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Text
From Orthodoxy to Freedom
Free Spirit,
A publication of Fountain Street Church,
Fall, 2001, p.17
Richard A. Rhem
When we could no longer with integrity affirm the faith understanding of our
religious community, we were faced with a critical decision: either we must leave
or we must engage in a process of thought, study, and revision in order to bring
our religious understanding to new expression. When I could no longer honestly
preach the orthodox and evangelical faith in which I had been nurtured and
educated and which, in my first four years in the ministry, I had proclaimed as
the pastor of my Spring Lake congregation, I chose the latter course.
After graduating from seminary in 1960, I came to the ministry armed with “the
authoritative Word of God.” The Bible, inspired by the Holy Spirit, was inerrant
and infallible. The preacher's authority lay in the faithful exposition of the biblical
text. Even though serious biblical criticism had been around since the late
eighteenth century, my denomination did not deal seriously with it.
But, after seven years of pastoral experience and preaching, the last three in New
Jersey, I found my authoritarian foundation crumbling. As I became aware of a
critical approach to scripture, it was no longer possible for me simply to assert,
“The Bible says...” I had to begin again. I needed a new foundation if I were to
continue in a preaching ministry.
A European pilgrimage that lasted for four years was not simply a quest for an
academic degree, but an existential quest for a religious faith I could believe in
with intellectual integrity and preach with authenticity. My search and research
were intensive - and the quest continues, but of this I became convinced - there is
no authoritarian claim that can ground authentic religious experience, whether
the claim be grounded in tradition, church or scripture. The witness to religious
experience - in my case, the witness of the preacher – is precisely that: it is
witness.
Traditional religious communities have a “founding story” or event that is the
source of their traditions; for example, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is
the founding story of Christianity. One may believe the founding story is a
revelation of the Sacred, but its expression is human; it cannot be otherwise. The
founding story can only be told by means of human language and thought forms.
The stories, creeds and confessional statements are human imaginative
constructs and they are most often separated from the revelatory moment by a
long time. Orthodoxy or “right thinking” is not achieved immediately. In the case
© Grand Valley State University
�From Orthodoxy to Freedom
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
of Christian orthodoxy, it took centuries before the Church settled questions of
who Jesus was, how he was related to God, and how God was to be understood.
But this long process is soon forgotten. A human imaginative construct in the
form of a statement in a creed becomes absolutized - the final word, the only true
expression of a given religion. Orthodox “truth” is thus established, defended,
and used as a weapon to outlaw those who fail to adhere to the established line.
The creeds and symbols of the religion become “fundamentals” to be externally
accepted and endlessly repeated.
When a religious faith reaches the orthodox and fundamentalist stage, it lives on
by authoritarian claim. Free inquiry is no longer welcome; one may think only
within prescribed limits. Ongoing human experience, historical development and
scientific discovery are resisted because new knowledge threatens a creed frozen
in time and established institutional order. The effect is deadening.
When all of this became clear to me, I still remained within my faith community,
but I challenged the accepted orthodox formulations at several points. When
called upon to recant and thereby to deny my best insight and understanding, I
refused and was declared to be beyond the limits of my faith community's
orthodoxy.
I was fortunate; the congregation I had served for over a quarter century voted by
strong majority to move with me into institutional independence where the spirit
of freedom prevails and free inquiry is encouraged.
We are continuing to seek to create a community of love and grace and
compassion, a community of open mind and warm heart. In the early 90s, we
expressed our vision thus:
Christ Community is an alternative to church as usual.
We live together in the awe of worship,
in the Presence of the Mystery of God
Whose inclusive grace moves us to embrace all
with unconditional love and gracious acceptance,
irrespective of race, gender, economic status, age or sexual orientation,
loving the world as God loves it,
following the way of Jesus,
sensitive to the winds of the Spirit,
seeking to discern the Word of God in the biblical tradition,
the movement of God in the context of our culture.
And the story goes on...
© 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.)
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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1981-2014
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From Orthodoxy to Freedom
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Free Spirit
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2001-10-01
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Kll-01_RA-4-20011001
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Article created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on October 1, 2001 entitled "From Orthodoxy to Freedom", it appeared in Free Spirit, Fountain Street Church, Fall, 2001, p.17. Tags: Fundamentalism, Critical Thinking, Inclusive, Nature of Religion, Community of Faith.
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Community of Faith
Critical Thinking
Fundamentalism
Inclusive
Nature of Religion
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The Question: Q & Q, Not Q & A
From the series: Q & Q: The Religious Quest and Question
Scripture: John 23:1-10, Luke 4:1-13
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Epiphany, January 17, 1999
Transcription of the spoken sermon
My Epiphany series continues. The theme, "Q & Q: The Religious Quest and
Question," points to the vision of the Center for Religion and Life that we are
inaugurating, as I announced last Sunday. That vision assumes a religious quest
as intrinsic to human existence. That quest is triggered by the questions that
confront our human awareness. The particular mark of our vision is that in our
quest we uncover the questions that meet us in our human experience and that
the clarifying of those ultimate questions is the purpose of the quest.
As the title of today’s sermon indicates, at Christ Community we understand our
human journey as one marked by Quest and Question, Q & Q, rather than Q & A,
Question and Answer.
I touched on this last week when pointing to the religious quest. Institutional
religion has been in the Q & A model, not Q & Q. The very fact that a religious
founding experience - such as Moses at the burning bush, or the life and death of
Jesus – ever achieves institutional form is because answers are provided to the
human questions.
A picture is painted, a story is woven, a ritual develops to channel devotion, a way
of living is prescribed, and a people is formed who shape a tradition and there
emerges: Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam.
If I were to put my finger on the significant transformations in my own faith
understanding in recent years, one would be in the area of the nature of religion.
I learned from my mentor Hendrikus Berkhof in The Netherlands 30 years ago
that every religion has three aspects -a teaching or dogma; a ritual or form of
worship; and, a moral code or way of life.
More recently, I have come to understand that every great religious tradition
begins in a founding experience - Moses at the burning bush leading to the
Exodus of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery, Jesus’ life and death and the
experience of his living presence still in the community. Professor Boyd Wilson,
with us again for a few weeks, could relate such founding moments for all the
© Grand Valley State University
�Q & Q, Not Q & A
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
great traditions and he could go on to portray how those founding experiences led
to the shaping of a tradition, a world view.
Some of us are studying a work by Gordon Kaufman, In Face of Mystery, in
which he demonstrates that a religious tradition, be it Christian or any other, is a
creative, imaginative, human structure by which a people has gained orientation
for life, a life-map for the human journey. Those life-maps answer the questions
raised by our human experience, give a sense of meaning and purpose to human
life, and reflect God’s being and intention.
