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The Word That Wounds and Heals
From the series: Moving On To Maturity
Text: Hosea 10:12; 11:8; 14:4
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
July 25, 1999
Transcription of the spoken sermon
This spring I had several messages on the general theme, "The Varieties of
Religious Experience," and, thinking about that, I was reminded again of the fact
that that is precisely true, there is a variety of religious experience. The variety is
determined somewhat by the way one is raised or nurtured, but on the other
hand, there is a certain something in all of us that makes us more attuned to one
approach than another. That is the impossibility of a congregation at worship
because you have all kinds of people who respond differently to different stimuli
and out of different backgrounds with different nurture, and then one tries to
weave that all together. Some of you who have been with me for a long time know
that some years ago it was a very telling moment for me when at a seminar at
McCormick Seminary in Chicago, a Presbyterian school, they brought the
venerable old Lutheran theologian Joseph Sittler in as a guest lecturer, and he
was needling the Presbyterians there, thinking that they were all Presbyterians
there, which I suppose most of them were, and he said, "You know, you
Presbyterians always route it through the head, always approach through the
mind, in an intellectualistic approach to faith, whereas the Catholic tradition is
more of an intuitive approach using symbols, sacraments, incense." (We used
incense here once but everyone started coughing; we have to get accustomed to
incense before we can use it full-blown.)
When I came home from that seminar, it was a moment of awareness for me to
realize that there was actually more than one legitimate way to worship and some
people can be approached more fruitfully in one way and some in another, and I
thought to myself, "Why must one choose?" and from that moment on it has been
our intention here to weave a tapestry of worship in such a way that there are
those moments when various people can be approached, where the entré to
different kinds of responses to religious stimuli can be honored, moments when
the word is addressed, as now, which has been the characteristic of our tradition,
but an enrichment of the rest of the service so there are those moments, even
moments of silence. Marcus Borg, when he was here, thought we were a bit
wordy, although he affirmed our worship, but he spoke, perhaps you will
remember, even for a place of silence in worship.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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We have been a wordy people, and it has been the tradition that has shaped me,
and consequently, the tradition that shapes this congregation probably most
forcefully. I want to look at that this morning; I want you to think with me about
the word that wounds and heals, and in so doing, I go to Hosea because the
Hebrew prophets were the ones who majored in this idea of the word of God as a
word of address. In fact, that is that which distinguished Israel from its neighbors
at the time, and the conception of the word of God spoken through the human
voice is a conception that formed and shaped the people of Israel. The eighth
century prophets, particularly, were these marvelous expositors of a word of God
in the midst of the concrete historical situation. The prophetic ministry of the
Church, the address to the world in its time and in its context derives from that
Hebrew prophetic tradition, Hosea, certainly one of the best. I love him because
of the things that I read this morning, a selective reading. I could have gone
anywhere in the prophetic corpus of the Hebrew scriptures, but I read Hosea
because there is so clearly the wounding word and the healing word, and the
word of God ought always to be understood to be wounding and healing, and
wounding in order to heal. There is no purpose in a wounding word of God that
does not bring, finally, the word of grace and healing.
Hosea had to confront the northern kingdom in the last period of their existence
before the Assyrian empire removed them in 722 B.C.E. Hosea prophesied in a
time of public turmoil, social unrest, the exploitation of the poor and the
vulnerable. In that sense, Hosea’s ministry was very much like most of the other
Hebrew prophets. They called Israel to account for its failure to live faithfully in
covenant with God and to have justice mark their social life. And so, he called
Israel to repent. It’s time to break up the fallow ground. It’s time to sow
righteousness and reap the steadfast love of the Lord, and in the 12th chapter
there is a summary, as it were, Hosea being the spokesperson for God, who
speaks about how tenderly God had nurtured Israel when Israel was in Egypt, "I
called my son," and how he picked him up and how he fed him and how he cared
for him and how he nurtured him, and then the statement, "But Israel continues
to turn away." They turn away and so they’re going to go back into exile. Once
again they are going to become the victims of Assyria; they are going to go back to
Egypt. "I’m done with them," God says. Then those very tender words, "How can
I give you up? How can I give you up? I can’t give you up. A human being would
give you up, but I’m not human; I am God."
The closing verses of the 14th chapter speak about Israel flowering as a garden
with the dew of heaven falling upon it, the fragrance of Lebanon’s wines marking
it, a picture of the healing. "I will heal you of your faithlessness."
I use that only illustratively. It is characteristic of the prophetic word. It is a word
that exposes. It is a word that tells the truth. It is a word that calls a spade a
spade. It is a word that makes us uneasy, uncomfortable in our ambiguity and
equivocation of our lives. It is a word that exposes our self-centeredness, our
selfishness. It is a word that calls us to right living, to the practice of justice and to
© Grand Valley State University
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the ministry of mercy. It is a word that addresses us in our humanness and tells
us in the name of God to clean up our act, to get on with the work, to do the task,
whatever it may be, in whatever concrete situation, wherever there is
compromise, with our accountability to the faithful God. There the word of God
in public address dresses us down, but only for our own good, only in order to say
to us, "I’ll never let you go. The steadfast love of the Lord will never let you go." It
is a word that wounds and heals, and it wounds, not taking any satisfaction in the
wounding, but in order to awaken, in order to break through to the dullness of a
heart of stone, in order to call us up short, in order that we might be consciously
embraced, conscious of that unconditional love that will keep us forever. That is
the prophetic task of the prophetic word of God in the midst of the people of God.
I use Hosea, as I said, simply as an illustration of that which has shaped and
marked our tradition, that which is a big part of our Sunday morning experience.
I have in your liturgies a rather extended excerpt from an address of Karl Barth in
1922. Now, that is Karl Barth. When you look at the bibliographical reference, I
want you to know that Karl is not Carl, but Karl. Karl Barth cannot be with a "C."
And it is Barth, but there’s an "h" on the end, and we knock the h out of Karl
Barth. In the European pronunciation, the h is silent, but when I looked at that,
Carl Bart, I thought, "Oh, my gosh. I am embarrassed. I am humiliated. I don’t
want one of those to go anywhere out of this church." I want you to take them
home and read them several times, but I want you to change it to Karl Barth. I
thought everybody knew about Karl Barth, but my mistake. I should have faxed it
in. I did it on the telephone. It’s correct phonetically, but don’t let anybody know
we did that.
Anyway, Karl Barth was probably the greatest theologian of the 20th century, and
where did his theology come from? Where does this huge production come from?
It came from the task of preaching. Karl Barth, in the early part of this century,
graduated from the finest European institutions of learning. He was deeply
indebted to and steeped in the culture of Europe, and he went to a little Swiss
village to preach. He got into the pulpit, this highly educated, highly cultured
genius and brilliant man, and he had nothing to say, and he began to struggle
with the word of God. His theology, the Bartian theology, was called the theology
of the word because, in his experience of having to preach, he found he had
nothing to say, and when you have nothing to say and you have to preach, you’re
in deep trouble. So, Barth began to study and he studied the Epistle to the
Romans and after ten years of preaching in this village and working with a good
friend, seriously wrestling with the faith, he published The Epistle to the Romans.
It started such a stir that he was asked to come and speak about his theology to a
ministers’ conference. He was embarrassed by the very thought, and he said, "I
don’t have a theology. I have a theology just like it came to me, nurtured through
my teachers until I had to preach, and then I needed something to say, and I
began to study and think biblically and theologically in order for the sermon on
Sunday morning."
© Grand Valley State University
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You see, there’s really nothing that is more important than this moment. Now, I
said a moment ago that I recognize a variety of religious experience and more and
more I have come to appreciate the aesthetic and the sacramental and the silence.
That is so terribly important. Maybe God can even touch us more easily then, I
don’t know. Maybe it would be better if I would shut up, but for better or for
worse, this is the moment of the sermon, this is the moment of the address of the
word of God and I want to say to you it is a terribly important moment. Karl
Barth recognized that his people were coming and he needed to have something
to say, and he came to realize that all theology ought to be nothing more than in
service of the sermon in order at this moment we can have something to say.
He speaks about Sunday morning, about the strange architecture of the place, the
furniture, the appointments, and then the expectation. Oh, he recognizes that
maybe someone came lazily, lollygagging in, not really expecting anything, and
yet, he said, the whole situation speaks of expectation. Some event, some event in
the past or perhaps in the future, some event, God is present. And then he says
here is presumption, here is daring - one prays, someone begins to preach, and
it’s done on the conviction that God is present. That is what this moment is about
- that God is present. Barth says the people come with a question, and the
question is, "Is it true?" He says that the preacher had better understand people
better than the people understand themselves. The preacher better know that
down in the depths of the human heart and soul there’s a question that says, "Is it
true?" In other words, can I live with trust?
Can I believe, somehow or other in the midst of the world that has gone crazy
with all of the darkness, where in Kosovo 14 farmers baling hay are shot at close
range, where there continues to be this vengeful cycle of revenge, the violence
where it’s symptomatic of the human condition, where I look into the human
soul, I look into my own heart and I see the darkness there, the compromise
there. I see the ambiguity there. I see the self-centeredness there, I see all of that
which keeps me from fulfilling that calling of God, that beckoning of the spirit.
Is it true? Is anything true? Is God at all here? Is God present? Can God be
trusted? Is God involved at all in the world, in history, in nature, in my life?
Barth says that’s what Sunday morning is all about. That’s what this moment is
all about. The people have come and even when they don’t realize it, even when
they just come because it’s Sunday morning and haven’t even thought about it,
even when they come with very little conscious expectation, down deep in their
heart, he says, there’s a question - Is it true? Can God be trusted? Is God? Is it
true? Karl Barth says Sunday morning is that moment in which all theology
should be focused in order to give the preacher something to say and to be able to
touch that deep place in the human heart where there’s doubt and fear and
anxiety, deep questions, where there’s a cry, "Is it true?" That’s what Sunday
morning is all about.
© Grand Valley State University
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I came across this work of Barth when I was in Europe and if I had ever been
tempted at all, following post-graduate study, to go into the academic
community, I think it was this piece plus Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and
Papers From Prison that convinced me that this is the most important place in
the world and this is the most important hour of the week, this hour, preaching.
My God, it’s important, people. Do you realize how important it is?
Presumptuous. Daring. One flawed and failing human being trying to say a word
that is the word of God. That’s what Calvin understood it to be, and Barth, in
following Calvin, clarified very, very nicely the three forms of the word of God,
the center of it all the word made flesh: the word made flesh, the word of God
embodied, and all of Israel’s prophetic word, words of anticipation, and all of the
apostolic witness following the word of recollection or remembrance. So, there’s
the word in flesh and the word written, but then, here’s daring, the preached
word, and the preached word is nothing more or less than the word of God
updated for this place and this time and this people.
Even when we read Hosea’s words, we’re reading an 8th century prophet into
which have been layered some 6th century words because the 8th century prophet
became the text for a 6th century preacher, and the text now that we have in 1999
is the text of the word of God written out of the 8th century Before the Common
Era, and the 6th century Before the Common Era, and here it is 1999 and it
becomes the occasion for the preaching of the word in this place at this time,
because the word preached is the updating of the word written that is spoken on
the word in flesh, because Barth understood so clearly that revelation is always
an event. You don’t have revelation in a book; you don’t have revelation in an
institution; you don’t have revelation in a confessional creed; the word of God
speaks. God reveals God. Never at our disposal. Never to put in our pocket. Never
for us to domesticate and have in a neat little box, packaged. The word of God will
speak when God will speak, and when the human voice is speaking a word of
address based on a written text pointing to the word in flesh, it just might
happen. And it might not. It probably doesn’t happen more often than it happens.
But, that’s why this is such an electric moment. That’s why this could potentially
be a world turning upside down, transforming moment for someone, and who
knows how it will happen, because the Spirit blows where it will. But when the
word made flesh, witnessed to by the word written, becomes the text for a word of
address, it just might happen. Even here and now someone might see a rift in the
sky, someone whose burden is heavy might feel it lift, someone might see a light
in the darkness, someone might feel themselves exposed, laid bare in all their
selfishness compromised and all of the flawedness of their existence, someone
might cry out, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner," someone might say, "I heard
the voice today that said, ‘I will heal your faithlessness; I’ll never give you up.’"
I don’t know how it happens, when it happens, but I know that it is absolutely
serious and critical that it happens where we find an honest word today. Will you
find it in the political arena? Why can we not pass campaign reform? Is it not
© Grand Valley State University
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because our political system is for sale? Where has the word "spin doctor" come
from? Do we believe anything we hear, or is it always something with a spin, or
an ulterior motive satisfied by an ambition for human acquisition or
aggrandizement, for the undercutting of something or other, for the setting up of
a project or a person? Is there any truth in the land?
There had better be truth here. Do I presume to be one without bias or prejudice?
Of course not. That’s the presumption of preaching. But I had better not speak a
word that I speak not consciously before the face of God. If there is to be truth to
be told in the earth, then it must be told here, where there is nothing to gain,
where there is no ulterior motive but the well-being of humankind and the glory
of God and the mending of creation.
The religious right has joined the political game. Recently Ed Dobson of Calvary
Undenominational, and Cal Thomas, the journalist, wrote a book about Blinded
By Power, because when the Church gets enmeshed in those structures, then it
has another agenda, then it can’t tell the truth. Only the free pulpit and a free
person who has nothing but the concern to speak a word from God is the
salvation of the world. It is here that you can still hear a word of truth, in spite of
the flawed nature of the voice, but the voice is tied to the text and points to the
one, and your deep question, "Is it true?" can be answered from the written word
that pointed to the word in flesh that lived out the fact, "Yes, it’s true. God is love.
A fierce love that will expose you only in order, finally, to heal you." I don’t know
of another stop along your way this week where you have a better chance of
hearing the word of God than in this hour, and that’s why you come, and it’s that
word in which you can trust, and by God, it’s tough. It’s presumptuous. It’s
daring, and it doesn’t get any easier, because I take it so seriously, do you know
that? God have mercy on us.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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Event
Pentecost X
Series
Moving On To Maturity
Scripture Text
Hosea 10:12, 11:8, 14:4
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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KII-01_RA-0-19990725
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1999-07-25
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The Word That Wounds and Heals
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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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Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on July 25, 1999 entitled "The Word That Wounds and Heals", as part of the series "Moving On To Maturity", on the occasion of Pentecost X, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Hosea 10:12, 11:8, 14:4.
Justice
Prophetic Voice
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Paul: Simply Wrong About History
From the series: Varieties of Religious Experience
Text: I Thessalonians 4:16-17; I Corinthians 15:22-24
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
April 25, 1999
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Nancy and I have finally succeeded in securing our future just in case Jesus
doesn’t come in the year 2000. We consolidated our pension funds. We have a
very fine financial advisor who lives in New Jersey and we’re so very happy with
him. Michael is not only competent and honest, but he is also a committed
churchman, a Christian, who seems to have a real personal concern for us, and he
comes through once or twice a year to hold our hand and say, "All will be well."
Michael came through this week. He is just finishing a term as Moderator of a
large Presbytery in New Jersey, and so he’s really interested in the Church and he
has been interested in Christ Community and in case anybody is at all interested,
I have a dozen or two tapes I have at all times at the ready. (Silver and gold have I
none, but sermons I have aplenty). And so, I share these around; they grow legs
and crawl all over the globe. He must have gotten a tape from Advent, this past
Advent when I announced rather boldly in the season in which we celebrate the
fact that Jesus came and is coming again, that Jesus wasn’t coming. Remember
that? Jesus isn’t coming again. Michael said he was listening to that as he was
driving along on the New Jersey Turnpike and he almost ran off the road. He said
to me, "Could you get me a printed copy? I’d like to study that." And he sort of
still had a dazed look.
Well, what I’d like to do today is to say that Jesus is not coming again and the
reason we’ve been confused about that for so long is that Paul had it all wrong.
Paul was wrong about history. Paul was wrong about history in terms of the time
line, where he thought he was in the time line of universal history, and that
caused him to be wrong about the meaning and significance of world history.
Now, I understand it’s a bit presumptuous to take on the great Apostle, but hear
me out this morning. Paul was obviously wrong about the time line. I have said
that here for a long time. I mean, you can’t deny that. Paul had it wrong about
where things were in the whole cosmic journey. Paul didn’t even grasp, through
no fault of his, but simply that the information was not available about the whole
nature of the unfolding of the cosmos and billions of years and this bio-historicalevolutionary trajectory on which we find ourselves. Paul thought that the End
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was very near, the end of his world as he knew it, the world as it was organized at
his time. He thought the End had come, and he believed that in the death and
resurrection of Jesus the climax had been reached and all that was left now was a
brief interregnum, that is, a brief interim period in which Jesus was reigning
from heaven, soon to return and bring all things to their consummation.
Now, as I said, I have said for a long time here that Paul had that wrong. That’s
obvious. Paul said Jesus was coming soon. Jesus hasn’t come yet. You can’t very
well get the Apostle off the hook on that. He expected the imminent return of
Jesus to wrap up all things, and that’s obvious in the readings of this morning.