For me, that understanding has been liberating, for I have come to see our
respective religious systems and institutional forms as human creations rather
than Divine givens. This has been a great part of my freedom to examine critically
my own tradition and to be open to the insights and values of other traditions seeing them not as false paths and a threat to the one true way, but
complementary ways of responding to the Ultimate Mystery that is God.
If my religion, the Christian religion, was the direct result of God’s structuring
rather than human response to God’s revelation as the Ultimate Mystery of our
existence, then I am struck with it so to speak, no matter what further unfolding
of knowledge there is about the universe or further development of human
history. Then I have a religious structure that arose in an ancient time as Divinely
authorized but incapable of making sense of the exploding knowledge of the
world, the human being and human culture.
But, if I understand it as an authentic response to the experience of God in an
ancient time with a developed story and developing tradition, then I can be part
of an ongoing transformation of its insights and teachings. Then I stand within
my religious tradition and seek understanding of the mystery of my existence
before the face of the Ultimate Mystery that we call God.
Then I come to realize that I must continue the quest because the questions are
mine and I must live with them because that is the very nature of being human;
we are historical beings. Our lives are lived in the unfolding story of history,
which is part of the unfolding of cosmic history of billions of years of spatial
dimensions beyond our capacity even to imagine.
How will we find our way?
Let me suggest that, given the nature of being human, that is, being historical, in
movement into the future with further unfolding the constant experience, we can
do no more than clarify the questions that drive our quest -Ultimate Questions –
another way to describe religious questions, because when they are consciously
faced, we are on the religious quest which is a quest for meaning.
How, then, do we live in the dynamic movement that is our history?
© Grand Valley State University
�Q & Q, Not Q & A
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
By faith, trust in God - trust which rests without knowing. It is not that we do not
think nor that we are without knowledge which arises out of our thinking and
experience. And we do not begin with a clean slate as though we are the first
creatures to ask deep questions. But, it is precisely our human situation of being
caught up in the stream of history that makes all our answers provisional,
tentative, and open to critique.
Faith is a gift and a choice. A gift - bestowed by the Spirit, but also a choice before
the mystery of our existence. We are not dealing with that dimension of reality
that is subject to verification through the scientific method.
In light of experience, through serious thinking, a religious tradition develops
and we are nurtured in it, find a place to stand within it, an attitude of trust grows
and we find meaning, direction; we have a life-map which gives us a sense of
orientation. We trust. We live by faith.
But, knowledge grows, experience widens, new questions arise, and we bring new
discovery and fresh experience to our religious tradition, causing that tradition to
adjust to assimilate the new.
Ultimate questions keep us on the quest. The quest raises new questions that
challenge our belief system, forcing us to find a more adequate understanding of
our human existence.
There is an interesting dialogue going on at present in the Christian Church.
Some weeks ago I mentioned an article in The Christian Century by the
Sociologist of Religion, Peter Berger, who addressed the question of
"Protestantism and the Quest for Certainty." Berger is a sociologist; he observes
what is actually going on with people and social institutions. He expresses
precisely what I have been trying to describe above - that history has brought us
to a situation of pluralism where much that was taken for granted and never
questioned suddenly no longer can be simply taken for granted because we
become aware of alternative news and responses.
That is our world. We are living with this every day.
Recognizing there is within the human mind and heart the quest for certainty, at
least on the most important question, there is tension set up in the human soul
and we may be tempted to a radical relativism, even nihilism, denying any Truth
accessible to human cognition, or, to fundamentalism and even fanaticism.
References:
Gordon Kaufman. In Face of Mystery: A Constructive Theology. Harvard
University Press, 1995.
© 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
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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
Coverage
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
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Event
Epiphany III
Series
Q & Q: The Religious Quest and Question
Scripture Text
John 23:1-10, Luke 4:1-13
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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KII-01_RA-0-19990117
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1999-01-17
Title
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The Question: Q & Q, Not Q & A
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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Text
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application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on January 17, 1999 entitled "The Question: Q & Q, Not Q & A", as part of the series "Q & Q: The Religious Quest and Question", on the occasion of Epiphany III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: John 23:1-10, Luke 4:1-13.
Mystery
Nature of Religion
Religious Quest
-
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14faa1fd3e31c82fbb7357de1b6367fc
PDF Text
Text
The Church: Has It a Place in the Spiritual Life?
From the series: The Church: Critical Questions
Text: Mark 7:8; I Corinthians 12:7; 12:27; 13:13
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
October 11, 1998
Transcription of the spoken sermon
The question this morning in this month of October, when we are thinking
together about the church, is whether or not the church has a place in the
spiritual life. A rather strange question, isn’t it, because one would assume at
least superficially that the church is precisely the place for the development and
cultivation of the spiritual life. Of course, at its best, that’s exactly what it is, and
yet, the question is not ridiculous at all for, if you stop to think for a moment, the
church as an organization, as an institution that is ministered to and over by
flawed human beings, that is full of structures and traditions and all sorts of
diverse baggage - the church as an institution can be a detriment to the spiritual
life. It can dampen devotion and undercut the freshness of faith.
Christ Community over the years has been a place that has collected all sorts of
birds with broken wings, wounded in the struggle of religion in its organizational
and institutional forms. So I think probably it is perceived here immediately, that
it is a legitimate question, the church can be a detriment to spiritual life. There
are those who would say, "The church has no place in my spiritual life, and it was
in finally shucking off the church that I found my spirit beginning to sing."
Unfortunately, that has too often been the case. That is understandable because,
whatever else the church is, as the mediator of the Spirit, as the arena in which
God moves upon us by the Spirit, it is also a human organization and institution
and, to that extent, it is a flawed body, and it can do damage.
Religion has been the source of great nobility and marvelous movements on the
part of the human spirit, and it has a shadow side which has been to be a
participant in some of the horrific experiences in the human story. So, to ask
whether the church has a place in the spiritual life is an effort to get us to think
together about the distinction between the spiritual pursuit, the pursuit of God,
the experience of God, and our life together in an organized, religious institution.
Obviously, it is my hope and my intention that a community like this foster
spirituality and not hinder it or become a barrier to it. That can never be taken for
granted and I think that we ought always, anew, to ask the question, "Is this
© Grand Valley State University
�Church’s Place in Spiritual Life
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
community such that it enhances human beings and inspires people and brings
them into the experience of God, or has the institution moved into a phase in
which, rather, it drains and detracts from the Spirit of God?" That’s the question
asked this morning.
As one looks back over the history of the church, obviously there have been those
times again and again when the church became, not an institution inspiring, but
an organization dominating and exploiting. If we simply think about the rise of
religion, think of our own biblical tradition, the Jewish-Christian tradition
(someone hears a voice, Abraham and Sarah move out, knowing not where
they’re going, and eventually out of that family comes a people enslaved in Egypt,
and another one named Moses encounters a bush that burns but isn’t consumed
and has a sense of divine mission and calling, brings that people out of slavery
through the wilderness, into their own land), we see that it is a movement,
dynamic, alive. But, before too long, in that land, organization happens and
structures are developed. Eventually, there’s a king named David, a great
politician, a savvy leader of the people, who organizes the nation. His son,
Solomon, builds the magnificent temple, and before long this people who had
heard the voice of God on Mount Sinai become a people who are domesticated, as
it were, in the organized structures of religion with a priesthood and a temple and
altar and sacrifices and all of the accouterments of organized and institutional
religion, and all of that arising out of the founding vision, all of that a sort of
natural and inevitable development and yet, a development which loses the
spontaneity and the freshness of the first love, that driving vision that sweeps
people along and lifts them up, and it becomes ordinary, it becomes pro forma, it
becomes highly structured, routinized, and loses its soul. And through all of the
experiences of that people here and there, now and again, a prophet’s voice is
raised, raised about the dominance of this institution, raised about the lack of
soul and the emptiness. The prophets are silenced because their message is not
popular.
One day on the banks of the Jordan River, a man named John stands up and
becries the situation of his people, their religious life, the temple crowd, the
collaboration with the Roman occupying power, and he points to another one by
the name of Jesus and Jesus, with his own vision, his own particular fire and his
own particular spirit, filled with the Spirit, challenges the institution, challenges
the tradition of the elders to such an extent that they know they have to silence
him, and in collaboration with the Roman authorities they put him to death
because he had the audacity to stand up in the face of the whole temple
establishment and say, "You’ve lost your heart; you’ve lost your soul; you’ve lost
your way."
The religious institution, with all of the vested interests of those who are a part of
it and who eat out of the trough has every reason to keep the status quo, but that
which begins with a fresh blush of the winds of the Spirit, that which is, first of
all, the experience of a new love, the freshness, the spontaneous movement of the
© Grand Valley State University
�Church’s Place in Spiritual Life
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Spirit, that which is inspiring, liberating, and causes people to sing and to dance,
becomes domesticated, ordinary, forgets the fact that it is a means to lift people
heavenward and becomes an end in itself that uses people for its own ends,
always justifying, of course, as being this divine institution, when all the time it is
human, all too human, petty, mean-spirited, losing vision, becoming protective,
defensive, perpetuating itself, when all of that about which it finds its life circling
around is anachronistic, out of another day, refusing to move along with the wind
of the Spirit. Jesus said, "You stick to human traditions rather than the
commandment of God."
We have to read those Gospel passages, understanding that when they were
written several decades after Jesus, they were written with the brokenness
between the Jesus movement and the Rabbinic Jewish movement. I don’t believe
that Jesus himself in his own day would have had the sharpness of those
discussions. But, there can be little doubt that Jesus challenged the temple
establishment. There can be little doubt that the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew,
Mark and Luke, are reflective of that confrontation of Jesus with the religious
establishment of his day, which eventuated in his death. It has always been so.
The little struggling Jesus movement, persecuted, hunted down, finally in the
fourth century, with Emperor Constantine, becomes the established religion of
the Empire. It becomes the dominant religious expression. Cathedrals are built
and the religious leaders dominate the European continent. It becomes a lush
institution. It becomes wealthy; it is corrupt. And in the 16th century there is a
movement of Reformation and the church is re-formed according to the word of
God, and reformed is a verb, an action verb. It’s a verb of movement; it is a
movement of renewal. And then, once again, just as has happened in the time of
Jesus, the institutional forms of the church get rigid, brace themselves, will not
be renewed, will not acknowledge that they’ve lost their first love, brokenness, the
tearing, the rending of the body of Christ. The essence of that Reformation
movement of the 16th century was never to absolutize any ecclesiastical form or
creedal statement.
But, the renewal only lasts so long and before very long, the essence of that which
was a spirit that it would reform and always be reformed by the word of God, the
verb, becomes a noun. Now there is a reformed presence in the world and it
becomes an adjective, so there is reformed worship and reformed evangelism and
reformed theology. The verb degenerates into a noun, a static thing, another
institution to be protected, to be defended, to be perpetuated, to resist the winds
of the Spirit. And so, it goes. Over and over and over again. And the institution
which ostensibly is organized in the human arena becomes a dominating,
exploiting institution that uses people for its own end, its own aggrandizement,
its own perpetuation. That’s why organized religion in our day, the mainstream
out of which we stem, of which we are a part, is in a survival mode, defensive and
protective.
© Grand Valley State University
�Church’s Place in Spiritual Life
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
The Utne Reader is an interesting journal with commentary on the contemporary
scene. There was an article this summer entitled “God With a Million Faces,” and
it began with the story of Ann Marie, who said that organized religion was, for
her, dis-empowering. She said it’s bogus. She took some of the trappings of her
Christian upbringing, she added a pinch of Buddhism and a little bit of this and a
little bit of that and she came up with a sect of one, the sect of Ann Marie. She is
on her individual quest, her quest for spirituality, her own thirst and hunger for
the experience of the living God which she couldn’t find in the institution. She is
an example of a very large trend in our day. We hear a lot about the vocal
rhetoric, the Religious Right. We hear stories, news articles, etc., of the megachurches that are growing by leaps and bounds, and we hear about the noisy part
of religion which seems to be alive and well in the US of A. But, we don’t hear
much about the Ann Maries, the thousands and millions who have been
disenchanted with organized religion, who have left the institutions. We hear a
bit about the New Age and some of it is very bizarre, and some of it is more
responsible, but all of it points to a deep spiritual hunger. It is very easy to say,
"Well, the world is growing less religious, less spiritual. People are pursuing their
own ends and their own pleasures," but I don’t believe that for a moment. I
believe that there is as much hunger and thirst in the human heart, in the human
soul as ever there was. But, there are all kinds of people who have taken the
warning that institutional religion can be bad for your spiritual life, and they’ve
gone off on their own quest, because the institution can be an albatross on the
human spirit, and I don’t know of any movement that has been able to avoid that
movement into organization and institutionalization, except maybe A.A.
We’re familiar with the Twelve Steps of A.A. in terms of that personal healing and
recovery, but A.A. also has its traditions in regard to it as a movement which has
historically positioned itself against the possibility of becoming an institution
with lands, buildings, and wealth.
Maybe in the Christian movement, the Quakers have avoided it with their little
white frame buildings, coming together and sitting in a circle of silence. But you,
what do you do? You hire a preacher. You build a building. You have to put a new
roof on it. You have a Minister of Music and a large organ - all of the
accouterments that make it such a pleasure to be a part of this community. And it
can become a real drain and a drag. And it can ring the zest out of your spiritual
life.