The first kind of labored paragraph that I read beginning with verse 12 shows that
in Paul’s mind there was an intimate connection between the resurrection of
Jesus and the general resurrection. If one didn’t happen, the other wouldn’t
happen. If one happened, the other would happen, and they were intimately
connected, and in order to maintain that intimate connection, even though Jesus
was resurrected and glorified and the rest hadn’t happened, Paul used the figure
of speech, the "first fruits." Jesus was the first fruit of those who would rise, but
the first fruit, you know, is the first ear of corn that is ripe, the first tassel of oats
that is ripe, the first apple, the first strawberry, that is the first fruits. You say,
"Ah, we got one ripe." But, the first one ripe doesn’t precede the rest by very long
or you have a problem, and when there is a hiatus between the first one ripe and
the rest, something is out of kilter. That was the image that Paul was using Christ the first fruits, and then the rest at his coming, and his coming has to be
rather soon in order for him even to conceive of first fruits, and he had to
conceive of it that way because there was an intimate connection between the
resurrection of Christ and the general resurrection, in Paul’s thinking.
Paul goes on, then, to give us the scenario of the End in his understanding at that
time, for Christ is presently reigning, subduing all contrary powers after which he
will yield up the kingdom to the Father in order that God may be all in all. All of
that, obviously, is to happen in relatively short order. Jesus will return after he
has subdued all contrary power. The dead in Christ will rise, and he will turn it all
over to God, big "G."
That he believed that and that he preached that is obvious from his letter to the
Thessalonians. He went there, founded a congregation, then kept in touch with
them, as he did with the congregations he had founded, dealing with the
problems that cropped up, and at Thessalonica, the problem that cropped up was
that he had taught them so well that Jesus had come, died, was resurrected in
order to give them eternal life, and would soon return, that they got up every
morning and said, "Maybe today is the day," and they looked skyward hoping
there would be a rift in the sky and the appearance of the Son of Man on clouds.
Then, a loved one died, and then another loved one died, and they began to look
at each other and ask, "Will our loved ones who died before the grand event miss
out?"
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So, Paul said, "I write these things to you that you grieve not as those who have
no hope, for if we believe that those who fall asleep in Jesus God will bring with
him," and then he gets into the apocalyptic imagery of the trumpet and the angel
and then we who are alive at the time, Paul expecting still to be a part of that
company who would be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, who has brought
with him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus before the grand event, and so he
says the only thing that’s really important in that paragraph, "We will be forever
with the Lord. Comfort one another with these words." He was dealing with a
very concrete, pastoral problem that was precipitated by his preaching of the
imminent coming of Jesus who didn’t come soon enough in order to get there
before Aunt Bessie died.
Obviously, this is what Paul believed. This is what he proclaimed, and he was
wrong. He was wrong about the time line of history. And being wrong about the
time line of history, which is beyond refute, he gives us a distorted sense of the
significance of history, of our present experience, of our human experience, of
our ordinary experience before the face of God, and I think that you will see that
quite readily when you will remember that Paul was obviously in the apocalyptic
mode and the shorthand for explaining that is simply to say that Paul was a
throwback to John the Baptist. We’ve looked at that, time and again here, most
recently in our Lenten series where we saw how Jesus distanced himself from
John the Baptist because John the Baptist was calling down fire and judgment
from heaven and the outpouring of the wrath of God and the vengeance of God
on all that was evil and in opposition to God, as well as the salvation of the
chosen. John participated in the very widespread and pervasive apocalyptic
expectation of his day, and so did Paul. If we had time, we could read on in the
second chapter of Thessalonians, and you would see all of the apocalyptic
imagery is there, including the vengeance of God. Paul is talking now about the
vengeance of God being poured out at the coming of Jesus from heaven who has
been received into heaven for this little brief period of time.
Paul was apocalyptic, and apocalypticism was in the air between 200 before
Christ to 100 after Christ. During that whole 300-year period, Jewish thought
was permeated with apocalyptic expectation; it was in the air. John the Baptist
was the one who was waiting for God to do something, and Paul knew that God
had done something but hadn’t finished it yet and would soon take care of the
rest, bringing all things to consummation - God’s vengeance on the unbeliever,
God’s chosen justified.
Thus for Paul and his contemporaries, life between Jesus’ ascension and his
coming again was an interim. They were cooling their heels and waiting for the
end to come. To Corinth he writes,
... the appointed time has grown short; from now on, let even those who
have wives be as though they had none, and those who mourn as though
they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not
© Grand Valley State University
�Paul Wrong About History
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions, and those
who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the
present form of this world is passing away. I Corinthians 7:29-31
So, sit loosely, don’t get encumbered. That was counsel for an interim, temporary
experience and that must be a limited, less than normal kind of human existence.
Paul was quite uninterested in everyday ordinary human life.
And Paul was not really interested in the life of the historical Jesus. Once he says
we knew him after the flesh, but we know him thus no more. The reigning Christ
about to return was Paul’s total focus. Jesus’ life and concrete existence played no
part.
Now, this is the opposite of the case with the Gospels. There God’s salvation is
embodied in a very real human life. Incarnation is key and the historical Jesus is
concerned about very concrete human life, about justice and mercy, about table
fellowship and healing of the body - in a word, about transforming the human
situation dominated by power issuing in violence.
For Paul, the present was a time of feverish activity - proclaiming the Gospel,
calling to repentance, getting as many into the number of the saved as possible
before the end arrived.
Now to make Paul’s understanding of the time between the two comings
normative would miss the meaning and significance of human existence and
human history which comes to expression much better in the life of Jesus, where
we claim the eternal God was embodied, incarnate.
What’s an alternative to Paul’s missed reading of the times, which led to a
misunderstanding of the nature of things? Well, the alternative, I think, is what
we see currently in the research on the historical Jesus. Dominic Crossan
introduced us to a Jesus whose life was a non-violent protest in the name of the
God of justice. The Jesus who distanced himself from John the Baptist who had
said, "God can’t you do something," and Jesus rather representing a God Who
said, "Why don’t you do something?" The difference is a God in the face of Jesus,
as Marcus Borg will speak of Jesus, a Spirit person, concretely in human
existence, healing and embracing. I mean, you have to sense that this is so.
Obviously, if the curtain of history is going to ring down very soon, as Paul
thought, then you adjust your life one way. You certainly don’t celebrate
birthdays. No need to plant a seedling or to clean up a river. I suppose you might
celebrate flowers, but you’d see a cut flower as a symbol of everything that was
soon to wither away.
The alternative would be to see that God is to be known and served and
worshiped in this life, that it is not "out there," but right here and right now that I
am to live before the face of God, that it is here and now that I am to find
© Grand Valley State University
�Paul Wrong About History
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
meaning for my human existence, that it is here and now that I am to be the
continuing embodying of the Spirit of God as was uniquely embodied in Jesus. It
makes all the difference in the world how I look at my world, how I meet my day,
how I live my life, whether I think that I have to simply endure and hold on until
..., or whether I recognize that this is the place, for God’s sake, where God has
placed me to live before the face of god, to love justice, kindness, walk humbly
with my God, embrace my neighbor and to find meaning and significance in my
ordinary days.
"Ah," you say, "this world? This life? What of shootings and violence in Colorado?
What of bombings in Kosovo and Belgrade? What of the constant eruption of evil
and darkness? This world is that to which you would point us for meaning and
significance and communion with God?"
I would say, "Yes," for this life is not only violence and darkness. It is also a
marvelous spring morning in which there are blossoms with the prodigality of
color to delight the eye. It is also a world of an Olivia and Alexandra, beautiful
creatures, children who smile, as well as dirty diapers. It is also a world in which
one can look into the eyes of another and say, ‘I love you.’ It is a world that has all
the potential to self-destruct and lie in ruins, or a world that has all the possibility
of being a human community, a family where hands are joined and hearts
entwined and peace reigns.
NATO at fifty? Bombing, but bombing in order to say "No" to an inhumane
monstrosity because we have come to see that we cannot stand by and allow that
to be. Haclav Havel, addressing the NATO leaders, said, "Peace is something
which we must be willing to defend."
I can understand the temptation to cry: “God, can’t you do something? Take me
out of here!"
The answer is "No, I have put it in your hands. You do something."
Paul was wrong in the time line. He is not a prophetic voice to follow in wringing
the best out of human life and history. There’s something so much better.
David Hartman, the Rabbi who has taught me so much, is the first person who
incarnated for me one who could live fully today without all of that eschatological
baggage and all of those questions about the future that we really don’t know
anything about, but could well just leave to God. I got a letter from him recently
and in a lecture that he gave, the Cardinal Bernardin Jerusalem Lecture, he
concluded it with these words,
My primary interest is in being alive and in finding significance in
everyday reality. History has holiness, not because it points to the
messianic kingdom. History has holiness when it provides opportunities to
© Grand Valley State University
�Paul Wrong About History
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
live in a covenantal relationship with God. History has significance when
we can bring God into everyday life.
And all God’s people said ... Amen.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/28a24b66e41746f4045e6e1be44a5921.mp3
720078e80e231a9ee2639b9563fb845c
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
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English
Type
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Sound
Text
Identifier
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KII-01
Coverage
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1981-2014
Format
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Eastertide IV
Series
Varieties of Religious Experience
Scripture Text
I Thessalonians 4:16-17, I Corinthians 15:22-24
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-19990425
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1999-04-25
Title
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Paul: Simply Wrong About History?
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Sound
Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on April 25, 1999 entitled "Paul: Simply Wrong About History?", as part of the series "Varieties of Religious Experience", on the occasion of Eastertide IV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: I Thessalonians 4:16-17, I Corinthians 15:22-24.
Compassion
Eschatology
Justice
Resurrection
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3f5a00df92002a507eb429a2babad46d.pdf
dbf4c2556624e1df8af1fc5a7cee8420
PDF Text
Text
I Really Can’t (Choose Not To) Follow
From the series: God in the Mirror of a Human Face
Text: Mark 8:34; I Peter 2:21
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Lent, March 21, 1999
Transcription of the spoken sermon
My contention: We must get Jesus right, the historical Jesus, because Jesus’ face
is the human face that mirrors the nature and character of God. If we get Jesus
right, we will get God right, and if we get God right, we will be right. The God we
imagine and worship determines the kind of people we become. In the Gospels
we have two very different images of God:
That of John the Baptist who, with many of his contemporaries, was living in the
expectation of the dramatic in-breaking of God to end the world as it was
organized, a world of oppression under the heel of Imperial Rome. God would
come in fiery judgment to throw down the social structures of oppression and
human abuse; the wicked would be burned as chaff, the righteous established in
God’s kingdom of righteousness. That final solution involved God in counterviolence to the violence that God’s people had suffered from imperial power.
Though beginning with John, at some point Jesus distanced himself from John,
moved north to Galilee and inaugurated a ministry of grace whose keynote was
the nearness of God to all, the unbrokered presence of God accessible to all,
symbolized in the open table, the shared meal. Jesus’ vision was not apocalyptic;
it was, to use the designation of John Dominic Crossan, “ethical eschatology.”
Jesus, like John, believed the normal way the world was organized and run was
fundamentally wrong, for the organizing principle was power - political, military,
economic, religious– power that, said Jesus, is not reflective of the nature and
character of God, nor of God’s intention for Creation.
Not Power, but Justice. But not simply justice: rather, non-violent justice; that
was the key.
John wanted justice, too, and he wanted God to level the playing field any way
God could - let wrath roar, but square the accounts of the world.
© Grand Valley State University
�I Can’t (Choose Not To) Follow
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
Not so Jesus; he came to see that justice by coercion fails to create a new world.
"One convinced against one’s will is of the same opinion still," claims the old
adage.
As we gather, an emergency meeting of the Defense and Security people in
Washington are gathering with the President about the situation in Kosovo. What
are you guessing will be the decision? How would you make the call?
Here is one of those terribly difficult decisions that this government is called on
to make - not alone, of course - but nonetheless as the lone superpower. I
mention that because, should we take military action, we may avert a human
slaughter, diminish human suffering, halt an aggressor. Force can do that. But
will we change anything? There would be service to some semblance of justice,
but a coerced semblance of justice holds in check a greater evil while failing
utterly to effect the kind of transformation that is reflective of the world order
that was envisioned by Jesus.
Jesus went another way - the way of non-violent protest. He did that in a very
concrete cultural situation - in rural Galilee under Roman rule
Commercialization was driving peasant farmers off their land. He did not need to
call those who followed him to leave all. They had lost all. And if on occasion a
person of wealth inquired about what he should do to enter the kingdom of which
Jesus spoke, he said, "Sell all, give it away and follow me if you want to be part of
this movement. Get out of the system; let your known, familiar world cease to be
and join us in a “companionship of empowerment." That’s Crossan’s descriptive
term, not teacher-disciple. That would still be a structure of domination, not a
fellowship of equality.
The best example I can give you in our century is Gandhi, who recognized that
somehow or other British rule in India was focused around salt and the fabric
industry. Remember Gandhi’s march to the sea? Well, they began to make their
own salt and they began to spin their own cotton, and when a mass of people opt
out of the way a world is running, that world collapses, it breaks down. You
remember in the film the moment when the masses were there in front of the
British guns and the guns began to bark and then had to be called off, because
any oppressor with a modicum of humanity cannot just mow down human
beings. Unfortunately, our world has known instances of those who could do that,
but anyone with a grain of humanity within cannot simply gun down a mass of
people who offer their bodies because they will no longer play the game that way.
That’s really, I think, what Jesus was about, and if our world had known more
people who would have followed the radicality of Jesus such as a Gandhi, our
world just might be farther along in this emerging evolutionary movement
toward humanization.
© Grand Valley State University
�I Can’t (Choose Not To) Follow
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Oh, it’s not easy - I really can’t follow, nor can I choose not to follow. That’s the
Lenten dilemma, when I’m faced starkly with Jesus’ call to take up my cross. To
take up my cross is not to buy a bathrobe and sandals and give away everything I
have and go out on the street. That’s imitating Jesus in a literalistic fashion and it
makes no sense.
Let me be clear - following Jesus is always a culturally specific action. It is an
action in light of my concrete situation. It is not the imitation of Jesus; it is doing
what Jesus would do, were Jesus in my shoes, for Jesus’ enemies are not my
enemies, and Jesus’ concrete instances of injustice are not mine. I’ve got to
determine what it means to follow Jesus in an economy where the stock market is
nudging 10,000. I have to determine what following in Jesus’ steps means in a
world that is driven into consumerism by PR, advertising firms that encourage
me to acquisition. I have to learn what following Jesus means in a world that is
under threat of pollution, a world that is marked still by terrible racism that
obtrudes itself occasionally in the disastrous brutality of the police slayings of
recent times. I have to decide what it means to follow Jesus in a world of gay
bashing and neo-Nazi manifestation. I have to decide what it means to follow
Jesus in a world where the most shrill voice and meanest spirit– I say in the
presence of God – I find in the representatives of the religious right. That’s how I
have to determine the shape of following in his steps, and it’s not easy. It’s very
complex.
The Church should have known long before it did that it belonged on the side of
the civil rights struggle of the sixties, of the feminist issue in the recent decades,
and the present era of homophobia. The Church should know long before it
finally comes kicking and dragging into the kingdom where it ought to be on
issues like that. But, it’s not always clear.
I can never get through Lent without going to my dear Bonhoeffer who was
convinced in his heart of hearts that Jesus called us to non-violence, who was
essentially himself a pacifist, and yet who left the safety of this country in 1939
returning to Germany, finally to be joined up by a conspiracy to assassinate
Hitler, a conspiracy which failed and which resulted in his incarceration and his
martyrdom. Eduard Bethke, his biographer, was asked when he came to this
country on a speaking tour how Bonhoeffer, with his convictions about pacifism,
could have gotten involved in that violent solution, and Bethke said, "What do
you do when someone is going up and down the street killing people?"
It’s not easy, you see. Because we live not in the kingdom of God. It has dawned,
but it has not fully arrived and, consequently, there’s light and shadow and it’s all
intertwined and we are all caught up in it, all heavily invested in the way things
are. There are often situations that are not clear-cut, and we need to be patient
with one another and in conversation with one another. But finally, finally I am
called to follow in his steps because I do believe that the heart of God is mirrored
in the face of Jesus. I believe that what Jesus was about is what God was about
© Grand Valley State University
�I Can’t (Choose Not To) Follow
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
and that it has cosmic, historical, human implications all the way down the line.
The possibility of the realization, the dream of God, that dream of a human
community, of humane existence, of the humanization of society - that that is
what Jesus was about because he believed that was what God was about and I do
believe that is the grain of the universe moving that way.
But God, with infinite patience, waits. Not full of wrath ready to bubble over,
saying to us, "It’s your only possibility. Power won’t do it. Violence, even my
violence, will defeat the very purpose with which I said ‘Let there be ...’ I only wait
until finally here and there, now and again, someone catches the dream, the
vision, the impossible dream for this world that I love, and I can imagine that
when Jesus moved from Gethsemane to the judgment hall, he might well have
written the words from The Man of La Mancha –
To dream the impossible dream,
to fight the unbeatable foe,
to bear with unbearable sorrow,
to run where the brave dare not go.