In the Utne Reader, in this same article, there are comments in the margins by
six or eight people of all kinds of religious spiritual movements and traditions.
I’ve printed a couple of them in the liturgy for you. One, in particular, Gangaji, I
don’t know who she is or what she’s a part of, but I like what she says and that is
that if the rituals and the forms can be the instruments by which the Mystery
becomes present, then wonderful, but, she distinguishes very, very carefully
between the freedom of the spirit and that ritualism that so easily comes and
entraps us. And she reminds us that the people we follow were the people who
© Grand Valley State University
�Church’s Place in Spiritual Life
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
would not follow, that the ones that we have made our leaders, the Buddha, Jesus
Christ, whomever, are the very ones who shattered the forms, who broke out of
the tradition, who undercut the institution, who got back to the heart and the
spirit of the matter. That’s the way it is, isn’t it? Someone sees a vision. Someone
breaks through the crust, the barnacles, and then everyone says, "Ha, that’s it!"
And before long, that one becomes the one who’s worshipped and followed and a
whole new set of things are organized, institutionalized, absolutized, and before
long you have to take an offering again.
Ann Marie says, "The church didn’t do it for me. I’ve taken my tray and gone
down the cafeteria line and borrowed a little of this and a little of that and I am a
sect of one." But, there are voices in that same Utne Reader article that suggest
the difficulty of being the sect of one, going it alone. We really do need
community. It is possible for human community to enhance our individual lives
and our walk and our quest for the reality of the Spirit. I think that’s what Paul
was trying to point out. The congregation in Corinth was exuberant, full of all
kinds of gifts, and he had to write to them to calm down a bit, to recognize one
another’s gifts and to do things decently and in order. He reminded them that all
spiritual diversity has one Source and that is the Spirit, and that all of the diverse
gifts are to be used not for personal exaltation, but for the building up of the
body. And so, he encourages those people in Corinth, in that community, to
recognize the unity of their spiritual gift and their calling to be concerned for
their brothers and sisters and the upbuilding of the body which is the image that
he uses, the body of Christ. And then he says, "When you’ve discovered your gift,
when you’ve brought your gift to the service of the rest, then let me show you an
even more excellent way."
And he breaks out into that beautiful hymn of love, the 13th chapter of I
Corinthians, in which he reminds us, as he reminded the Corinthian
congregation, that the most profound proclamation, the proper creedal posture,
the exuberant offering of oneself, making even the supreme sacrifice, apart from
love, is nothing. And then he goes on to describe what love is and what love is
not. He comes back, then, to remind them that all of the things that seem so
important are really provisional, temporary, passing away, that there is finally
faith and hope and love and the greatest of these is love.
You see, the church so easily becomes an end in itself. It takes so much to keep it
going, to keep it on track, to keep it up, organize it, regulate it, supervise it, when
what we really want, what we really need is the experience of God. So, let us be
very certain that this organization called Christ Community never sacrifices the
life and the spirit in order to be a little more stable, a little more solid in order to
have a better future, in order to perpetuate itself. We don’t have to go into the
future. We don’t have to become anything. In fact, to the extent that we are
willing to let it all go, let it die, only then will we be free to allow the wind of the
Spirit to blow where it will. Only if we can relativize this necessary organizational
life, will we be set free to open ourselves to the Spirit, to love one another, to
© Grand Valley State University
�Church’s Place in Spiritual Life
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
recognize that everything takes second place to that community of love. When we
become willing to unclench the fist and open our mind and heart, we can be free
of compulsion, fear, manipulation, and the need for exploitation, finally freed up
to walk the way of spirituality, the way of Jesus, in a community of love where the
Spirit blows free, and where we can leave after gathering with the brothers and
sisters on a marvelous Lord’s Day like this and see a leaf or hear a child’s cry,
experience a lump in the throat, a tear on the cheek, and say, "That’s why I
believe."
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6a0dbb4568ea302714a36b15485d8a65.mp3
0b0eda39afd6ce2e510d6f5c52c9008c
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
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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English
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Sound
Text
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KII-01
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1981-2014
Format
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost XIX
Series
The Church: Critical Questions
Scripture Text
Mark 7:8, I Corinthians 12:7, 12:27, 13:13
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-0-19981011
Date
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1998-10-11
Title
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The Church: Has It a Place in the Spiritual Life?
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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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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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on October 11, 1998 entitled "The Church: Has It a Place in the Spiritual Life?", as part of the series "The Church: Critical Questions", on the occasion of Pentecost XIX, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Mark 7:8, I Corinthians 12:7, 12:27, 13:13.
Community of Faith
Nature of Religion
Prophetic Voice
Spiritual Quest
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/dedef21f77bfe5535f425a703d987a4e.pdf
86ead1cdcb67145c08cba3516911538f
PDF Text
Text
The Church: Has It a Future?
From the series: The Church: Critical Questions
Text: Matthew 7:4; 31:31; Matthew 23:37-38
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
October 4, 1998
Transcription of the spoken sermon
It is the month of October, and being the son of the Reformation, the month of
October always makes me think about the church and I have often in the fall
season reflected on the nature of the church, its mission, and its function. I want
to do that again this year in October, raising critical questions about the church
and, in November, talking about the nature of the community that is the church. I
do so this year, perhaps particularly, because I am anxious that we should think
together about the nature of the church, the church’s future, a future that cannot
be taken for granted, ever, but certainly in this congregation as we go into a new
church year with a status of independence, somewhat unusual because most of
the time, most of the church is interconnected. Not that we are outside of the
body of Christ. Nonetheless, we have a particular situation, a circumstance, I
believe a particular opportunity, but we ought to be about it intentionally and
thoughtfully. And so, if you would for a few weeks just think with me about the
church and, this morning, The Church: Has It a Future?
I think I can answer that immediately - of course it has a future, but I would also
respond to that immediately by saying it will not be the nature of the church as it
has been in the past, I believe, as we look into the future. There will be some
significant transformations, I’m quite sure, and I do believe that we can be a part
of that movement toward a creative newness, which I would hope we would find
ourselves engaged with. Think with me, then, for a bit about the church and
perhaps the future shape. Maybe that would be a better title. The kinds of things
that will be true, increasingly, as we move together into the future.
I cannot help but remember the couple of weeks that some of us traversed the
European continent. Every place you go, there is another church or another
cathedral. There are those who have accused me of leading ABC Tours - "another
bloody church." But, we seldom miss one. When one is on the European
continent, one is impressed with the fact that those spires that ascend
heavenward all over that continent bespeak an age of faith. There was a time
when the European culture ,which has become so thoroughly secular, was
marked by faith, Christian faith, to be specific. Those magnificent sacred spaces,
© Grand Valley State University
�Has the Church a Future?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
still awesome upon entrance, taking your breath away, making one realize the
function of sacred space, of the aesthetic that is able to reach the depths of our
being and draw out that attitude of worship, causing us for a moment simply to
be still. In one such moment someone said to me, "Whatever else one can say,
one would have to admit that was a day when somebody really believed in God."