To right the unrightable wrong,
to love pure and chaste from afar,
to try when your arms are too weary,
to reach the unreachable star.
This is my quest:
to follow that star,
no matter how hopeless,
no matter how far.
to fight for the right
without question or pause,
to be willing to march into hell
for a heavenly cause!
And I know, if I’ll only be true
to this glorious quest,
that my heart will lie peaceful and calm
when I’m laid to my rest.
And the world will be better for this:
That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
still strove with his last ounce of courage
to reach the unreachable stars! (Joe Darton) –
because God so loved the world.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e0c40486f6dbb367d29248d6492cd911.mp3
92c96e66e37e14d4fd112f5c1d35eecb
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
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
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KII-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981-2014
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Lent V
Series
God In the Mirror of a Human Face
Scripture Text
Mark 8:34, I Peter 2:21
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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KII-01_RA-0-19990321
Date
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1999-03-21
Title
A name given to the resource
I Really Can't (Choose Not To) Follow
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
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 March 21, 1999 entitled "I Really Can't (Choose Not To) Follow", as part of the series "God In the Mirror of a Human Face", on the occasion of Lent V, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Mark 8:34, I Peter 2:21.
Divine Intention
Grace
Justice
Non-violence
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/92992b6aa3d8b5d4a4a8903f5ff9588f.pdf
3d9d78ff830b00b996f30c61a03257b1
PDF Text
Text
God, Can’t You Do Something?
From the series: God in the Mirror of a Human Face
Text: Mark 14:36
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Lent, March 14, 1999
Transcription of the spoken sermon
It has been my contention this Lenten season that it is critically important that
we get a proper fix on the historical Jesus, because if we get it right on Jesus, we’ll
get it right on God, and if we get it right on God, we’ll get it right in ourselves, for
Jesus is the human face that mirrors God, and the God that we worship, the God
that we serve, the God that we imagine is the God that will shape us, determine
the contours of our life, the attitudes, the posture of our spirit. So, it’s so very
important to get it right on Jesus in order to get it right on God, in order to be
right ourselves.
We have seen thus far two varying visions of Jesus, one by John the Baptist and
the other by Jesus. Now, both John and Jesus were looking for the end of the
world, not the space-time world so much as the end of the world as it is,
structured through its institutions, through its society, through the powers that
be. Both John and Jesus believed that there was something fundamentally wrong
with the world, that it did not reflect the justice and the compassion that were the
intentions of God. Both John and Jesus believed that there was a divine mandate
for world transformation. Both of them were committed totally to the bringing in
of the kingdom of God, and both of them were looking for God to break in
dramatically and to execute righteousness with violence, at least for a time. That
was basically John’s view, and there was a time in which Jesus identified with
John. He was baptized by John. He and his disciples were baptizing and carrying
on a mission similar to John in the vicinity where John was ministering in the
early days of Jesus’ ministry. John’s vision was apocalyptic, the in-breaking of
God, the purifying of the righteous, the damning of the wicked, the setting of
things right, violently.
Something happened in Jesus’ consciousness. Maybe it was reflected in the
temptation narratives, where Jesus was seeking his own identity and the nature
of his mission. But, there was a point, at least, when Jesus separated himself from
John the Baptist. He moved from Judea in the south to Galilee in the north and
there he was carrying on quite a different kind of ministry. We might describe it
as a ministry of grace, a ministry of healing, a ministry that proclaimed good
© Grand Valley State University
�God, Can’t You Do Something?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
news to the poor, that God had drawn near to all people, including all and
excluding none. It was quite a different message than that with which he began,
the message of John the Baptist, of the imminent judgment of God.
What happened? Well, whatever happened, John wondered, too. He was, in the
meantime, imprisoned by Herod, and in the prison he heard reports of Jesus’
gracious ministry, quite out of sync with that with which he had nurtured Jesus
and mentored Jesus, and he sent two of his disciples to ask Jesus, "Are you the
one? Or, should we look for another?" Jesus said to the disciples that came from
John, "Go tell John what you see and hear, how the blind see and the deaf hear
and the lame walk and the poor have good news preached to them." But, as a
matter of fact, what Jesus was saying is, "Go tell John the answer to his question
is ‘No, I am not the one he thought I was.’"
John’s ministry, John’s vision was that of a God of justice who affects justice on
the earth violently. Jesus’ vision and ministry was of a God of justice, non-violent
justice, a God of infinite patience who would wait until justice would rise in the
earth. Jesus distanced himself from John the Baptist, saying, in effect, to the
disciples that came to him, "Go tell John I am not who he thought I was, because
I have a different vision of the nature of God which, in turn, gives me a different
cast to my mission to bring in the kingdom of God."
John, obviously, must have been disappointed, and we can understand that.
Certainly we can identify with John. John was one who wanted God to do
something.
Don’t you often want God to do something? Aside now from the great affairs of
nations, cosmic events, even in our own lives, don’t we often want God
to do something? Don’t we want a God that does something? Isn’t there
something within us that stirs when we see corruption in high places and low
places? Isn’t there something within us that rises up and wants God to do
something when we read of yet another hate crime, another brutal slaying,
another abortion clinic bombed? Isn’t there something in us that wants God to do
something about the ugliness of all of the darkness in all of the tragedy that is
visited upon humankind by structures of domination and oppression, by those in
positions of power and privilege who would perpetuate that privilege and power
by the oppression of the rest?
That was going on in Palestine at the time of John the Baptist, Roman
commercialization driving the peasants off their land, driving them into
destitution. There was enough reason for one like John the Baptist who believed
in God, who believed in justice, who believed in righteousness, there was enough
in John the Baptist, to cause him legitimately to cry out to heaven and to say,
"God, why don’t you do something?"
© Grand Valley State University
�God, Can’t You Do Something?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
I can identify with that, can’t you? If we can’t, then we aren’t aware of our own
heart in which there resides always just beneath the surface the potential for
violence in all of us. But, Jesus had come to the insight that by violence the
kingdom of God could never come. Jesus must have arrived at the insight that it
was only non-violent protest in the midst of the battle, in the heat of the day,
consistently and firmly that would ever be the means of the transformation of the
world. Jesus must have come to see that violence begets violence, begetting
violence and more violence, even when it is the violence of God, for the kingdom
of God could be imposed upon us violently, it could be brought upon us with
coercion, it could be held in place by domination, and we would be the same as
we are now. A totalitarian tyrant can enforce total morality and absolute justice,
but that’s not the kingdom of God.
Jesus must have come to see that the kingdom of God will dawn only when there
is an inward awareness and a personal and social transformation of the world,
and therefore, he followed the course that he did, a course which now led him to
Jerusalem, to his denunciation of the establishment of the temple, to his last
supper at Passover time on the eve of his death, of which he must have been fully
aware, and he went to Gethsemane with his disciples to pray. That’s where we
find him, in prayer. Falling on his face on the ground, crying out, "O God, if it be
possible, let this cup pass from me."
"Afraid to die, Jesus?"
Oh, probably not, although execution on a Roman cross is enough to create fear
and trembling in anyone.
"Feeling the absence of God, Jesus?"
Probably not, at least in Mark’s portrait we have Jesus using the most intimate
address possible, "Abba," "Pappa."
"What was it, then, Jesus, this cup that you wanted removed, this foreboding, this
sinking feeling, this being torn inside, this wrenching of your soul, this being
totally distraught, this condition worse than death? What was it, Jesus? Was it
that you were now in the position that John the Baptist had been a year earlier?
When John sent his disciples with his question, when John was wondering
whether he, John, had gotten it wrong, whether his whole life project had been
wrong? Was it like that, Jesus? Were you wondering, did you get it right? Were
you wondering in the face of the darkness that you were encountering, were you
wondering in the face of the entrenched evil in the world, were you wondering
whether or not your vision of God was adequate? Could a God of non-violence
ever bring in the kingdom of peace?
"Jesus, were you wondering whether or not that vision by which you lived that
you learned in Isaiah, the suffering servant, the suffering servant who does not
© Grand Valley State University
�God, Can’t You Do Something?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
crush the bruised reed or snuff out the smoldering wick, the servant who goes as
a lamb to the slaughter, who resists not, are you wondering whether that model of
your ministry which was reflective of your understanding of God - were you
wondering whether or not it was adequate to the darkness of the world that you
were facing? Is that what you were struggling with, Jesus? For, certainly in the
heat of the battle, you must have sensed the overwhelming power of the way
things are, which is fundamentally wrong.
"Did you wonder if maybe John, with his God Who affects justice through
violence, might have been wrong, after all?"
Whatever he was wrestling with, he finally won through to freedom when he was
able to say, "Not my will, but Thy will be done."
I suspect that if we could have encountered a conversation between Jesus and his
Father in heaven, Jesus might have said, "Is there no other way? Can’t you do
something?"
And the answer would have been, "No, I can’t do anything, given Who I Am, and
the intention of creation and the goal of My dream. No, Jesus. There’s no other
way."
"What, then, must I do?"
"Stay the course."
"But, if I stay the course, I’ll die."
"Yes. You will die."
Was it, then, the will of God that Jesus die? Absolutely not. It was the will of God
that Jesus should continue to be what Jesus had been, continuing that nonviolent protest against all that was wrong, standing for all that was right,
revealing the compassion and the grace of God that embraced all and excluded
none. That was God’s intention and will for Jesus. But, it would get him killed,
executed, the separation of his body and his blood.
Was there no other way? No other way, because violence, even God’s violent, final
solution, breeds violence, stiffens resistance, builds walls, and can never create
community.
Jesus died, but he was free, he was free, because, you see, if I look into the mirror
and I see at least some semblance of similarity to the contours of the face of
Jesus, then I’ll know that my face reflects what his face reflects, which is the
justice and the grace and the compassion of God. And if I’m sure of that, I’m free.
You can do anything. You can strip me of everything, but if I see the reflection of
my face in the mirror that had all the reflection of Jesus, then I’m strong, then
I’m free.
© Grand Valley State University
�God, Can’t You Do Something?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
"God, why don’t You do something?"
"Why don’t you do something? You’re waiting for me? I’m waiting for you. It’s in
your hands, this world that I’ve created."
"Well, then certainly a God like You, a pansy God, a milktoast God, a passive God
will never bring in the kingdom. How long will it take?"
"I don’t know. How long will it take?"
Is that God of Jesus too weak for you? Does it disquiet you a bit, that passive God
of grace and justice?
Well, let me just remind you that we know the agent of imperial power resident in
Jerusalem at the time of Jesus; his name was Pontius Pilate. We know him
because his name was inserted into the creed that confesses Jesus as Lord. And
Jesus, the one whose blood was separated from his body, through 2000 years has
continued to elicit the best, create the highest nobility and commitment of those
who have followed in his steps. Of course, it will cost everything ... as Gandhi
found, Bonhoeffer found, Martin Luther King found. It will cost everything, but,
by God, you’ll be free.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ff945147a66586d6caf9967444e1145d.mp3
5905a82cdb590daf9f12316e116c2842
Dublin Core
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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Sound
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
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Event
Lent IV
Series
God In the Mirror of a Human Face
Scripture Text
Mark 14:36
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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KII-01_RA-0-19990314
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1999-03-14
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God, Can't You Do Something?
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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/
Language
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eng
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Text
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Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on March 14, 1999 entitled "God, Can't You Do Something?", as part of the series "God In the Mirror of a Human Face", on the occasion of Lent IV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Mark 14:36.
Compassion
Divine Intention
Justice
Nature of God
Way of Jesus
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/897f90ed11c89c2fe493a404a447ed0a.pdf
51c06b682ea06d73482c26f91163c7bb
PDF Text
Text
The Biblical Vision and Karl Marx:
A 150th Retrospective
Scripture: Leviticus 25:1-17; Acts 2:43-47; Matthew 25:31-40
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Labor Day Weekend, September 6, 1998
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Labor Day does not appear on the liturgical calendar, and there are some purists,
some high liturgical churches where civil holidays are not noted, and I suppose if
I had to choose if there was a conflict between a liturgical festival day and a civil
holidays, obviously, I would take the text for the day in the church, but civil
holidays also point to some significant human concerns which are not without
deep biblical concern, as well. And so, on occasion it is, I think, appropriate to
have a sermon on the theme of Memorial Day or the Declaration of Independence
or, in this case, the Labor Day weekend. As I said, there are purists who wouldn’t
do that, not even that highest, holiest of all festival days, Mother’s Day, but then,
not to observe that is to take one’s life in one’s hands. But, today I want to
address the theme of Labor Day, a day set aside to honor labor, a day in which it
might be appropriate for us to think about the whole economic aspect of life and
its impact upon our spiritual existence.
The year 1998 is the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Communist
Manifesto by Karl Marx, assisted by Friedrich Engels, and I promise you more
than I can deliver in the title of the sermon when I say, " 150th Anniversary
Retrospective." I don’t really know very much about Karl Marx. I don’t really
know very much about economic history, but I do think that it is appropriate to
take a moment this morning in our worship to reflect on our spiritual lives in
relationship to that which is so dominant in our society and in our lives, as well the power of the economic dimension.
When I was reading the recent issue of Tikkun, the magazine edited by Rabbi
Michael Lerner, I found the piece on spirituality which is in your literature, and
what I want to try to communicate to you this morning is the place of our
economic endeavor in the totality of our lives. As Lerner writes, "We live at the
end of a century in which the competitive economic market has demonstrated its
powerful ability to shape a dominate consciousness of the planet." Economic
concerns being a dominate determinative of our minds and our hearts, shaping
our lives and our motivations, it’s rather interesting that this message should
have been planned for this Lord’s Day which is at the end of one of those great
© Grand Valley State University
�Biblical Vision and Karl Marx
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
volatile weeks on Wall Street. The ups and the downs, and the downs had it, and I
suppose that there are those of you sitting here, along with me, who at least in the
paper count are considerably less wealthy today than we were last Sunday. But it
has our attention, doesn’t it? There was an article on the front page of one of the
newspapers this morning in which a commentator was saying that we hear voices
assuring us that all is well, the economy is essentially solid, the stock market is
still a safe place to be, hang in there, ride it out. And then rather disconcertingly,
he quoted similar statements from October of 1929 prior to the Great Fall.
Well, if it all happens, will you jump out of a skyscraper window? My question to
you this morning really is, "Where will you be if you get where you’re going?"
How will you be if you achieve your dreams? What if you accomplish that which
you are killing yourself to accomplish - how will it be with you? Will there be
contentment, peace, serenity? Will you be a fulfilled and whole human being if
you should be granted your fondest dreams, the things that you are giving your
life to? I think that’s a legitimate question for a Labor Day weekend, and I believe
that Karl Marx, 150 years ago, had a prophetic insight and amazing insight into
the power of capital to determine the shape of global existence.
In an anniversary edition of the Communist Manifesto that has an introduction
by an English scholar, Eric Hobsbawm, the dust cover has an interesting
paragraph. It says that Hobsbawm writes that the world described by Marx and
Engels in 1848, in passages of dark, laconic eloquence, is recognizably the world
in which we live 150 years later. The author identifies the insights which
underpin the Manifesto’s startling contemporary relevance, the recognition of
capitalism as a world system capable of marshaling production on a global scale,
its devastating impact on all aspects of human existence - work, the family, and
the distribution of wealth, and the understanding that, far from being a stable,
immutable system, it is, on the contrary, susceptible to enormous convulsions
and crises and contains the seeds of its own destruction.
Historical development did not prove Marx correct. That is, what he thought
would happen with the rise of capitalism did not happen according to his script.
But, he saw with an amazing vision and insight the tremendous impact of the
economic dimension of our human existence individually and in terms of human
community. And what he saw, the dangers he saw, and the problems that he saw
have been experienced and we are not out of the woods in terms of the
consequences yet.
Someone who was here on the 4th of July weekend and heard my sermon, "A
Declaration of Interdependence," in which I suggested that the Holy Spirit was
creating this global community, knocking down barriers and boundaries, all of
which are artificial, creating therefore a world community, wrote me a very
perceptive letter in which he said, "Dreamers dream and all of that is fine, but in
the meantime, how about the people who get hurt? In building a global
community, what about the disruption to local communities? And having that
© Grand Valley State University
�Biblical Vision and Karl Marx
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
universal dream, what about the particularity of human communities, their
identity, their character, their nature, their uniqueness?" He wrote a very, very
good letter, and then he shared with me just what I needed, another book.
It was written by Kirkpatrick Sale, whose book Rebels Against the Future tells the
story of the Luddites. Do you know who they were? In the onset of the Industrial
Revolution in England, the Luddites were small craftsmen, cottage industry
people, textile people. And, of course, with the discovery of steam and power and
the building of factories, these individual craftsmen were being put out of work.
They were able to work traditionally at their own pace and in their own
environment according to the rhythms of their own life and nature, and now,
there stood a factory! And that factory was taking their jobs and also hiring them
- they became the laborers who no longer could set their agenda according to
their own rhythm, the rhythm of their life and that which led to human wellbeing, but the cadences of the piston and steel determined the nature of their
work and their labor. So, what did they do? They took their guns and pistols and
pickaxes and they attacked the factories. In 1811, 1812 there were a number of
textile plants that were destroyed, and it was a violent revolt against what was the
inevitable movement, it seems, of historical development.
Well, Karl Marx saw what they were doing, but he recognized that there was this
personal self-interest involved in their attacking the factory, because they were
losing their jobs. But Marx saw a bigger picture: he saw the power of capital, as
Lerner says, to determine the production globally. He saw the power of capital to
continue to pile up wealth and the tremendous determinant that it would be of
human destiny and human society. Marx didn’t fight the rise of capitalism. He
figured it would have the seeds of its own death within it and eventually, having
produced a large laboring class, the laboring class would revolt, overthrow the
owners, and there would be this classless society. Now, it didn’t work that way; it
hasn’t worked that way. His vision was Utopian, in that sense, the classless
society where the development of each was the condition of the development of
all, where everyone worked according to his or her ability and received according
to his or her need. A kind of Utopian vision. Utopia is an interesting word from
the Greek language. Utopia means "no place." There is no place like this. No
place. Maybe we would say no possibility.
But, where did Karl Marx get his vision? Where did he get such a fantastic idea?
Well, he was from a Jewish family that converted for convenience reasons to
Christianity, but he was nurtured in the Old Testament prophets. His uncle was a
rabbi. It’s a Messianic vision. It’s a vision shaped by the Hebrew prophets, and
the Hebrew prophets were those who spoke in the name of the God Who was
concerned for human well-being, for human community, Who was concerned for
the spiritual well-being of people, knowing the temptation of people to get caught
up in de-humanizing activity and the de-humanizing chase in which they would
lose their own soul.
© Grand Valley State University
�Biblical Vision and Karl Marx
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
Scholars don’t think that probably Israel ever fully lived out that Levitical year of
Jubilee, Sabbath Year and then the year of Jubilee, but it was a part of the
Hebrew tradition and there are enough references in the Hebrew scriptures to
know that it was operative, to what extent, we’re not sure. But, isn’t that an
interesting idea? Here in the Bible we have this suggestion that every seventh
year the land should lie fallow. Now, it’s an agricultural society and you have to
make the translation, but how about a sabbatical every seven years? Do you want
not only to not harvest the field, but also shut the doors of the factory, let the
machines cool off and the laborers take a year off? You intelligent, academic
people still keep that custom alive and I’ve practiced it a time or two, also. It’s
kind of nice, under the guise of doing heavy work, heavy thinking.
Now, listen to me. Listen to me. What was operative in the Sabbath principle? No
matter how the practical execution of it, what was operative? Sabbath principle
was the principle by which, according to the understanding of the Hebrew, God
was saying, "For your sake, for my sake, cease and desist. Unplug. Every seventh
day, stop." The Sabbath day could be kept with legalistic rigidity.
I grew up in a setting, a home, an environment of Calvinistic grace that was all
law. I, as a child, experienced ugly Sundays. Couldn’t do anything, and it wasn’t
very much fun for a kid growing up. I think there are others like me, so that the
Sabbath principle gets bad press because it was legalistically applied and sort of
seemed to be a way to drain all the pleasure out of a day.
Donald Gray Barnhouse, a great preacher of an earlier generation out of a
Scottish Presbyterian home which was the only thing worse than a Dutch
Calvinist home, said that when he was a kid in church and they sang "Day of All
the Week the Best, emblem of eternal rest," he thought, "Good grief, if heaven is
like Sunday, I don’t want to go there." But, the principle is absolutely beautiful,
totally humane, and divine. It cuts the nerve of that compulsiveness that gets
hold of us to produce and to consume and to acquire and to aggrandize. It says,
"Stop! Just stop." I don’t want to emphasize it too much because Nancy may get
the idea and say, "Physician, heal thyself." Because you don’t have to be a laborer
in a factory to be a workaholic. That was the principle, and the year of Jubilee, of
course, where it all goes back the way it was sets limits on the degree to which
there can be this present widening gap between wealth and poverty. And the
recognition that all of us, the shrewdest business man, the most skilled worker,
the most industrious person, is finally a steward of God Who alone owns the
resources.
So, when you laugh at Karl Marx, you might as well also take your scissors and
cut Leviticus 25 out of your Bible. And you’re going to have a problem, too, with
the immediate aftermath of Pentecost when people were living their lives under
the impact of the Spirit of God when they lived in a commune kind of situation,
from which, of course, we get the word communist. Now, thank God for Acts 5,
the story of Ananias and Sapphira. They were going to do like Barnabas, sell their
© Grand Valley State University
�Biblical Vision and Karl Marx
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
farm and bring all the proceeds to the deacons, but they were also practical and
they kept a little back. They told the deacons, who asked, "Did you sell that farm
for $10,000?" "Yes, we did." Well, they had sold it for $12,500. And Bingo, there
were two dead Christians, right on the spot.
Well, we know communal living for the good of all didn’t work, so we can be done
with it. We don’t have to worry about it anymore. It may be in the Bible, but the
Bible gives us clear indication that it doesn’t work. But, of course, I suppose that
community of early Jesus people got some of their impression from Jesus who
said, in the one description of the judgment scene in the whole Bible, that the
difference between the sheep and the goats has nothing to do with grace or
justification by faith or any of that stuff, it has to do with practical things like
feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the ones in prison, the
unconscious goodness and care of compassion.
So, on this Labor Day Sunday there’s enough in the scripture to warn us about
the possibility of getting all caught up in chasing dreams and building kingdoms,
of getting our priorities all mixed up, thinking that it is of primary importance to
secure ourselves into perpetuity, to recognize the possibility that we can be so
caught up in the schemes in which we are engaged, that we lose our soul and we
have no peace. My Labor Day message to you is that Karl Marx got a lot of things
wrong, but he did see the threat to our soul of the economic dimension of our
lives, and he got a lot of it from the Bible. So, for God’s sake, for your sake, take a
moment and ask yourself where you’ll be when you get where you’re going and,
if you do really get where you’re going, is it really where you want to be?
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b6f5a6e4a5992ecb2501dd28d9f1f877.mp3
5ca0fefc2a3ccf83d458211831394d6d
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
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English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
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KII-01
Coverage
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
Labor Day Sunday, Pentecost XIV
Scripture Text
Liviticus 25:1-17, Acts 2:43-47,Matthew 25:31-40
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-19980906
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1998-09-06
Title
A name given to the resource
The Biblical Vision and Karl Marx: A 150th Retrospective
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 6, 1998 entitled "The Biblical Vision and Karl Marx: A 150th Retrospective", on the occasion of Labor Day Sunday, Pentecost XIV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Liviticus 25:1-17, Acts 2:43-47,Matthew 25:31-40.
Consciousness
Justice
Prophetic Voice
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A Declaration of Inter-dependence
Text: Psalm 33:16-17; Romans 12:21; Matthew 5:44
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Independence Day Weekend, July 5, 1998
Transcription of the spoken sermon
We celebrate 222 years of existence as a nation, born as an experiment in human
freedom, a nation in which the government was of, for and by the people. The
ideal of our founders was a magnificent vision worthy to be celebrated in public
festivals and to be reflected on in Divine worship because, while the early framers
of our founding documents were not evangelical Christians as is loudly claimed in
some quarters today, their vision was grounded in the biblical vision of
humankind created by God, not only the ground of all reality but the source and
enlivening presence of all life, including human life - a Creator Who is the
guarantor of human dignity and freedom.
Our founding vision was a radical experiment, to be understood in the
background of the European origin of the nation, a background of Divine Right of
kings and nobility and human domination. The American experiment was an
attempt to limit government and vastly restrict its arena of operation. The early
documents resonate with lofty idealism and there is too little appreciation of the
greatness of that founding vision.
It was flawed from the beginning; it had its limitation of the radical nature of the
freedom it was espousing and has been in a process of development over the 222
years of our national existence. But we have been blessed to have entered into the
fruit of that vision, for which we give God thanks.
The Declaration of Independence, the claim of national sovereignty, was a bold
and daring act in the 18th century. As the 21st century dawns, an equally bold
and daring act is imperative; it is the declaration of inter-dependence with all
nations and peoples of the earth. Such a claim is not wild-eyed fantasy of a
hopelessly idealistic and impractical dreamer. Rather, it is a practical and
necessary response to the real situation of our world on the threshold of the Third
Millennium.
The most telling image of our situation as humankind on planet earth is the
astronaut’s picture of the earth taken from outer space - the earth, a beautiful
globe of blue and green hanging in the frozen darkness of space - obviously an
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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inter-related, inter-connected whole. The picture gives vivid witness to the
commentary of the astronaut who says there are no real barriers or divisions; the
earth is one; a planetary unity.
What the picture of the earth as a whole points to is being realized in actual
human experience. The amazing accomplishments of technology have put the
world’s people into instant communication. Travel exposes us to the whole rich
diversity of the human community. What happens in one part of the world
impacts every part. We cannot wash our hands of the ongoing tensions in the
Middle East, not turn our backs on the anguish of the Balkan states.
The ecological concern for the well-being of the environment can only be
addressed from a global perspective and nuclear non-proliferation is essential for
the whole global family.
Speaking of the drive toward one world totally intertwined is not fantasizing
about what might be, but simply being responsible before what is; and the best
place to see it is in the actuality of a global economy. Multinational corporations
and international banking are a reality. The move to one currency in the
European community is only a symbol of the interlocked economics of the world.
We bail out Mexico, cajole and press Indonesia and support the Japanese yen not because we are an altruistic nation wanting to help those in distress, but
because we are invested literally around the globe and need a healthy global
economy to keep our own GNP in good shape.
As the Third Millennium approaches and the 21st century breaks upon us, it is
time for a declaration of inter-dependence.
It would be foolhardy to think that we, the USA, the world’s only present
superpower could insulate and isolate ourselves from the rest of the earth in the
ongoing development of the cosmic drama and the human story. These are not
far out ideas.
The Fourth of July in Flint was marked by picketers with American flags. We are
witnessing a serious social situation in our own state that is impacting not only
Michigan, but the nation. What is the underlying reality? It is not a simple
matter. One can fume at General Motors - giving the store away in the past. One
can fume at the UAW - bringing on what they claim they are trying to avoid. But,
General Motors cannot go on as is. And autoworkers in Flint are human beings
being disrupted and dislocated.
I mention this not to take sides or examine all the issues involved - and it is very
complex; rather, to show that this kind of crisis close to home has to do with
globalization.
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Richard A. Rhem
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Some philosophers and theologians suggest that we must dismantle the global
networks of industry and economics, return to small regional communities of
production and consumption, nurturing local customs and ethnic diversity. They
rail against globalization as the loss of particular cultural identities and want to
stop the whole process toward one world.
I understand, but I don’t think that will happen. There is a tide, broad and
powerful, that is sweeping us toward one world, totally inter-related. It seems to
me what we must do is not throw up barriers against ongoing development, but
rather, seek ways to make the future humane, just and peaceful. We need a vision
of inter-dependence and then the will to make it happen.
What is needed is a transformation of consciousness. We simply must begin to
think differently. We need a prophet to annunciate the new and emerging reality
- the global reality of which we are a part. Rather than the reactionary rhetoric of
the religious Right that is attempting to re-invent yesterday, we need someone to
help us find a new orientation in a new cultural situation. Rather than a fearful,
defensive posture that is marked by a militant mind and hostile spirit, we need to
cultivate a global consciousness that thinks of how to make the future more
humane, more just, marked by planetary peace.
We are not without resources for such a vision. In 1848 Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels published the Communist Manifesto. It was focused on economics, but it
was really a revolutionary social document. On the 150th anniversary of its
publication, a number of works are being published. In an article in The New
York Times, the present debate was set forth, but what seemed to be commonly
agreed on was that Marx did see the relentless power of capital to produce wealth
and he did see what we are currently experiencing globally. He failed to see how
Capitalism could pull the proletariat into the game and thus avoid what he
thought would be inevitable revolution.
Again, here my point is not to argue Marx pro or con, but to suggest that we need
such a powerful prophetic visionary in our day.
Where did Marx get his vision?
Communism has been called a biblical heresy. The founding story of Israel is the
freedom of a people from domination and ruthless exploitation, and the story is
shaped by the Hebrew prophets who envisioned a peaceable kingdom where the
lion and the lamb would lie down together. The vision, the passion for justice and
human well-being that found expression in a Karl Marx was in that biblical
tradition.
We have the biblical story as resource. Psalm 33 celebrates the sovereignty of
God who fills the earth with steadfast love. The image of God as Ruler out there in heaven - controlling the affairs of the nations is not in line with the experience
of cosmic movement and historical development, but I believe the Psalmist had
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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true insight into the human situation - we did not create this world; we are not
sovereign, nor can we secure ourselves by human means. The King - the symbol
of human sovereignty - is not secured by horses and armies. Military might won’t
do it. Economic power won’t do it. No human reality is impregnable.
God is at the heart of things.
Love is at the heart of things.
Grace - modeled out in God, as we see it revealed in Jesus Christ, is the only way
to peace on earth.
Paul, responding to the encounter with the grace of God in Jesus Christ, appealed
to followers of Jesus in Rome - on the basis of the mercies of God, to present
themselves a sacrifice to God - living, holy, acceptable. This, Paul said, is only
logical - it makes sense.
Grace at the core of things, as he had so eloquently written as chapter 11 ends,
calls for a transformation of life, a new way of being, not conformed to the
structures and forms of this world, but transformed by the renewing of the mind.
A shift in consciousness - that is radical, thinking differently!
Paul, of course, was reflecting Jesus. The Sermon on the Mount is filled with
concrete, practical counsel on how to live. Paul said do not meet evil with evil, but
overcome evil with good and, obviously, he was trying to counsel a way of being
that emulated the way of Jesus who said "No!" to the old code of justice - an eye
for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Rather, "If anyone strikes you on the right
cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give
her your cloak, as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the
second mile."
Again, radically, Jesus declares, Love your enemies.
In short, be God-like, the God who causes rain to fall on the righteous and the
unrighteous alike and causes the sun to rise on the good and the evil. That section
ends with "Be perfect as God is perfect," and the connotation of the word
translated perfect is "mature." In effect, we need to grow up.
Hans Küng brings this radical counsel of Jesus into the concrete circumstances of
our day. In his work, Judaism, he addresses the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Recognizing the delicacy of any non-Jew dealing with the issue, he nonetheless
points to the frequency with which the Likud party, particularly, uses the word
retaliation. One must be sensitive to the Israeli position, given the suffering and
loss that people has suffered over the centuries. Yet, he wonders if the word of the
Jew Jesus is not a better way to the future and peace - not retaliation, but the
voluntary renunciation of power and rights.
© Grand Valley State University
�Declaration of Inter-dependence
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
For many years I did not preach on the Sermon on the Mount. I was not content
to interpret it as a code of personal ethics irrelevant to the world of real politics.
Yet, it seemed so incredible, so impossible in the real world of international
relations. But, the longer I think about these things, the more I am convinced that
Jesus’ way is the only way there can ever be peace on earth, the realization of the
Creator’s intention for Shalom - the peaceable kingdom.
If Jesus’ way won’t work, there is no other way.
© Grand Valley State University
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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Interfaith worship
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Pentecost V
Series
Independence Day Weekend
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Psalm 33:16-17, Romans 12:21, Matthew 5:44
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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1998-07-05
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A Declaration of Inter-dependence
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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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application/pdf
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An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on July 5, 1998 entitled "A Declaration of Inter-dependence", as part of the series "Independence Day Weekend", on the occasion of Pentecost V, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Psalm 33:16-17, Romans 12:21, Matthew 5:44.
Consciousness
Global Community
Inclusive
Justice
Peace
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Too Good To Be True
From the Advent series: Songs Of Liberation
Text: Luke 1:47; Isaiah 7:14
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Advent III, December 21, 1997
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Sometimes even the skeptic is forced to believe in the providence of God. I always
have to list my sermon titles a couple months in advance; they are printed a
month ahead of time, and last week how apropos, when hope was almost gone.
But, even better today - "Too Good to be True." Maybe, maybe there’s something
more to it than most of the time I believe.
The songs of liberation, the song of Mary today, the Magnificat, is a song of
praise in the conviction that God is doing something that will radically transform
the landscape of the earth - the world re-imagined in another way; human
existence in an alternative kind of community. With the announcement of the
birth of Jesus, Mary breaks forth into praise because God is on the threshold of
creating newness, a whole new world.
But, the question this Advent that I’ve been putting to you and we’ve been
thinking about is, how can we who are top dogs sing the songs of underdogs?
Make no mistake about it, this is a peasant song. This is a song of liberation from
one who has been oppressed and a part of a people who walked in darkness and
lived under the shadow of death. Listen again as Mary sings: God has shown
strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud and the thoughts of their
hearts. God has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the
lowly. God has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich empty away.