They say you can determine the nature of a culture by its architecture, and that
certainly is true of that European scene as it reflects those centuries in which
faith was dominant and great cathedrals were raised to the glory of God. I
suppose our own day would be marked by the glass and steel skyscraper of the
commercial world, the business world. Ours is a different age. But, there was a
time when in every village, in the most prominent location, there stood the
church as a symbol of that faith in God that was as solid as the rock on which the
church was built.
But one cannot traverse that continent today without the sense that, when one
enters those magnificent spaces, one is in the environment of the museum. That
is not to say that there are not still godly people gathering in worship, but one
does have the feeling that many of those beautiful edifices are more now a place
where tourists come and light candles and stay a moment to pray, rather than
being the cutting edge of the society over which the spire dominates. And so, one
recognizes the fact that with religion and with now specifically the church, there
are periods of ebb and flow and that to raise the question about the future is
significant, it is important.
I read an article some time ago about some of these buildings in The Netherlands.
When a building has served as a place of divine worship, there is a general
recognition, even for those who have no affiliation or participation in that act,
nonetheless some feeling that such a building, such a place ought to be used
appropriately when its function is no longer needed in the community. There are
a lot of such buildings in The Netherlands, for example. So, how do you find a use
for an old church? How do you use a place with dignity that once was a house of
worship but no longer functions in that way? What of the future of the church?
What of the future of this congregation?
As I was thinking about this a month or six weeks ago, and put together this
present series, I received an issue of The Christian Century that had an excellent
article in it by Peter Berger. Peter Berger is a Lutheran; he’s a sociologist; he’s
been one of the most acute observers of the religious scene, and he writes an
excellent article, which was precisely what I had been thinking about, entitled
"Protestantism and the Quest for Certainty." He raises the question whether or
not the church can survive and have a future if it must live with less than absolute
certainty in matters of faith. His answer is "Yes," but not to be taken for granted.
In his analysis of the present situation, he says in our world, which is marked by
pluralism, there is the interfacing of cultures and religions such as formerly was
not the case. Formerly, in previous generations, people could live pretty much
isolated in their own communities. People were socialized pretty much the same
© Grand Valley State University
�Has the Church a Future?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
way and, where there is a stable community and a stable tradition and a relatively
homogenous population, you have a lot of things that are very important about
life that are simply taken for granted.
Peter Berger plays on that phrase, "taken for grantedness." Much of life is taken
for granted, and that’s not all bad. It simplifies life a bit. You don’t have to think
about every action. You don’t have to make a decision every time you make a
move. There are things one takes for granted. But, in the arena of religion, the
pluralism of our times, the presence of the great religious traditions in our own
communities means that, in terms of our religious faith, we can no longer take it
for granted. We simply know that there are other options. There are other people
who evidence the fruit of the Spirit who believe differently, who act differently
than we do, and whenever that happens, when you come into a situation that is
genuinely pluralistic, that taken-for-grantedness is obviously undermined. One
has to begin to think about what one believes and how one behaves and how one
values, etc. Peter Berger says that’s our situation.
He quotes the philosopher John Dewey, who speaks about a quest for certainty,
and recognizes that it is endemic in the human heart, in yours and mine, that we
do seek certain certitudes, certain securities. I like to use the phrase, "lust for
certitude." Some things we want to know absolutely. We want to be able to say,
"Here I stand," and we don’t want to waffle all over the place. Religion and the
church as the bearer of religion have fed into the human desire and quest. It’s
simply quite normal, but I think the disservice that the church as a religious
community has visited on its people is to give the impression that it’s possible to
live with absolute certainties, failing to point out that it is the very nature of our
human existence that absolutes are denied us. We are in the stream of history;
our lives are marked by change, by development. The future is open, and it is
impossible to freeze, absolutize church structures, liturgical forms, creedal
formulations, and consequently, we live with a tension, a tension that stems from
our quest for certainty and the reality of our human situation which denies us
certitude.
I happen to think that the church has played into that lust for certitude and
promised what it really cannot promise honestly, and that what we ought to do,
what we must do, rather, is help our people learn to live by faith where those
absolutes are unavailable. But the question is, can such a church have a future?
Can such a community face honestly the human situation and survive, refusing to
play into that which has motivated so much religious activity, that quest for
certainty and security which, once again, I must say I think is simply not available
in our human situation?
Well, Peter Berger in this very fine article says the very heart and center of the
Protestant movement of the 16th century Reformation was the refusal to
absolutize any human structure, be it the structure of the church, or be it the
structure of the faith, or even be it the Bible as the infallible, inerrant word of
© Grand Valley State University
�Has the Church a Future?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
God. Anything that a human hand has touched is denied absoluteness. That was
the insight of the 16th century. The nuance of the word Protestant is negative, like
protest, as being against. But, as a matter of fact, in the 16th century the
Protestants were protesting. Pro is for. Calling for something, so that out of that
16th century movement, at its heart, which was already denied by the 17th century,
there was a recognition that there is always a danger to absolutize human forms
and structures and institutions, and freeze against the future, and try to create a
situation of taken for grantedness, and I have to tell you there’s no such place. My
question is: Can a congregation survive where there is that kind of honesty up
front that denies you the certainty for which your soul longs?
But, in taking that position, I am being true to my heritage, because the essence
of the 16th century was that the church was being reformed according to the word
of God, and always being reformed, and there was no point, no creed, no
structure that could ever finally be absolutized. That’s what the whole thing was
about, because there was an explosion in the 16th century because churches do
what churches do. It happened in Jeremiah’s day. They thought, as long as the
temple was sitting in the midst of Jerusalem, everything was going to be hunkydory. And so, the prophet comes. How does God speak to Jeremiah? I don’t
know. Middle of the night, or did he just overeat the night before and have
indigestion? Anyway, he stands on the church steps on the high holy day and
they’re coming to worship and he says, "Don’t trust these deceptive words, ‘The
temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord is this.’ Do you
think you can just go out and live any old way you want to live, denying the
justice and the compassion that God requires, and everything will be just fine
because the temple is standing? Not on your life."
Oh, Jeremiah’s got a story. What a story. I can’t go into it, but they call him the
weeping prophet no one ever heeded. Finally he lost his life, but he wasn’t alone.