That’s a song from down under, because the whole human situation is about to be
changed. But now, after 2000 years, who are the rich and the powerful? Who are
the well-fed of the earth? Obviously, it is we. How then can we honestly sing the
song of the underdog, which filled the hearts of those people of ancient time with
such praise at this mighty Christmas miracle of God?
Let me say just a couple of things this morning because it is a day not for heavy
deliberation, but for joyful music and song. But let me say this - I am more
convinced than ever that what the Gospel is about, tidings of joy, is this world,
here and now, human existence in this present situation in which we find
© Grand Valley State University
�Too Good To Be True
Richard A. Rhem
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ourselves. I am convinced that we have domesticated the Gospel, spiritualized it
and projected it out into another age when, as a matter of fact, it is for here and
now, for this place, for people, this earth, this age. Sometimes when you get an
idea like that and you begin to trace it, it’s like putting on glasses - everywhere
you look, it’s there. For example, that famous promise in Isaiah 7:14. It was given
to a king who was the king of a people who were under siege and there were all
sorts of international complications going on. It was about slavery or liberation in
a very real political sense at the time. That was the word of God that came from
the prophet to the king. And so, Mary’s song - is about the transvaluation of
values; it is about a grand reversal, the powerful down, the lowly lifted, the
hungry fed, and the full ones sent empty away. That’s what the Gospel is about,
and the challenge to the people of God who, by God’s grace and goodness, have
become so richly blessed, full of resource and power, the challenge is to learn how
to sing the underdog’s song while seeking to make reality for the underdog
humane and full of hope, marked by justice and peace.
The early Jewish Jesus community for which Luke wrote the story was a
community that believed that in its life it was beginning to realize another way to
be human. Let me say, 2000 years later, that that is precisely the challenge for us.
We are free at last and the future is open. We were seriously challenged because
we dared to say that sexual orientation was a matter of the diversity of God’s
great creation. We’ve been challenged because we refused to arrogate to ourselves
a corner on salvation and the light of God and the movement of God’s Spirit. We
were challenged because we dared take another look at this book and let it come
off the page afresh, not in a wooden, literalist way, but rather as the storybook of
those who were encountered by the living God in their historical experience. And
now we’re free; now we’re free to be that community of grace where joy abounds,
where there are no boundaries for the love of God, where there are no
exclusionary clauses to all of those who are hungry and thirsty and seeking rest.
We have a future before us to be everything that God is beckoning us to be and it
has not entered into the human heart yet the things that God has prepared for
those who love God and are willing to be the embodiment of all of that that was
embodied in the word made flesh. Jesus, that one who was born, God’s word,
incarnation of God’s intention, continues to be enfleshed where there are people
who hear that word, who imbibe that spirit, who will be marked by that grace,
and who with open heart and open mind will reach out to a world still much in
darkness, to many still living under the shadow of death. In such a community
there will be praise and there will be healing and there will be signs of what
ultimately will be when the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our
God and of his Christ.
Now, listen to the story again. It cannot be preached. It must be sung. It is a song;
it is a poem; it reaches into the depths because it is so true. Listen to it and enjoy.
© Grand Valley State University
�Too Good To Be True
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
(The Cantata, "The Christmas Story According to Saint Luke," by Richard Hillert,
continues.)
© Grand Valley State University
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Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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English
Type
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Sound
Text
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
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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
Songs of Liberation
Scripture Text
Luke 1:47, Isaiah 7:14
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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KII-01_RA-0-19971221
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1997-12-21
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Too Good to Be True
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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>
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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
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eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Sound
Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on December 21, 1997 entitled "Too Good to Be True", as part of the series "Songs of Liberation", on the occasion of Advent IV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Luke 1:47, Isaiah 7:14.
Community of Grace
Justice
Shalom
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When Hope Is Almost Gone
From the Advent series: Songs Of Liberation
Text: Malachi 3:1; 4:2; Luke 1:78-79
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Advent II, December 14, 1997
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Well, did you do your assignment? The one I gave you last week?
The assignment was to reflect on my question: How it is that we who are top dogs
can sing the songs of liberation of the underdogs?
We established last week that the songs of liberation with which Luke introduces
his Gospel are, indeed, the songs of liberation of those who are living in darkness,
who are longing to be delivered by the mighty hand of God, and that the famous
songs that have played such a critical part in Christian liturgy, the Benedictus
today, Zachariah’s song, the Nunc Dimitis, old Simeon’s song, and next week, the
song of Mary, the Magnificat, that those are, indeed, songs of liberation in which
a people are crying out to God to make good God’s promises to establish justice
on the earth and to bring peace to all humankind. The songs of liberation are
described very well by a recent author, Richard Horsley, in his book entitled, The
Liberation of Christmas, in which he points out, I believe, beyond reputation,
that the Christmas story is, indeed, a story of liberation which is a story told by
those who are underdogs as they hope in the coming of this one to have justice
established and peace brought to earth, the transformation of human society,
indeed, the transformation of the world. The songs of liberation are the songs of
underdogs.
We who claim them today are top dogs. And, if we really understood what we
were singing, we would realize that we are calling for the total transformation of
the world and that what is being imagined in those songs of liberation is another
way for the world to be, which would involve a radical transformation in our own
experience in human society. And so, in order that we might keep Advent with
integrity and celebrate Christmas honestly, I’ve asked you in this season to reflect
on that fact - that we who are top dogs sing the songs of underdogs, and I think
we seldom realize it.
The people of Israel were always a minor pawn in the power brokerage of
imperial affairs. They knew a moment of glory with David and grandeur with
© Grand Valley State University
�When Hope Is Almost Gone
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
Solomon but, outside of that, Israel never amounted to much in terms of an
earthly power. They were caught between the great world empires, and yet they
had a sense that they were chosen by God to be God’s instrument for the effecting
of God’s will on earth. And as we saw last week, they had ancient dreamers who
dreamed of a marvelous world, the Messianic Age. There would be a sprout out of
the stump of Jesse, and he would change things. He would affect justice in the
land, he would have compassion for the poor, he would bring about a world that
was reconciled in all of nature so that the lion and the lamb would lie down
together and they wouldn’t hurt or destroy in all God’s holy mountain, because
the earth would be covered with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the
sea. A beautiful picture, and Israel’s dreamers dreamed of such a picture, and it
was a dream that lodged in the hearts of the people. They believed that, somehow
or other, history was moving in a way which eventually would bring about that
kind of a reality.
But, it didn’t come. There are those beautiful words of Second Isaiah in the 40th
chapter of the book by that name, "Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people," and the
prophet calls out to the cities of Judah, "Behold, your God." There was all of this
marvelous expectation as the exiles were going home from Babylon. They
believed that this was the time. But it didn’t come, and, as it didn’t come and
didn’t come, prophecy moved into the genre of apocalyptic which was a rather
despairing understanding of history, believing that history no longer had the
potential of realizing their dream. They prayed for the dramatic intervention of
God that would damn the wicked and establish the righteous and would bring in
the new age of God’s righteousness and peace.
Malachi was such a voice. He is around 450, 475 years before the birth of Jesus.
The exiles have returned from Babylon. Rather than Mount Zion being
established as the top mountain of all the earth with all the nations flowing to it
for instruction, they were a poverty-stricken, destitute people. They were still
under the dominion of the Persian empire, and their city was lying in ruins, their
walls were not built. This was a time that Ezra came to teach them the law again
and Nehemiah came to build the walls, and they built a temple. Herod built the
second temple. But the community was poor. It was a far cry from the glorious
picture of Second Isaiah, and Malachi, speaking to that destitution, that human
hopelessness, says, "But, my messenger is going to come."
In fact, Malachi probably isn’t the name of a prophet. Malachi means literally, in
Hebrew, my messenger. So this anonymous prophet is saying into a situation of
despair and darkness, "In the name of God, my messenger will come. And it will
be a time of judging and refining and purgation, and this will be preparation of
the people of God for that great and terrible day of the Lord, a day of darkness
and judgment when the wickedness of the earth will be thrown down and
righteousness will be established."
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Well, we know from our Gospels that the early Jesus movement understood John
the Baptist as fulfilling that role of the messenger who is portrayed by Malachi in
terms of an Elijah returned. Jesus said John was fulfilling the role of Elijah. And
so, this story of the nativity of John and Jesus is woven by Luke into a beautiful
tapestry laced with these songs of liberation to give expression to that which was
the deep conviction of that early Jewish Jesus movement that now God was
present in human form, was moving things toward that culminating act when
judgment would fall and light would shine for the people of God, and the
purposes of God would be realized.
The early Jewish Jesus movement was convinced that, in this one God was
present, God was embodied, God was moving, and the kingdom of God would be
effected, and the song that Zachariah sang, the Benedictus, celebrates this
movement of God in the establishing of the horn of salvation, the one that will
bring about salvation, and then he addresses his little child, John, and says that,
"You, child, will go before this one to prepare the people who, in the tender mercy
of God, will see the sun of righteousness dawn upon them. They who live in
darkness in the shadow of death will finally, finally receive this gift of God."
Well, that was the eschatology. That is, that was the understanding of the times,
the last times of that community, of that world into which Jesus was born, and
when the angel announced the birth of Jesus, "To you this day in the city of David
is born a Savior," that Savior we automatically with our Christian ears think of as
one who saves us from our sins in order to make us acceptable to God and bring
us to heaven. But, in the understanding of that Jewish Jesus community that
believed that God was present in Jesus, moving things toward the culmination,
that community that believed that it was living on the edge of the end, for them
the Savior was one who would salvage them, save them from their enemies, their
occupying power, those who taxed them, took their land, abused and exploited
them. Salvation in that community’s idea had social, political and economic
implications. Israel always knew that God forgave their sins. The Psalmist said,
"Lord, if you should mark iniquity, who could stand? But, with You there is
forgiveness." Read David’s marvelous Psalm of confession, Psalm 51, where he
acknowledges his sin and says to God, "But a broken and a contrite heart Thou
wilt not despise, O God."
It is not Jesus that brought grace. It is not Jesus that brought forgiveness. Israel
lived in the reality of a gracious God Who forgave them. But, Israel was also a
people that believed that God was to be experienced here and now, in this life,
and that God was concerned about their society, about their economics, about
their politics. That God was a God Who loved justice and righteousness, Who
spoke out through the prophets against all exploitation of people in all systems of
domination. This was the thrust of those songs of liberation that came to
expression through the Gospel writers as they tried to say what they understood
was happening in the appearance of Jesus and, before that, of John. Those songs
of liberation were the expressions of a people who longed to have the yoke and
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the burden and the oppression of the human situation lifted off their shoulders,
who were still dreaming the dream of the ancient dreamer, who said "That day is
coming when there will be justice, mercy, peace, equity in all of God’s creation."
Well, that’s what Jesus was about. Jesus addressed the concrete social situation
of his day. He announced that God Who in grace is near to people. He especially
embraced those who had been excluded. He made it clear through his table
fellowship to those with whom he broke bread, that the embrace of God was as
broad as the world and all humankind. No one, the voiceless ones, the
marginalized, the excluded - none of them would be left out of the grace of the
kingdom of God. And for that he was crucified, because the kind of social vision
that Jesus had, with its political and economic implications, is the kind of vision
that those who have vested interest in the status quo will not long tolerate,
because it will transform human society and, rather than exploitation and
domination, there will be community, justice and peace.
Jesus was crucified for his vision, for that which he incarnated and embodied,
and they experienced his presence and fully thought that he would return at any
moment. That’s obvious from a study of the New Testament. They believed that
this one who had come, who was crucified, whose living presence they
experienced would return and all things would come to their consummation. But,
they didn’t, did they? It’s been now 2000 years, and we don’t really look into the
sky every morning to see whether or not this may be the day of his appearing.
Although, if you travel I-96, there is a billboard where Jesus is in the rump seat of
a plane predicting to come out of the blue soon. I can’t believe that kind of
ignorance, frankly. It is such a terrible distortion of the Gospel. It is the
perpetuation of an eschatology, an idea of the last things, which history itself has
clearly indicated was the wrong conception, and what it has enabled us to do is to
turn the Gospel of Jesus into a salvation cult by which we receive the forgiveness
of sins and peace of God and preparation for heaven. We have taken the Gospel of
Jesus Christ that was a world-transforming movement, domesticated it into a
religious cult by which we find our personal peace while we go on with our lives
politically, economically, socially, as though we never heard the songs of
liberation.
We have been able to take the Gospel with its Christmas story and subvert it into
a marvelously beautiful, moving pageant that lacks totally what it really is about,
which is about changing the world to reflect the intention of God. So, we still say,
"When is the day of his appearing? When that comes out there some way, then
it’ll all be fixed." As a matter of fact, it would seem to me we ought to go back and
listen again to see whether or not it may be erroneous to be waiting for some
future act of God to make it right.
Possibly, possibly what God intends is for top dogs not just to sing absentmindedly the songs of underdogs, but to begin to use their power and resource to
implement, to make real, the longing of the heart of the underdog that comes to
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Richard A. Rhem
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expression in those songs that plead for the dawning of light, for the rising of the
sun of righteousness, for the establishment of justice and the bringing of peace.
Maybe, maybe we who are top dogs are called upon to be the agents to effect the
cry of God’s heart that comes to expression through the underdogs. I wonder if
God has anybody doing anything today. You know, Messiah means anointed,
anointed with the Spirit, and Christ is the Greek word for Messiah. I wonder if
God has any Christs in the world today, any people anointed with the Spirit who
are seeking to effect the intention of God in a world that still lies, so much of it, in
darkness, with so many people still living in the shadow of death.
Let me make a suggestion; it will probably blow your mind and you will laugh me
off the stool. Let me suggest another Jew - Steven Spielberg. You see, I wonder. It
seems to me that, to the extent that the church has become a ghetto of salvation
when we come together for our own personal spiritual renewal and our own
eternal security, where we get our emotional fix through our religious devotion,
maybe having become a ghetto and made the Gospel a salvation cult, God says,
"Well, if you want to be off in that backwater, okay. Okay. ‘Cause it’s not bad to
pray and sing hymns and worship. In fact, you really ought to be doing that,
because that’s where you get the vision and the strength to go out and change the
world. But, if you’re not going to do anything about the world, if you’re just going
to enjoy this little pipeline you have to me, then I’m going to have to find some
people in the strangest places. I’m going to have to find some people, for
example, in show biz."
Perhaps a Steven Spielberg, who a couple of seasons ago, two or three, gave us
"Schindler’s List," who showed us a flamboyant playboy who got gripped in the
midst of the Holocaust with the mass murder of the Jewish people and who used
his industry and his fortune in order to rescue a couple of thousand of them. If
you don’t like Holocaust stuff, then don’t watch "Schindler’s List." But, I wonder
if Schindler was not a Christ, doing what top dogs ought to do.
Another film by Spielberg is coming out: "Amistad." Amistad was the name of a
slave ship that was bringing slaves from Africa around 1839, and they mutinied,
these slaves. They killed the captain and several of the crew, and they impressed
the navigators and told them to turn them around and take them back to Africa,
but the navigators fooled them and they found themselves sailing into Long
Island Sound where they were captured by a U.S. Navy ship and the mutineers,
the blacks from Africa, were thrown in the brig and brought to trial. But, in one of
the shining moments of the Christian Church, in this case, the Congregational
Church, which is one of the merging bodies that forms the United Church of
Christ, the church people began to lobby on behalf of these blacks. The faculty
and the students of Yale University went to bat for them. Former President John
Quincy Adams became their defense attorney. And in one of the better moments
of American history, in American church history, these blacks were vindicated,
their mutiny declared justified, and they were sent back to Africa, and I just
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Richard A. Rhem
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wonder if someone like Steven Spielberg who can bring us those kinds of stories
might not be someone upon whom the Spirit of God is dwelling in order to shake
us loose, break us out, help us to understand that we have no business singing
songs of liberation if they are simply the caressing of our own satisfied souls, that
we who are the rich and the powerful, if not famous, are the ones upon whom it is
incumbent to effect in human society the longing of the songs of liberation.
It is that task to which I believe we are called. It is in contemplating that task that
we will keep Advent. It is in welcoming that kind of a Savior that we will be
honest with Christmas, and it is to that end that I believe Christ Community must
be committed, for who knows but what some of you have come to the kingdom
for such a time as this? Not only to sing songs of liberation, but to bring liberty to
those who are oppressed, that the sun of righteousness may dawn upon us with
healing in its wings. Ah, wouldn’t that be something?
References:
Richard Horsley. The Liberation of Christmas: The Infancy Narratives in Social
Context. Wipf & Stock Publishers, reprint edition, 2006.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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Interfaith worship
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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Event
Advent III
Series
Songs of Liberation
Scripture Text
Malachi 3:1, 4:2, Luke 1:78-79
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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Richard Horsley, The Liberation of Christmas: The Infancy Narratives in Social Context, 2006
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1997-12-14
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When Hope is Almost Gone
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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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An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on December 14, 1997 entitled "When Hope is Almost Gone", as part of the series "Songs of Liberation", on the occasion of Advent III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Malachi 3:1, 4:2, Luke 1:78-79.