And Jesus, in his controversy with the religious leadership of his day, confronting
them with the best in their own tradition, and yet recognizing that it would be
true of him as it was true of Jeremiah. Jesus said to the religious leadership of his
day, "You’ve always done it. You’re simply the children of your parents who have
shed all that righteous blood down through the centuries. The prophet, the one
who dares shake the foundations, the one who dares to tell the truth, the one who
refuses to cotton to that lust for certitude where certitude cannot be found, that
one who will give answers knowing more than one can know." Jesus says, "I
would have gathered you as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you
would not."
So, Judah went into exile. The Jesus movement split off from the Jewish
movement. The Reformation was a rending of the body of Christ because
institutions will not live in the light of reality, which is a non-absolute posture in
all of life. That’s the nature of human existence. I’m sorry to deny you the kind of
security and certainty you would want, but if I would give you security and
© Grand Valley State University
�Has the Church a Future?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
certainty in this human pilgrimage, I would be giving you something that is not
possible. You, rather, have to learn to live by faith.
Sola Fidei; Luther, one of the cardinal planks - By faith! There’s no church that’s
absolute; there’s no doctrine that’s absolute; there’s no book that’s absolute;
there’s only God Who is absolute and God is Mystery and we trust by faith, we lay
hold of God. Colette prays a moving prayer that touches us deeply and recognizes
the infirmities and the fragility and the tragedy and pain of our human existence,
and then the choir sings, "All will be well. All will be well; all manner of things
will be well," quoting Julian of Norwich who is quoted here regularly and will
continue to be quoted here. Eventually we’ll sing it, as well. All will be well. All
will be well; all manner of things will be well. I believe that. I live in faith; I trust
that, but in the meantime, I don’t know. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I
don’t know about the next decade or the next century or the next millennium. I
have to live, trusting, trusting. The Protestant Principle, said Paul Tillich, refuses
to absolutize anything human - church, state, culture, social, whatever. We are
pilgrims, we are on a journey, the future continues to open up, we move toward
it, trusting, without that kind of certainty that we would so love to have.
I’m thinking about all this, and then I’m reading this article and Berger says,
"How can one build institutions on such a fragile base?" I said, "Peter, you tell
me. How can you build institutions on such a fragile basis?" Don’t viable
institutions require a strong foundation of taken for granted verities? Require
representatives who exude self-assured certainty? Let us assume that over time it
is difficult to fake this, and we must ask, if one constructs institutions on the basis
of the sort of skepticism that the Protestant Principle implies, will these
institutions not be extraordinarily weak, associations of individuals with no deep
commitment? Can such institutions survive? I want to say, "Peter Berger, you’re
reading my mind."
Do you know what sells in Peoria? Do you know where the vitality and the
strength and the resources are in the religious world? They are in places where
there is absolute certainty, where there is promise without qualification. Where
there is triumphalism. Where there is reveling in this victory and triumph of God
that makes all things well. They’re flourishing, folks, and my question to you is
not whether we will flourish, but simply whether we’ll survive. Can an institution
that is deadly honest with the human situation, simply trusting God, survive?
Peter Berger says, "Yes," but he said there will be a difference. You can believe a
lot of the same things, but you hold them differently because you know there are
other options, and you know that you have intentionally decided to be here, and
that you have deliberately embraced a certain faith and posture, and that you are
an association of voluntary members. There’s no coercion. Nobody forces you. No
peer pressure. No community pressure. Just plain saying, "That’s what I believe,
and I can live with that kind of uncertainty because underneath it is a deep trust
© Grand Valley State University
�Has the Church a Future?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
in God that will enable me, come triumph or tragedy, light or shadow, radiant
sunshine or the dead of winter, to prevail.
In 1972, a man who was working for the National Council of Churches named
Dean Kelly, wrote a book, Why Conservative Churches are Growing. This was
1972. I had been back here about a year. Kelly was observing, as Peter Berger,
sociologically, phenomenally, the church scene, and he asked why conservative
churches were growing, that is, churches with a very rigid creed and a very rigid
social code, (you do this and you don’t do that), and a series of demands, (you’re
here on Sunday, Wednesday night, you tithe your income), etc., etc. Why, he said,
are conservative churches marked that way growing? He said, "As a matter of
fact, they are the churches that are growing," and he has been proven to be at
least partially right. In 1972 I took that book into the pulpit in that little sanctuary
over there and I held it up and I said, "Folks, if Dean Kelly is right, we are
doomed, because I am trying to do something that is absolutely opposite,
diametrically opposite from what he says works." So, if we’re in trouble, it was
intentional, and it’s the only way, it’s the only way that I can be a part of any
church in the future. An honesty, a trust, and that’s all there is. So, let’s keep
thinking about it.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/fd60ddece2cf83937ac2a19a0f9c8454.mp3
82144e330a9ba21a45ec16887bb490bb
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981-2014
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost XVIII
Series
The Church: Critical Questions
Scripture Text
Jeremiah 7:4, 31:31, Matthew 23:37-38
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01_RA-0-19981004
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1998-10-04
Title
A name given to the resource
The Church: Has It a Future?
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University
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Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on October 4, 1998 entitled "The Church: Has It a Future?", as part of the series "The Church: Critical Questions", on the occasion of Pentecost XVIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Jeremiah 7:4, 31:31, Matthew 23:37-38.
Nature of Religion
Prophetic Voice
Protestant
Religious Quest
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Do I Need Religion?
From the series: Can I Honestly Believe?
Text: Psalm 8:1; Psalm 42:2; Acts 17:22
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
July 12, 1998
Transcription of the spoken sermon
I announced a summer series in a recent Courier entitled With Heart and Mind
United. I cited a sermon from 1984 with that theme. In that sermon, I pointed
back to my return to this congregation in 1971 when we determined to be a
congregation marked by intellectual integrity and evangelical passion. We have
been on such an adventure of faith now for over twenty-seven years. When I
determined the series theme for this summer, it was not a case of conscious
recycling; rather, it was a determination to do once again what we have been
engaged in over all these years - to understand the faith we profess and live, to
bring our experience of God, of the sacred, the Holy, into connection with the
whole reality of our human experience. Working over that theme, I have named
the series Can I Honestly Believe? By that I mean, can I as a person at the end of
the twentieth century, aware of the universe of which I am a part, still believe in
God as Source, Guide, and Goal of all that is, to paraphrase St. Paul?
Faith, religious awe, worship and devotional practices arise from our depths, not
from rational analysis; we will never by exercise of our reason be able fully to
explain the human experiences of the Mystery we call God.
In a 1917 classic study of religion, Rudolf Otto wrote on the idea of the Holy, the
description of the experience of the Holy or a God as the ganz andere, the wholly
Other, that mystery beyond that breaks through to us but, breaking through to us,
making us unalterably aware of the reality in the presence, remains the hidden
one, the hidden mystery. The religious experience, Otto describes very, very
wonderfully when he says, it is
... the feeling that remains where the concept fails.