Divine Intention
Inclusive Grace
Justice
Prophetic Voice
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PDF Text
Text
Mystery’s Face and Flow
Trinity Sunday
Text: Job 23:3; 11 Corinthians 4:6; and, John 14:9
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
May 25, 1997
Transcription of the spoken sermon
It is Trinity Sunday; the Sunday after Pentecost, and it's the time when we focus
on God. It is God Who brings us together week after week, and we have many
things about which to think and speak together. On Trinity, however, we go right
to the core, to God, and to focus on that conception of God which has been
shaped by the Christian tradition and has, indeed, shaped the Christian tradition,
that conception of a Triune God, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy
Spirit, One God blessed forever.
God in the modern period has become a problem, and although high percentages
of people affirm their faith in God, in the intellectual centers of reflection and
deep thinking that eventually impact popular opinion, God has had hard times in
the last two or three centuries. We no longer simply take for granted the existence
of God, and the nature of God has been thought about a good deal. The religious
quest will always be there. But, God has become a problem. That statement of the
problem was probably set forth as profoundly and as critically as anywhere by the
German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach. You've heard me refer to Feuerbach, on
occasion, over the years, because his critique of the idea of God goes to the heart
of the matter. It is his idea that God is the projection of our human needs unto
the screen of reality, after which we bow down and worship, that God is the
consequence of human need and that God is a human construction or a
projection. It is certainly true that when we ask about God, we are asking about
ourselves. The questions about God are really questions about our own existence.
Whence have we come? Whither are we going? And in the meantime, what is the
meaning of it all? Is there any purpose? Is there any direction?
The human situation is fraught with peril. We are threatened creatures; our
human existence is perilous. At any moment we well know that we could be
wiped out. We stand at the side of those we love, helplessly seeing them die. We,
ourselves, are vulnerable to a medical diagnosis at any time that could be fatal.
The human condition is one of contingency; it is a perilous life we lead, and the
religious quest is quite a natural quest after some anchor, some place to stand,
some place of comfort, some place to rest the soul. And so, when Feuerbach said
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that God does not exist except as we have created God and objectified God and
constructed God out of our own human needs, he was putting his finger on
something that was true. He was roundly criticized, of course, and the Church
rose up with great defensiveness at such a suggestion, that God is a human
creation. Feuerbach, nonetheless, had looked at the human person and the
human situation, had sensed the fearfulness and the anxiety and the fragility of
human existence and detected within the human person a kind of weakness that
longed for some strong source of support and comfort and strength. Feuerbach's
mistake, which is a mistake all of us often make, was to absolutize his claim, that
is, that God is nothing but... To say that God is nothing but the projection of
human need is to say too much. But, his insight is telling and you must be aware,
as I am, of that which goes on in your own soul and heart and you must observe
as I do all about us those for whom God is a crutch, a safety blanket, a security
measure. God, for many of us, is the God we need. But, that's not all there is to
say.
I point that out because we are downstream from that movement of modern
atheism. From Feuerbach came Freud who said that religion is an illusion, Marx,
who said that human life is nothing but economic determinism, Nietzsche, who
said all is nothingness. The nihilism that is laced within contemporary society is
the consequence of that conception of things that has ruled out God, that
conception of a Feuerbach who saw so much of human need projected into God
that he simply wiped God away. But, as Nietzsche said, God is dead, and
everything is permissible. And I would say that the 20th century is probably a
good example of the fact that, when God is dead, anything is permissible, and
very soon the fabric of society begins to unravel.
Karen Armstrong, in her lecture a couple of weeks ago, spoke of the future of
God, and she alluded to the contemporary atheism that pervades the lives of so
many, even though they might answer a Gallup Poll, "Oh, yes, I believe in God."
But there exists a practical atheism, living without any engagement or any regard
to God. Karen Armstrong, said we are in one of those periods of history when we
are simply waiting in the darkness for some future image to arise. But atheism,
she said, is not to be feared, for it is not a rejection of God, but it is a rejection of
inadequate conceptions of God. And so, we are in this present darkness, waiting,
confident that there will yet emerge that understanding of God that can call forth
from us worship and commitment to the ways of love and of justice.
We have had inadequate conceptions of God. We have archaic, naive and
primitive ideas of God, which we have not updated with everything else that we
know in our world. With all of the explosion of knowledge, we have not done
much with our idea of God.
Yesterday it was a nice day and I was beckoned out of the loft to contemplate
God. I went out on the bluff to soak up a little sunshine, thinking that I could
think there or not think at all there, and lo and behold, God got me there, too, for
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as I sat down there was a little table in front of me, one of those little, low tables.
It was made of slats of wood and those slats of wood had little spaces between
them, and as I contemplated the table, there was an ant. So, I will now tell you
the story, "The Ant and I."
The ant went all the way up one board to the corner, and then he made a left turn
and went down the short side and got to another corner, came all the way down
the long side, came to the corner, went up the short side. And I thought, "Now,
what will you do? You've been all the way around the perimeter. Now, what will
you do, little ant?" He did it all over again. Got to every crisis point, made his
turn, in his case, always the left turn, and got back to the starting point. And then
one time, as I was about to drift off, he came to the edge and he went down and
he found the supporting board underneath which created a bridge for him to get
to the next board. He came up on the next board and then he went all the way
down on the board, across, all the way up, down, and he did that several times.
And I thought, "You know, ant, you ought to give me some interesting plot to
follow because I don't have time just to watch you continue to traverse all these
boards."
But, then I realized that God had placed me there in order to contemplate God,
not the ant, for my contemplating the ant is that old image of God that we've
grown up with that has come to us out of an ancient past where there was a
heaven and an earth and the waters under the earth, the three-storied universe,
where God was a being on the throne "out there," in heaven somewhere, and we
were here, and God, although totally apart from us, would come down into our
history and affect circumstances and then return back to heaven. I thought to
myself, if I contemplate the ant, I am like that childhood idea of God which I had.
Here I am, totally unengaged, just a spectator, observing. Now, I thought to
myself, I could take a piece of dune grass and I could wiggle it in front of the ant,
seeing whether or not I could influence the pattern of its peregrinations. But, I
didn't do that. Then I thought to myself, I could crush that bugger! But, I didn't
do that. And then I thought, I could help him. I could save him; I could redeem
him from his dilemma. He is on the surface of a table and the poor dear really is
trying to find the sand. He's trying to find the sand where there is sustenance,
where there is community, where there is home. He's trying to find his brothers
and sisters. I could actually pick him up and put him down on the sand. I didn't
do that, either. When I left him, he had gone down into one of those deep valleys
between the boards, he was down on that foundation piece which probably was a
deep, dark valley of the shadow of death for him. I was half-tempted to pick him
up and put him down, but I thought, "No, I think I'll just leave you there."
Then I thought to myself, "I am like my old image of God, sovereign, absolute. I
can do what I will with that ant. I can crush the ant. I could redeem the ant. I
could observe the ant. I could get engaged with the ant. But, I'm totally apart
from the ant, even though I have the prerogative of getting involved with it, but I
live a separate existence far superior and beyond the ant."
© Grand Valley State University
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That's the God I learned in Sunday School. How about you? And then I thought to
myself, "That isn't the God that makes sense of my universe at all today. That's
not how I understand human existence, the world, the cosmos." Oh, I understand
how that old system worked and if we wouldn't be literal about it all, it would still
work for us because it tells us, according to Paul, of God Who said, "Let light
shine out of darkness." In other words, the Creator God Who, in the fullness of
time, shined into our hearts the light of the Gospel of the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. And Paul, in his writing to the Corinthians, was talking about the
fact how we even look at that mirror of Jesus mirroring God, and how we, as we
contemplate that image, are changed into that image by the Spirit of God. So, I
see what Paul meant. In the biblical material, I can understand that God, the
incarnation of God, the Spirit of God shaping me into the image of that incarnate
One according to the purposes of God. Or, as John witnessed, really quite simple.
Jesus said, "I'm going to leave you." Thomas said, "We don't know the way."
Jesus said, "I am the Way. I am the Truth. I am the Life. No one comes to the
Father but by me."
Phillip said, "Ah, I've been wanting to talk to you about that. Just show us the
Father and we'll be satisfied."
It's that deep longing. I don't sense that Phillip was in any particular crisis.
Job was in a crisis! Job said, "Oh, that I knew where I might find him!" In the
midst of his burning anguish, Job was in a crisis, with the problem of suffering
and of tragedy in the world that has wrenched that cry out of the human heart
down through the centuries.
Phillip? Phillip's just, well, still longing, though. He said, "Just show us the
Father. Oh, if I could just know, if I could just see."
Jesus said, "Look, how long have I been with you, you still don't get it. You see
me, you see the Father. There's no other access. There's no other map. There's no
other possibility except as you behold God in my face."
So, Paul saw God in the face of Jesus. John saw in his witness to Jesus, God in the
face of Jesus. I can understand that. But then, as I was thinking about the
inadequacy of my King of the Universe model over against the ant, I realized that
that old model wouldn't work anymore, because that table is not just a thing.
That table is dammed up energy, because we know that for 15 billion years it has
been a cosmic river of energy expanding time and space as it moves, and we know
that that table is simply energy, for a time coalesced, gathered into material, but
that material can as well be transferred back into energy because energy and
matter are interchangeable; they're all one reality. It is not as though I have a life
other than that ant; the life of the ant is the life in me, as well. It is God's Spirit,
God's breath that enables the ant to live and me to live, and I am just a cut above
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the ant in that I am conscious of the ant and the ant is not conscious of me, but
consciousness is that uniquely human capacity. But, the human, although having
that consciousness, that self-awareness, that ability to observe the process, is not
apart from the process, for that table and that ant and my body are all one reality,
and all of it alive because of God. Nothing exists except God's Spirit, God's breath,
God's enlivening presence.
So, I have to do away with that old King model of a God, "out there" ruling, some
sovereign Absolute Who can dip down, Who can save or damn. I have to get God,
somehow or other, into the reality of my world, to see that my world is because
God's breath is or God's Spirit is, and behind and beyond that cosmic drama
there is a mystery, a mystery that we cannot fathom, that totally Other, that
wholly Other, totally transcendent, Ultimate Mystery that is the Source. I don't
know how to say anything more. And even to say that is an article of faith. There's
no empirical proof that there's any Source! But, I cannot believe the marvels and
wonders of the cosmic drama, except I think of a fountain of creativity that
continues to pour forth and that the cosmic drama itself continues to be laced
with that creativity as that develops in all of its diversity in a thousand directions
with possibilities unlimited.
But then, I think to myself, "So I have an Ultimate Mystery. But, what is the
nature of that Mystery other than a creativity. And I have a cosmos of tables and
chairs and bricks and bodies and everything existent, and all of that diversity what does it mean? What is the nature of the Mystery? And what is the meaning
of the manifold diversity of my reality?
And then I see a face. I see the face of Jesus. And suddenly I'm back at an old
Triune God. Suddenly I see the Trinity with new eyes. Suddenly I see the Ultimate
Mystery totally hidden from us, but totally present in all that is, defined in a face,
the face of Jesus. That enables me to have a sense of the nature of the Mystery, to
sense that that Mystery which is creativity is driving things toward an order of
love and justice, because if that face, that representation in history, that
concretization, that incarnation - if that incarnation of Jesus is really a reflection
or a mirror of the Mystery, and as I reflect on that reflection in the face of Jesus,
if I am being thus shaped like Jesus, then perhaps it is the intention of that whole
cosmic drama that there be those who be human who are thus shaped, who are
joining in those currents that lead to justice and to love.
Suddenly I have a three-pointed God again. I have the Ultimate Mystery, the
Source of it all; I have the enlivening presence of God in all that is, and I have a
definition, I have a specificity, I have an image, an icon, a concrete shape that
calls me to meaningful living.
The way of Jesus. The way of justice. The way of compassion, moving, moving, I
trust and hope, to the Kingdom of God, Shalom, the Cosmic Harmony in perfect
pitch.
© Grand Valley State University
�Mystery’s Face and Flow
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
Now I have a sense of my whence, although I cannot penetrate the Mystery. I
have a sense of my aliveness, thanks to that breath, wind, Spirit that's been
flowing now for 15 billion years, and I have a marker, I have a way, I have a face,
and it's because of that face that we gather here, lost in wonder, love and praise,
before the Mystery, and go out of here to live a certain way.
My economic decisions are not just economic decisions. They are economic
decisions that I make in light of my call to follow Jesus.
My political decisions are not just arbitrary political decisions; they are decisions
that I make in the light of the face that I see.
The total way that I am is not arbitrary. It is a way of commitment, following the
one whose commitment led him to death and resurrection, by the Spirit, moving,
moving toward that final Kingdom.
In the light of all that we know about that cosmic river of energy that now and
again is dammed up into material stuff like chairs and tables and bodies, I can't
believe that, caught up in that process, I still need three points of light, or a
Triune God, or a God creatively present, concretely representative of that life to
which I am called.
The Church is a place where we gather where all lobbying ceases, all selfish
ambition comes to an end, all personal advantage ceases as we commit ourselves
to the cause of the Ultimate Mystery Whose clue we've found in a face. It's just as
simple as that.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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f8469e813eebb54263761fe5fcf98317
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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Sound
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
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Event
Trinity Sunday
Series
A Cosmic Symphony
Scripture Text
Job 23:3, II Corinthians 4:6, John 14:9
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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KII-01_RA-0-19970525
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1997-05-25
Title
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Mystery's Face and Flow
Creator
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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/
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
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Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on May 25, 1997 entitled "Mystery's Face and Flow", as part of the series "A Cosmic Symphony", on the occasion of Trinity Sunday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Job 23:3, II Corinthians 4:6, John 14:9.
Justice
Love
Mystery
Nature of God
Religious Quest
-
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PDF Text
Text
Insight, Courage and World Transformation
Text: Acts 26:1-9; John 12:42
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Season of Epiphany, January 26, 1997
Transcription of the spoken sermon
I have found in the season of Epiphany a theme that continues to circle around in
my head and what I am going to say to you this morning, I've said before. I am
going to reinforce that theme that in Epiphany we celebrate the fact that the Light
has come. It's a wonderful season, the season of the Star, of brightness, of
illumination. We celebrate the fact that God does not remain hidden, that God
unveils God's self and we have the knowledge of God. The gift of God is that
illumination of our minds and hearts so that we are not in darkness, but we live
in light.
The thing that has continued to get at me is that the Church always celebrates
these seasons of the year, we celebrate that the Light has come, but we fail to act
in light of the Light. The Light is not an end in itself. The Light has come in order
that people illumined, given insight, might become world changers, world
transformers. The thrust this season and of this message is that insight must be
wedded to courage in order that the world might be transformed.
It sounds like pulpit talk, grandiose, doesn't it? But, think about it for a moment.
Is that not what the whole biblical story is about - God calling a people, Israel, in
order to be light to the nations? Is not that what the Gospel is about - the light of
Jesus Christ, the one who said, "I am the Light of the world," calling us to follow,
to be light, to be salt to the world? Are we not called, we who follow in the way of
Jesus and in the tradition of Israel, to bear witness to the kingdom of God and to
be the concretization of that kingdom in the midst of history? We are called to be
agents of change. We are called to be world transformers.
Krister Stendahl used a phrase that I love: "We are called to be the menders of
Creation." Isn't that a nice phrase? To mend Creation. God is about the mending
of Creation, and God's people are called to be the agents in that process of
mending, the healing of Creation, specifically that society might be humanized,
that there might be more justice in the world, that there might be more
compassion in the world, that there might be more peace in the world. That's so
basic, very simple, isn't it? Fundamental. The people of God, as we have
understood ourselves, in the tradition of Israel and in the Christian tradition, are
© Grand Valley State University
�Insight, Courage, Transformation
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
a people who are called to live in the Light, to walk in the Light, to be children of
Light in order that the world might become a better place. World transformation.
The Light hasn't come simply to give us information. The Light has come to give
us insight in order that, with courage, we might engage in the changing of the
world, the changing of society, the changing of human behavior, making the
world a better place. The mending of Creation.
My theme is this: That the insight must be wedded to courage in order that the
insight might be effective in the concrete world of which we are a part. And the
greatest hindrance to the coming of the kingdom of God is a failure of nerve. It is
fear.
I had noted that, last weekend at Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, Dr.
William Sloan Coffin would speak. Coffin has been an activist minister of the
Gospel for many, many years. He has been about many causes of social justice
and world peace, but yesterday's Press had a little clip from him in which,
typically, he called the Church to live in love and to live lovingly, but then this
caught my eye: He said, "The great enemy of love is fear, and fear is the
destructive force and it is the block to transformative action," and he said, "I'm
afraid of scared people."
The problem with the world is scared people. People who lack the courage to
stand for the insight that God has given. I think that is clear from the scriptures
and it is obvious in our own experience as a people in our own day.
Certainly it was clear in the biblical story, the story as Luke told Paul's story, and
as John told Jesus' story. Luke, in the Book of Acts, in those last chapters tells
about Paul's return, after all of his missionary activity and the founding of the
churches, to Jerusalem with that offering, and when he goes there, a very
significant moment in the 21st chapter, the 20th verse: James and the leaders of
the Christian Jesus Movement, the Jesus Jewish Christian Movement encounter
Paul and they welcome him, saying, "Paul, there are thousands of followers of the
Way here. There is a big population in Jerusalem of Jewish people following the
way of Jesus, but there are those among them who are saying that when you get
out in the hinterlands, you play fast and loose with Moses. You don't observe
Torah; you are not an observant Jew out there. And you encourage other Jews to
be lax in their observance. And so, Paul, can you straighten that out?"
Paul says, "Certainly."
Then they say, "Why don't you engage in the Rite of Purification? Go to the
Temple, it's a seven-day process, say your prayers and shave your head and all
that kind of thing."
Paul says, "I'll be glad to," because Paul never claimed to be anything else but an
observant Jew. And so, he does that but, while he's in the Temple, there's this
© Grand Valley State University
�Insight, Courage, Transformation
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
group who is agitating. They stir up a mob and it doesn't take a mob long with a
mob psychology to get rabid. They're ready to pounce on him, to tear him limb
from limb. They want to kill him, and he's arrested by the Roman cohort there,
and the arrest actually becomes a rescue. So, he's put in prison to guard his own
life. But, before that, he speaks to the mob and he says, "Look, I am a faithful
follower of the tradition. It is for the hope of Israel that I stand here."
Well, they boo him down eventually, and then he speaks to the Roman tribune
and finds out he's a Roman citizen. Now he's in the Roman legal process; he gives
his defense to the first Governor, Felix, and then Festus and then finally we hear
him talking before the King, Agrippa, and it's the same in every case as he gives
his defense.
As we read a moment ago, he says, "Look, King, I was a persecutor of the People
of the Way. I was so diligent in my own Jewish faith that I imprisoned, I voted for
the death of the followers of the Way, I persecuted these people. Certainly these
accusations against me are false."
And then he tells the king about how, on his way to Damascus, the light shone
upon him, and he tells his conversion story and how he who persecuted the
followers of the Way became the proclaimer of Jesus, as indeed God's anointed
one. And then this phrase, one of my text this morning: "I was not disobedient to
the heavenly vision."
That's the point, dear friends. Paul was bathed in light; Paul had to undergo a
radical transformation in his thinking. Paul had to do a 180° turn. Paul was
absolutely broken, only to rise up and to go another way. He could say at the end
of his life, "I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision."
He had been warned not to go to Jerusalem but he had to go to Jerusalem. They
said, "They will bind you there," and he said, "I will go to Jerusalem even if I be
bound. I am ready to die for the name of Jesus Christ."
Paul wedded insight to courage, and he was not disobedient to that heavenly
vision. I'm sure he died disappointed because he had hoped that from Jew and
Gentile there would be created one new humanity. That's the phrase from his
Letter to the Ephesians. He spoke about how that middle wall or partition was
torn down and now there would be no barrier separating the human family. And
you know his frustration. It comes out in his Letter to the Romans, when his own
brothers and sisters in the faith did not see what he saw. He said, "I would myself
be accursed if only they could see this."
I think Paul dreamed of a day, not when the Jew would cease to be a Jew, but
when the Jew in his following of Torah would see in Jesus that full manifestation
of God and the day when the Gentile would not become a Jew, but would be
embraced by that same grace of God. Paul envisioned one new humanity,
embraced by God's grace, dwelling in the light, and he could see that it was not
© Grand Valley State University
�Insight, Courage, Transformation
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
happening that way, and there was this terrible tension between his work out in
the Gentile mission field and the Jesus Jewish contingent at home base in
Jerusalem.
But, think of what might have happened if Paul's dream could have been realized,
for what ensued because it was not realized was the dominant Jewish party
persecuting the people of the Way until the people of the Way became the
dominant Christian establishment with tragically 2000 years of anti-semitic
persecution. Think of the horror that has been visited upon the human family
because there was not at that point created one new humanity.
Paul was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. Paul was ready to die for that
truth in which he believed, but it didn't happen. There were not enough who
would join him, not enough who caught the vision. And so, 2000 years later, does
thinking have its implications? My goodness, people, out of that what happened
2000 years later, the horror of the Holocaust! I read just recently in the paper
that the nation Germany is wrenched even now as they're trying to determine
how to establish a Holocaust memorial in Germany. Ten million dollars, but how
do you do it? How do you have a people live, constantly being reminded of that
horror?
You see, thinking has ramifications all down the line. If only there had been more
who would have heeded Paul and stood with him, not to put everybody in a
blender and have a homogenized humanity, but to have Jew and Gentile in Christ
linked arm in arm, according to God's intention, bringing light to all nations, the
light that is in Jesus Christ.
There weren't enough that had nerve enough to stand. There weren't enough who
wedded insight with courage in order to transform their world. Near the end of
the first century, the Rabbinic Jewish party has gained the ascendency. The
Jewish followers of Jesus are on the defensive now. Now in this Johannine
community, John sees in his congregation one and then another and another
leave; they're going out all over the place. The ascendent Rabbinic party is now
denying the possibility of someone being in the synagogue and saying that Jesus
is the Messiah. Now, you're up against it.
"Do you believe Jesus is the Messiah?"
"Oh, yes."
"Well, if you confess it, you're out of here."
Now you have to decide - will I openly confess it, or will I just be quiet and stay
here, for after all, this is my spiritual home.
That's the situation in which John tells the story of Jesus, and you always see
those two levels in John's Gospel. He's telling the story of what happened in
© Grand Valley State University
�Insight, Courage, Transformation
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
Jesus' day to address what's happening in his day, and so after giving the Book of
Signs, the public ministry of Jesus comes to an end in the 12th chapter. The first
half of the Gospel is over and it's as though the curtain drops, and John comes
out in front of the curtain and speaks to the audience to say, "Now, let me explain
this dilemma. You wonder - all of these things that Jesus did that I've just
recorded and his own people have rejected him; they don't believe him. How can
that be?"
Well, John, out in front of the curtain now, with the audience, says, "On the one
hand, God's in that somehow." To explain how that can be, John goes to the
prophet Isaiah, the 6th chapter, in which Isaiah records his vision of God and his
call. The sixth chapter has a strange twist:
He said, Go and tell this people:
You may listen and listen, but you will not understand.
You may look and look again, but you will never know.
This people's wits are dulled, their ears are deafened and their eyes
blinded, so that they cannot see with their eyes
nor listen with their ears
nor understand with their wits,
so that they may turn and be healed.
Difficult words; how can we understand them? In any case, John is saying
something similar. He is trying to say to the people this is not happening apart
from God's overall operation in history. But then, lest it seem as though he is just
saying, well, it's God fault, he goes on to the next paragraph to say, "But even
many of the authorities believed but did not confess it for fear of the Pharisees,
lest they be put out of the synagogue."
Now, in Jesus' day, nobody was going to be put out of the synagogue, but in
John's day the issue was you confess Jesus as the Messiah, you'll be put out of the
synagogue. And what John is saying to his community of people was you must
make up your mind, you've got to decide, and it just may be down deep finally it
will be an issue of whether or not you have the courage of your conviction.
Because he says in Jesus' own day there were religious authorities that believed,
but for fear of the Pharisees they didn't confess it because they valued human
glory more than the glory of God. I would translate that a little differently in our
day. They valued their comfort and their security and their job, their position in
society more than the imperative to speak the truth according to their conscience.
John says to his community, "Will you, too, leave, through a failure of nerve? You
do believe it. Just like in Jesus' own day there were those who did believe it.
But the question is not what you believe in the depths of your heart. The question
is the degree to which that which you believe in the depths of your heart will find
expression in your life. It is the degree to which you will stand up and speak it,
say it, take a stand, be counted. Because, you see, insight is given not as an end in
© Grand Valley State University
�Insight, Courage, Transformation
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
itself, to be contemplated in silence. Insight is given to be wedded with courage in
order that the end of it might be world transformation. We are to be about the
mending of Creation, the humanization of society, the changing of attitudes, the
changing of behavior, the changing of social structures.
It is so difficult to do it in the political process. Come in this next hour and ask
Sen. Stille how difficult it is in the political process. Politics is the art of
compromise, but there has to be a place in society where the truth will not be
compromised, and if it is not the Church, if it not the people of God, then where
will the truth be spoken? If we believe it, we must have the courage to say it. If we
believe it, we must have the courage to incarnate it. If we believe it, then we must
be the living concretization of it.
The light has come. Thank God! So, what? So that we may become agents of
transformation. So that we may act on our insight. So that we may follow our
conviction. So that we may be true to our faith, the thing that we really believe.
The great block to human transformation is fear - fear of consequence, fear of
cost, and it is costly. And the fear is not without justification. Finally each of us in
our own life and we as a people together, have moment by moment to make those
decisions. Because 2000 years ago there were those who knew it, but for fear
refused to confess it, a Holocaust happens and the world is still wrenched. We
have knowledge about the genders and the essential equality of the genders, and
yet there continues to be a battering away at the equality of women. We live in a
society where the armed forces at a school like Citadel, where there is still that
damnable resistance to what we really know is true and right. We live in a society
that will continue to experience gay-bashing and persecution, when we know and
we have information and we have an experience such that we know that there is
no shred of basis in reality for that kind of bigotry and prejudicial attitude. The
tragedy is that, while it is very difficult to speak the truth in the political arena
where one needs to be elected, in the Church there is a refusal to speak it, even an
undergirding of the bigotry and the prejudice that has ruled far too long.
My epiphany plea with you is that we will, before the face of God, think hard,
think seriously, think responsibly, reflect, contemplate, discuss, dialogue,
struggle and wrestle with humility and openness, but then have the courage to be
all of that that would reflect what we really believe and end the conspiracy of
silence and the compromise with all of that negativity that continues to lace the
human family with tragedy.
Dear friends, the Light has come. Be children of Light and let your light so shine
that all people may glorify the Eternal God Who calls us to be the menders of
Creation.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981-2014
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Christian Unity Sunday, Epiphany IV
Scripture Text
Acts 26:1-9, John 12:42
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-0-19970126
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1997-01-26
Title
A name given to the resource
Insight, Courage and World Transformation
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 January 26, 1997 entitled "Insight, Courage and World Transformation", on the occasion of Christian Unity Sunday, Epiphany IV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Acts 26:1-9, John 12:42.
Compassion
Epiphany
Justice
Transforming the World
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2b3370796315a085a7496679855e9837
PDF Text
Text
To Bring Justice
From the series: Waiting For Messiah To Come –
Text: Isaiah 11:4; Luke 1:52
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Advent, December 8, 1996
Transcription of the spoken sermon
The lesson from the Hebrew scripture is Isaiah, chapter 11. Let me be clear this
morning. I'm going to be asking you to engage with me in some thought about the
meaning of Advent. I am not so much making claims as inviting you to think with
me about the traditional ideas that are associated with this season and what we
ought to be doing about it. The bold print in your bulletin says "Waiting For
Messiah To Come," the smaller print, "To Bring Justice." Waiting for Messiah to
Come - that is the posture of Advent. Waiting for Messiah to Come. And then,
when he comes, to bring justice.
It's going to take us all of Advent and Christmas, and you're going to have to stay
with me because I probably can do no more than raise some consciousness this
morning, but what I want to try to do in this season is to take a fresh look at this
Advent expectation. In a word, I'm going to suggest to you that it's time we
stopped waiting and started doing something about it. I'm going to suggest to you
that for us to wait for Messiah to come to bring justice is to miss that which has
been revealed to us so clearly - justice is not something that will come at the end
of the line that Messiah will bring.
The Call to Confession this morning was from Micah 6:8, "The Lord has shown
you what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love
kindness and to walk humbly with your God." We have that embodied in Jesus.
So, it is not as though we don't know, and it is not as though we do not have the
resources. It is that we lack the will. I simply want us to think about that in this
Advent season.
Advent is a season of preparation for the coming of the Lord. Now, we are not
preparing to go to Bethlehem. We are preparing for the End, the end of history,
the consummation, the Kingdom of God - that's what we are preparing for.
Advent is a sober season in which we are reminded that we will all be called to
give account of our lives before the Judge of all the earth. Advent in the Christian
Church is not anticipation of the miracle of Bethlehem; it is anticipation of the
End when the one who was born in Bethlehem comes in power and glory to judge
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the nations. That is the Advent theme. It's awfully hard to squeeze it in, to get a
word in edgewise for Advent in the Church. This is not the Christmas season, in
spite of appearances. The Advent theme of the final consummation of all things is
to be considered in these four weeks prior to Christmas, and then, on December
24 in the evening, we can begin to celebrate Christmas.
I take my life in my hands and I live with some peril. We haven't sung a
Christmas carol yet. Some of you get downright testy about it. You really wanted
"Jingle Bells" this morning, didn't you? But, you see, the Church has its own
calendar and I think the Jewish people are a distinct people after all of these
thousands of years because they live by their own calendar. What is it - the year
5757 or something like that on the Jewish calendar? They live according to their
festivals and their seasons quite apart from the rest of the world.
We have a calendar, too. There's nothing divine or inspired about it, but it's a
calendar that sets out for us seasons, the rhythms of life, moods, foci of
concentration, and to live by that calendar is to be shaped by those ideas. In the
shaping, we are also able to distinguish ourselves from the culture at large.
The culture at large has co-opted our day, eh? The commercial interests have
backed Christmas way up on the other side of Thanksgiving. It was the 16th of
November when Nancy and I went to Bethlehem at Radio City Music Hall. We've
already been to Bethlehem! Fantastic, spectacular program, Rockettes and all.
But, a Christmas show on November 16! How in the world do we ever get a word
in edgewise for Advent and for the serious contemplation of that which lies before
us at the end? We're waiting for Messiah to come. The Jewish people are waiting
for the messiah, too, except they're waiting for Messiah to come the first time.
They say to us, "Messiah has not come."
We say, "Jesus was the Messiah."
They say, "No, you've got to be wrong."
They may be right, because Jesus did not claim to be Messiah. It was his followers
who said, "That was the Messiah." But the Jewish people - after all, you know, we
get the idea of Messiah from their book - they tell us quite rightly that the idea of
Messiah coming was to issue in the peaceable kingdom. They say Messiah hasn't
come. Look at the world - it's full of war and violence and destitution and poverty
and all that's wrong. When Messiah comes, all that's wrong will be made right.
There will be a total transformation of everything. Messiah, obviously, hasn't
come. We say, "Well,... yes he has."
But, we have to be honest. The whole New Testament, which is not a Christian
book, folks; it's a Jewish book, you know. It's about Jesus, a Jew, written by Jews
who had been nurtured in Jewish expectations. They encountered Jesus and they
said, "That's the one!" And the only problem was he was crucified, and the world
wasn't transformed, but they expected it to be transformed. They knew the vision;
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they knew what Isaiah had spoken, that he wouldn't judge by what his eyes see or
what his ears hear, but he would judge according to truth. They knew that he
would decide with equity for the meek of the earth, and the consequence of that
would be that the wolf and the lamb would lie down together and they would not
hurt or destroy in all God's holy mountain, that beautiful Messianic dream. Those
who encountered Jesus and who experienced Jesus said he's the one. They knew
that dream. We read in the Gospel lessons and The Magnificat was also sung:
He has shown strength with his arm. He has scattered the proud and the
thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their
thrones. He has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good
things and sent the rich empty away.
They said Jesus was the one. But, Jesus was crucified. "Ah," they said, "but he
lives. We experience his living presence; he's with God, enthroned in glory, but
he's coming, he's coming soon. Just wait; just watch; hold on." Acts 3:19: "Repent
therefore and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out, so that the times of
refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord and that he may send the
Messiah appointed for you, that is, Jesus, who must remain in heaven until the
time of universal restoration that God announced long ago through the holy
prophets."
They were living on the edge. They shared a general cultural expectation of the
end of the age, and they believed that Jesus was the Messiah; they had not
expected that detour of crucifixion and resurrection and ascension, but that Early
Church, this whole New Testament document written about a Jew by Jews was
posited on the supposition that the one who had come would come back very
soon. That's clear.
Now, 2000 years later, we still read the beautiful Messianic dream of the prophet,
we still hear The Magnificat sung, and we get into Advent and we get into our
prayers and our rituals and our hymns and our liturgical formulae and we sort of
go through it, never, I think, stopping to think that, when we wait for Messiah to
come, we are really copping out of what should be obvious to us and incumbent
upon us - that Messianic dream that we read and love and that The Magnificat
that we hear, that speaks the language of the underdog who is praying to God to
reverse things, turn the tables, change things around. I think our problem in the
Christian Church is that we have an underdog religion and we've become top dog.