It is an experience that transcends the possibility of conceptualizing it,
articulating it, putting it into idea form.
But, put it into idea form, we will. We seem to have to do that. We will try to
understand. The understanding is never the same as the experience in itself, but
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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being human as we are, rational creatures, reflective, self-conscious, we will
inevitably think about and seek to bring to expression at least in some symbolic
form that which will point beyond itself to the experience that has broken in upon
us. That seems to be the universal human experience, and that is the origin of
religion.
Religion has at least these three basic components: There is that which is
believed, or the doctrine. There is the mode of worship, devotion, practice, the
ritual, the liturgy, which seeks to be an expression, an action that gives
expression to the idea. And then, there is the drawing out of the implications of
the experience for daily living, or ethics. So, doctrine or theology, cult or worship,
ethics or morality - that’s the nature of human religion.
I have said this before a number of times, but I’m going to say it again until you
wake up in the middle of the night and repeat it to yourself - religion is a human,
creative construction. Religions don’t fall out of heaven full-blown. We make
them up. Not arbitrarily or capriciously, but we make them up in response to the
in-breaking of the sacred or the Holy or God, the experience that is still there
when the concept fails, but the experience that drives us to seek to articulate the
nature of it. We construct our human religion in response to the in-breaking of
the mystery that is God.
Therefore, and this is critical, the knowledge of the world, the universe, the
human being and society, in a word – the worldview, because it provides the
framework of human religion and will from time to time move beyond an earlier
understanding, will leave the religious structure, imagery and symbol with a
framework that no longer makes sense.
For a time the religious community will do a translation - the three-storied
universe heaven
earth
hell
is translated into modern cosmology with meanings spiritualized.
But, at some point, a symbol system breaks down and it no longer speaks, it can
no longer point beyond itself to the Ultimate. Then one must decide - either to
chuck religion as nonsense, or to recognize that an outmoded structure does not
spell the death of God.
Edward O. Wilson, in his recently published book, Consilience, talks about his
experience as a good Southern Baptist lad who went through the evangelical
experience of conversion and all the rest, but having a curious mind from the
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Richard A. Rhem
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beginning, eventually went off to school where he says, "I chose to doubt." Then,
in his distinguished career as a biologist who recognized the place of religion in
people’s lives, he recognized the importance of religion in giving orientation, in
giving meaning, significance to life, and so forth. But he also recognized that he
was one person who could not continue to understand reality as continually being
unfolded in our presence before the pursuit of the natural scientist and still
somehow or other believe that there was a literal anchoring of conceptuality back
2000 or 3000 years. He refused to believe that the final revelation of God was put
in stone by an agricultural culture 2000 years ago at the eastern end of the
Mediterranean. He experienced cognitive dissonance.
Wilson raises the interesting question whether science, the examination and
exploration of reality, may not be a continuation of "Holy Writ," only on better
tested ground. He suggests the data of scientific investigation may play the role
that once revelation played in religion - satisfying the religious hunger to know
one’s place in the universe.
So far, the theory of everything has eluded even the great intellects of an Einstein
and a Hawking. And if one day the unity of knowledge becomes a reality, even
then one will have to choose whether or not behind it is still the Mystery that
manifests itself, yet remains hidden.
The questions we will be asking this summer are questions that arise because our
religious system, its imagery, symbol and conceptuality derives from another
time, based on an outmoded worldview. Therefore, in Wilson’s terms, there is
widespread cognitive dissonance.
Many have simply given up religious faith. Some of us struggle to bring religious
experience into meaningful conversation with our present knowledge of the
world.
That is my challenge for this summer season. But, the question arises: Do I need
it?
- Not if my religious practice was only a way to please a God Who might
condemn me to eternal punishment.
- Not if I practice religious devotion just to cover the bases, just in case ...
I read last night again The Grand Inquisitor, by Dostoevsky. Chilling, chilling!
Jesus appears in Seville, Spain, during the time of the Inquisition. They had just
burned 100 heretics at the stake and Jesus appears before a crowd of people and
the Cardinal, the church ecclesiast, sees him, has him thrown into jail, then goes
to speak with him, and tells him how the freedom of which Jesus spoke and for
which he gave his life cannot be handled by the people. The people need
authority. They live by miracle, mystery, and authority. Let them submit. Let
them be slaves, simply obedient, unthinking. Give them bread. That’s what the
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Richard A. Rhem
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masses need, not the freedom of spirit of which Jesus spoke and incarnated. And
then the Cardinal says, after Jesus refuses to respond, but only arises and plants a
kiss on the wizened old face, the Cardinal says, "Get out! Get out and never
return!"
Well, we don’t need a lot more of that religion, even though there’s a lot of it alive
and well on Planet Earth. But, do we need it? No. No, not absolutely. But, I think
that there’s a loss without it. There’s a loss to our humanity and a loss to world
community.
The scripture lessons were read to indicate different experiences of God. I’m used
to watching the sunset. It’s been magnificent, but Friday morning I had to take
Nancy to the airport early and I caught a sunrise. Huge, flaming globe just over
the horizon. I said, "My goodness, it comes up like it goes down!" I’m not a
morning person, but the sunset or the moon, the stars say, "O Lord, our Lord,
how magnificent is your name in all of the earth. When I consider the stars, the
moon, the wonder of it all, I say how small am I." The sense of humility and
smallness before the vastness, the wonder of the world. But, I am a little less than
God! How can I give expression to that in a secular fashion? What if I can’t sing?
What if I have no song, no songwriter, and no one to whom to sing? Or, in life’s
anxieties and depression, the hunger for God. My soul thirsts for God, for the
living God. Or, like Isaiah, to come someday and to have the place filled with
smoke and to hear the rumbling and to be encountered by the mystery, the
fascinating and terrorizing mystery and to feel one’s own guilt and uncleanness
and unworthiness, and then to hear the word, "You’re cleansed. Your sin is
forgiven." And to be commissioned to significant living and service.
You don’t need religion. But I believe that to fail seriously to engage, to practice,
to be observant is a very great loss and leads to a truncated human experience
and a distortion of all that we’re intended to be.
Paul said to the Athenians, "You’re really religious. There’s an idol to an unknown
God just in case you missed one." I don’t need that kind of religion. But,
yesterday I had the privilege of being invited to the Bar Mitzvah of the son, David,
of Rabbi Alan and Anna Alpert, and in that Jewish community again, on Bar
Mitzvah day, which is high celebration, I felt the warmth, I felt the solidity of
family and of community. I regret that I wasn’t born Jewish because it’s not like
being born a Christian where you have to keep worrying about becoming one,
where you have to get converted, you have to keep wondering if you’re in or out.