Just think about it for a moment. Listen to The Magnificat again - "He has
thrown the mighty off their thrones. He has raised up the lowly. He has fed the
hungry and he has sent the rich empty away."
Who are they talking about? They're talking about us, folks! We have taken over
the religious yearning and expression of an underdog people and now we who are
the dominant, powerful, affluent people of the world are still waiting for Messiah
to come to do justice! We're waiting for God, and I think God is waiting for us!
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"For have I not showed you what is good and what does the Lord require
but to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?"
You see, that Messianic dream was Israel's dream, little Israel, that little piece of
real estate at the end of the Mediterranean Sea, buffeted about by all the world's
empires - they had chutzpa! They thought that God had chosen them; they
considered themselves the navel of the earth; they were battered about by Assyria
and Babylon and Persia and Greece and Rome, and the prophets of Israel, living
in an occupied nation, in a conquered nation, being the pawn of the power
brokers of the earth; yet they had a dream. They had a dream one day our God
Who has called us will exalt Mt. Zion and all nations will flow to Mt. Zion and we
will teach the world Torah. We will lead the world to God. We have been called by
God to be a beacon to the nations. Is that chutzpa, or not? You bet it is! Here they
were, this little people, and they had a dream. They said "One day it's going to be
different than it is. One day Messiah's going to come, and the whole earth will be
wrapped in beautiful peace, and we'll teach the whole earth to walk in the ways of
our God."
Then into that little community into which Jesus was born, poverty-stricken,
occupied, down-in-the-mouth, poor, poor society, comes The Magnificat! It is a
song of an underdog people. It is a song of a people who are oppressed, who are
poor, who are hungry, who are saying, "God, when are you going to make it
right?" And they saw Jesus and they said, "Aha. That's the one." But, then he
died. They said, "Ah, but he lives. He'll come back; he'll come back. Come, Lord
Jesus. Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus. Come, Lord Jesus. Do it! Do it, do it,
because if you don't do it, it is so awful. This human condition is so terrible, the
darkness, the darkness. Do something!"
And here we are, affluent, well-fed, well-dressed, comfortable, Christian people
2000 years later, and we say, "Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus. Maranatha. Come,
Lord Jesus." We don't even understand what we're praying. For us to pray the
Magnificat is to take the oppressed and the underdog's song and to say, "Lord,
throw us down. Lord, throw us empty away." I suspect that if it would ever get
through to us, we'd have to say, "Ah, I guess we shouldn't be waiting for Messiah
to come.
I guess we should be about the transformation of the world. I guess we who have
so much power and so much resource and so much knowledge and insight and
Wow! We ought to be about changing the world, because the dream, the dream is
there." Rabbi David Hartman says that Messianic dream - that's not the end of
history. That is the critique of history in every moment. That's the plumb line of
God that measures every historical period. You reach that dream and you
measure your own day by that dream and you will see how out of sync it is, how
crooked it is, how full of injustice and oppression and inequality. You measure
your society, 1996, Christ Community - measure your world against that dream.
How does it measure up? It doesn't measure up, does it?
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That dream is God's dream, God's intention. That dream has been embodied, for
God's sake. The world has become flesh; it has dwelled among us. Jesus, the
mirror of God's intention. The way of Jesus, the way that God calls us to go.
We say, "We're waiting for Messiah." God says, "What are you waiting for? I've
showed you throughout all of the prophecy; I've showed you in the face of Jesus.
Why do you keep praying for Messiah to come? Why aren't you about turning
your world upside down?"
Well, you know, one could really get going on this thing, and I could probably tell
you stories about your world and you'd just say, "Oh, I give up." Last month in
Rome there was a huge international conference on food. There was one in '74
because they were afraid then we weren't going to be able to feed the multitudes,
and there was another one just last month. In the report of that conference on
whether or not the earth is going to produce enough for the people in light of the
population growth, etc, it said there are in our world today 800 million
malnourished human beings. Eight hundred million, and so you could say, "Ah,
..." I mean, at the time of Jesus, there was this apocalyptic strain where, for
example, John the Baptist was saying things are so bad, God come down. You
know, rend the heavens and come down. Damn the wicked! Stamp out the
darkness; establish the righteous. Bring in Your kingdom!"
I can understand that apocalyptic urge. We human beings can get so
overburdened with it, so baffled by it that we sort of throw up our hands and say,
"What can I do? Who am I? Who am I? What can I do? I'm only one person and
the problems are global!" And I probably could ruin your Christmas by putting a
little guilt on you. Probably get a pretty good response to the Alternative
Christmas Market by reminding you how much you're spending on one another
and maybe, you know, a few bucks for the Third World would be good. We have
an oversubscription for our Thanksgiving Offering. That's beautiful. That's
wonderful. You're a generous people. We feed 350 people - that's great. I think
it's wonderful! We adopt needy kids for Christmas - that's beautiful. But it's just
tokenism. Those are just tokens of a world that is wrenched with human anguish.
And you know what I think? I think Christ Community is the kind of community
that has intelligence and commitment and generous hearts, the kind of leaders of
society. And wouldn't it be something if out of Christ Community there would
come a catalyst group of God's gadflies who would harangue the Ottawa County
Commissioners and that would go to Lansing, that would sit on Engler's steps,
that would go to Washington, that would bother the Congress, that would
petition the President.
Now, there are always in this world those kinds of people that go into the
ministry, do-gooders. They're kind of soft, they're kind of flabby; they don't think
critically; they don't understand how the world works. They just think if you'd
just be nice, everything'd be nice. There are a lot of people like me. But, you know
what we need? We need some of you hard-headed, hard-hitting corporate
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professional people who would get together and would say, "For God's sake, this
world is in trouble. How in the world could we do something about it?"
You see, we've got an underdog religion; we sing The Magnificat, but down deep
in our hearts, friends, let's be honest, when you're on top, the biggest
preoccupation of your life is to maintain that top position, and the hungry masses
of the world, the poor, the suffering - they are our threat.
They tell us that the gap between the rich and the poor is getting bigger. And a
world where the gap between the rich and the poor gets big enough is a
dangerous world. If we didn't want to do it because Jesus calls us to do it, if we
didn't want to do it for God's sake, we ought to be thinking about how this world
can be transformed because it's not such a mystery.
Has he not shown you, O mortal, what to do? Do justice, love kindness,
walk humbly with your God.
There is enough brain power; there is enough resource. There may be somebody
here who could start a movement. After all, little Israel thought that God called it
to be a light to the nations. There might be somebody here that would say, "You
know, that's really true. We ought to be about something big, something big." The
tokens - they're wonderful. Don't stop the tokens. But, there's a world out there,
and at Advent I just can't let you hear The Magnificat four weeks in a row
without feeling uneasy.
"The mighty he has put down and the lowly he has raised up. He has fed
the hungry and set the rich empty away."
I don't have an answer. The human situation is so complex, but wherever there is
injustice, wherever there is a human person given a less than humane existence,
there's where we ought to be, in the name of God Who has given us that
magnificent dream. You see, it's not that we can do it through human ingenuity
alone. Obviously not. But, neither can God do it alone. The dream is God's dream
and to be caught up in that dream - that would make Advent something really
special.
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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Interfaith worship
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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1981-2014
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Advent II
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Waiting for the Messiah to Come
Scripture Text
Isaiah 11:1-0, Luke 1:46-56
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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1996-12-08
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To Bring Justice
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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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An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on December 8, 1996 entitled "To Bring Justice", as part of the series "Waiting for the Messiah to Come", on the occasion of Advent II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 11:1-0, Luke 1:46-56.
Advent
Eschatology
Justice
Way of Jesus Divine Intention
-
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Text
Love’s Vulnerability
From the sermon series: Now – But Then
Luke 2:12; I John 4:16; I Corinthians 13:4-8
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Christmas Eve, December 24, 1995
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Now - But Then, a phrase that comes from Paul's hymn of love in I Corinthians,
the 13th chapter, where he contrasts the present and the future, the reality in
which we live and the hope that we dream for another kind of world and
experience. The Church of England makes this statement, entitling it "Christian
Believing." I shared it with you last Sunday morning; I think it's worth repeating.
The Christian life is an adventure, a voyage of discovery, a journey
sustained by faith and hope towards a final and complete communion with
love at the heart of all things.
We have considered together the faith, the trust with which we live, and the hope
that we have that the darkness will be dispersed by the light, and we come this
evening, finally, to that supreme gift of which the Apostle writes - the gift of love.
Faith, hope and love abide, but love is the greatest, says the Apostle Paul. And
John would agree, for John says that God is love. And this evening for just a few
moments, think with me about love - love's vulnerability. We say that love came
down at Christmas, and this is such a beautiful time of the year and it's very easy
to get blurry-eyed, to get lumps in the throat, tears in the eyes. The mystery of it,
the wonder of it, just the beauty of it - all of that is really a marvelous gift to be
taken in fully and to be celebrated and appreciated.
But, it's also possible, as we talk about the love that came down at Christmas, to
get a bit sentimental and to forget the real context out of which the Christmas
story arises. Christmas in conjunction with a consideration of love caused me to
think about love's vulnerability, because the love that came down at Christmas
was the love that became vulnerable in a world that finally crucified it. The love
that came down at Christmas is a love that entered into the very real world. The
Christmas Gospel, the Christmas story is really quite a social criticism. We can
forget about that in all of the sentimentality of the season, but Jesus came a child
born into a very harsh world. And those to whom he came praised God because
they saw his gift as a reversal of the reality they were living. The songs in the
beginning of Luke's Gospel are really revolutionary ballads. They celebrate the
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lifting up of the lowly and the putting down of the arrogant and the powerful.
They are the songs of the voiceless and the powerless, ones who believed that God
is visiting their lives and that their reality will be changed through this divine
visitation. The love of which they speak is the love that took concrete form in the
flesh of a child, but the flesh of a child that entered into a social, economic and
political context that was criticized by the very appearance of that child in its
midst.
Love's vulnerability. As I think about that, I think about the concreteness of love.
Love - everybody talks about love, everybody sings about love. Love is used in
such diverse manner to cover so many different things, and for the most part it's
really very superficial. It's very easy to say love. "I love you," "I love that." But, the
love that came down at Christmas was God's concrete identification with a
human reality that was harsh and brutal, and that visitation came with the
intention of creating another kind of reality. Paul talks about Now - But Then,
and I want to suggest to you tonight that the movement from Now, in the
darkness, to the Then of the dream is possible only through the vulnerability of
love. The love that came down at Christmas, in its manifestation, was vulnerable,
for the heart of God was revealed in a child. Not in the intimidating presence of
some great king, not with a blinding flash of glory. The love that came down at
Christmas was a vulnerable love in its manifestation. Who would have guessed
that love would be found enfleshed in a child? Quite God-like. Quite
uncharacteristic of our own revelation of ourselves.
But, love's vulnerability is seen not only in its manifestation, but also in its
identification. For love came down at Christmas to a manger, to the peasants, to
be adored by poor shepherds. The love that came down at Christmas, the love
that revealed the heart of God was the love that identified with the weak and the
powerless and the voiceless.
I don't expect you to remember the first Sunday in Advent, but when I got into
this theme I suggested to you as we gathered around the Lord's Table, that it is
only through life broken and poured out that we can possibly move from the Now
to the Then. It seems like the human story is only moved, nudged along at all
through some demonstration of love that involves the self-giving of the lover. And
in the identification of that love, of Christmas, with the poor and the weak and
the voiceless and the powerless, there was a sharp criticism of the way our world
is structured and the way our lives are structured.
As I suggested to you on the first Sunday of Advent, when I get thinking about
these things too deeply, I ask the question, "Is it possible for affluent, powerful,
mostly white people like us to be Christian?" Have we not spiritualized it? Have
we not made it a beautiful tale of God's love? Have we not made it a salvation
story? Have we not made it something that pertains to that vertical relationship
between the individual and God and forgotten that in that manifestation of love
in the child there was the identification with the poorest of humankind, with the
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promise that their destiny would be altered and that another reality was dawning
in the world?
Love's vulnerability. I looked the word up. I use it all the time; I think I know
what it means, but sometimes it's good to go to the dictionary and just say what
does it say about this word, vulnerable? I found that, in the big, fat dictionary that
I use, it says that vulnerability is exposing oneself to the possibility of
woundedness, exposing oneself to the possibility of injury. That's a good
definition. That's a definition of the love that came down at Christmas. Was not
the heart of God revealed in the child in a way vulnerable, exposed to injury,
exposed, indeed, to crucifixion? Is not the fact that the love, which came down at
Christmas, was finally nailed to a cross a sign that that love contradicts the world,
contradicts our society, contradicts our manner of life, contradicts the living out
of the Gospel by the Christian church?
Love's vulnerability. What is the love that became vulnerable at Christmas? Well,
John says God is love. Not simply God loves, but God is love, which means that
out of the fountainhead of God, love permeates the whole of creation, so that all
that there is of love is that which flows from the heart of things. At the heart of
things, there is love. And out of that heart of reality flows love into creation. And
John says, further, that God is known in the concrete love of the other. The one
who abides in love, abides in God. Paul makes that very concrete. Sometimes in
the history of the Church, in the tradition of the Church, the Ten Commandments
are read in every service. But, I must say I am never so stricken as when I read
Paul's description:
Love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant,
does not insist on its own way, is not irritable or resentful. It does not
rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, it
believes all things, it hopes all things, it endures all things. Love never
ends.
At the heart of things is love, and that love flows into the whole created order.
And that love seeks to flow through us and to find concrete shape and
manifestation through us, who are the extension of the Incarnation. And the only
way to live out the Christmas Gospel is to live in the vulnerability of love. And I
don't do it very well. Love is patient and I'm impatient. Love is kind, and I'm not
always. Love is not envious and I am. Love is not boastful or arrogant or rude and
sometimes I plead guilty. Not irritable or resentful? Not true of me. Doesn't
rejoice in wrongdoing? Sometimes I do, when it's your wrongdoing. Rejoices in
the truth? Generally. Bears all things? Hopes all things? Endures all things? Dear
God! To live love is to live vulnerably. Why, it's to be a veritable fool!
Love's vulnerability. As I think about it, it seems to me that love in its shape is
other-centered rather than being self-centered. Love, in its vulnerability, acts
concretely with compassion. Love in its vulnerability believes in the ultimate
triumph of love. Love in its vulnerability cares infinitely, never giving up. And
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love in its vulnerability identifies with the most vulnerable of its brothers and
sisters.
Someone has said that a society can be judged by how it relates to its most
vulnerable members. There's a battle raging in this nation right now and the poor
and the voiceless and the powerless are in the game as there's a struggle, and I
don't have the political solution, but this I will tell you - in this nation that is rich
and is powerful, God holds us accountable for the way we treat the weakest and
the most vulnerable, and if we do not do that with compassion, if our hearts do
not cry out for justice, if there is not within us a consuming care that won't quit,
then all of this beauty and this wonder is just a game. Now there is so much
darkness, but we dream of the possibility of Then, something other.
Some years ago there was a film that moved me greatly. It was called "Places of
the Heart." Perhaps you saw it A rural Texas farmer is murdered His widow is left
with a crop to harvest. A Black man comes through town looking for work. She
hires him. She boards a blind man. Between them, they struggle and they harvest
the crop and they save the farm, only to see the Ku Klux Klan move in and drive
the Black man away with their burning cross in the yard And one's heart sinks
and one has to say, 'That's always the way it is!"
But, the film then moves off into an ethereal future and there's a church service in
that little rural community. And there's the man who was murdered and the man
who murdered him. There's the bully of the Ku Klux Klan and the Black man and
the widow and the blind man. And they pass the bread and the cup down the row
with the words, "The peace of Christ be with you." And at first I wondered if the
filmmaker was mocking the communion of the church as though one thing goes
on out there and then we come here as though it isn't true, but I think, rather, he
was saying, since the passage that was read in the service was I Corinthians 13,
Now - But Then. Then, finally. Love's vulnerability will triumph over all of our
selfishness and our self-centeredness and our failure to care.
Christmas, if it would effect the miracle in our lives, must change us, calling us to
love's vulnerability. I have an idea. I think I may even act on it. I want to print
and mail to you in some fashion I Corinthians 13 and suggest that the whole
Christ Community put it up on the cupboard or the refrigerator or the mirror and
read it every day of 1996 until we are so permeated by love's vulnerability that we,
like the eternal God, find ourselves naturally manifesting love and identifying
with the loveless until Now becomes Then.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/aa381e73299d7925c8e1007c5c36b1db.mp3
77aec517750d1b4f4518b4c5aea83809
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
Series
Now _ But Then
Scripture Text
Luke 2:12, I John 4:16, I Corinthians 13:4-8
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-0-19951224
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1995-12-24
Title
A name given to the resource
Love's Vulnerability
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 24, 1995 entitled "Love's Vulnerability", as part of the series "Now - But Then", on the occasion of Christmas Eve, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Luke 2:12, I John 4:16, I Corinthians 13:4-8.
Advent
Compassion
Justice
Love at the core of reality