A Jew is just a Jew! Can’t do anything about it. So, they celebrate, and those who
are observant, who are serious, celebrate it in wonderful warmth of community.
And there’s something more there than just good friends and family ties. It is in
the presence of a Mystery that here and there, now and again, has broken in upon
us, creating awe, wonder, gratitude, drawing forth worship, enhancing our
humanity and nudging us toward the things that make for peace.
You don’t really need it, but you’ll miss a lot if you don’t have it.
© Grand Valley State University
�Do I Need Religion?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
APPENDIX
. . . I found it a wonderful feeling not just to taste the unification
metaphysics but also to be released from the confinement of
fundamentalist religion. I had been raised a Southern Baptist, laid
backward under the water on the sturdy arm of a pastor, been born again.
I knew the healing power of redemption. Faith, hope, and charity were in
my bones, and with millions of others I knew that my savior Jesus Christ
would grant me eternal life. More pious than the average teenager, I read
the Bible cover to cover, twice. But now at college, steroid-driven into
moods of adolescent rebellion, I chose to doubt. I found it hard to accept
that our deepest beliefs were set in stone by agricultural societies of the
eastern Mediterranean more than two thousand years ago. I suffered
cognitive dissonance between the cheerfully reported genocidal wars of
these people and Christian civilization in 1940s Alabama. It seemed to me
that the Book of Revelation might be black magic hallucinated by an
ancient primitive. And I thought, surely a loving personal God, if He is
paying attention, will not abandon those who reject the literal
interpretation of the biblical cosmology. It is only fair to award points for
intellectual courage. Better damned with Plato and Bacon, Shelly said,
than go to heaven with Paley and Malthus. But most of all, Baptist
theology made no provision for evolution. The biblical authors had missed
the most important revelation of all! Could it be that they were not really
privy to the thoughts of God? Might the pastors of my childhood, good and
loving men though they were, be mistaken? It was all too much, and
freedom was ever so sweet. I drifted away from the church, not definitively
agnostic or atheistic, just Baptist no more.
Still, I had no desire to purge religious feelings. They were bred in me; they
suffused the wellsprings of my creative life. I also retained a small measure
of common sense. To wit, people must belong to a tribe; they yearn to have
a purpose larger than themselves. We are obliged by the deepest drives of
the human spirit to make ourselves more than animated dust, and we
must have a story to tell about where we came from, and why we are here.
Could Holy Writ be just the first literate attempt to explain the universe
and make ourselves significant within it? Perhaps science is a continuation
on new and better-tested ground to attain the same end. If so, then in that
sense science is religion liberated and writ large.
Such, I believe, is the source of the Ionian Enchantment: Preferring a
search for objective reality over revelation is another way of satisfying
religious hunger. It is an endeavor almost as old as civilization and
intertwined with traditional religion, but it follows a very different course
— a stoic’s creed, an acquired taste, a guidebook to adventure plotted
across rough terrain. It aims to save the spirit, not by surrender but by
liberation of the human mind. Its central tenet, as Einstein knew, is the
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Richard A. Rhem
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unification of knowledge. When we have unified enough certain
knowledge, we will understand who we are and why we are here.
If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they
will find another way. The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor
alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and
failure memorable. The ancient Greeks expressed the idea in a myth of
vaulting ambition. Daedalus escapes from Crete with his son Icarus on
wings he has fashioned from feathers and wax. Ignoring the warnings of
his father, Icarus flies toward the sun, whereupon his wings come apart
and he falls into the sea. That is the end of Icarus in the myth. But we are
left to wonder: Was he just a foolish boy? Did he pay the price for hubris,
for pride in sight of the gods? I like to think that, on the contrary, his
daring represents a saving human grace. And so the great astrophysicist
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar could pay tribute to the spirit of his
mentor, Sir Arthur Eddington, by saying: Let us see how high we can fly
before the sun melts the wax in our wings.
Edward O. Wilson. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. Vintage, first
edition, 1999.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
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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 VI
Series
Can I Honestly Believe?
Scripture Text
Psalm 8:1, Psalm 42:2, Acts 17:22
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, 1999
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KII-01_RA-0-19980712
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1998-07-12
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Do I Need Religion?
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/
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eng
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Text
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on July 12, 1998 entitled "Do I Need Religion?", as part of the series "Can I Honestly Believe?", on the occasion of Pentecost VI, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Psalm 8:1, Psalm 42:2, Acts 17:22.
Critical Thinking
Nature of Religion
Religious Quest
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Mystery Experienced
From the series: Aspects of God
Text: Numbers 33:23; Hebrews 1:2-3; John 14:16-17
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
June 14, 1998
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Our religions are the consequence of creative human imagining in response to
God’s revealing. God’s revealing, if it is revealing, indeed, meets in us now and
then with awareness, awareness of the wholly Other, and of the Holy Other, of
God, of the sacred, of the holy. The human experience has been that now and
again, to this one or that one, there is some breakthrough, some awareness, some
experience of that which is beyond human capability to grasp. Yet the experience,
the awareness will always result in a stumbling, stammering attempt to give
expression to that which was experience. And so, we have our human religions
with our statements, expressions, articulations of the truth as best we can bring it
to expression in light of our experience.
Last week, celebrating Pentecost one week late, we said that the experience of the
risen Christ, the living Lord, the foundational event of Christian faith was not the
experience of the word in flesh, but rather, the experience of Spirit, the Spirit of
Christ or the Spirit of God, the wind, the movement, the enlivening, creative
movement that gives us an awareness of that intimate relationship with God,
even though we can never adequately bring to expression that experience, but
rather do so in human language, always limited, stammering and stuttering
because we have been overwhelmed if we have met the living God.
The Sunday after Pentecost, which really was last week but celebrated here this
week, therefore tries to gather the experience of the Christian year, the cycle, on
this particular Sunday. Four Sundays before Christmas we begin with the Advent
season, the One who came is coming, the birth of Christ at Christmas, Epiphany,
Lent, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost and the gift of the Spirit, and then on that next
Sunday we say we believe in one God - God the Father, God the Son and God the
Holy Spirit, one God blessed forever, in traditional liturgical language. We speak
of God as Triune because we want to affirm that God is one. But, the experience
of God is trifold, and on this Sunday we simply point to that Christian
understanding of God as God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,
one God.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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The early Church, the immediate followers of Jesus, did not sit down to construct
a mysterious doctrine by which to bewitch and confuse us. And the early Church
did not sit down to construct some mysterious idea of God that would confuse
generations ever after. They did what all people do who have religious experience
- they simply began to express what they had experienced. And the immediate
followers of Jesus, in the wake of his crucifixion and resurrection, were Jewish
people and they had no idea at all that they were talking about some other God
than the God of Israel. They were now not switching their loyalties; they were not
now conceiving of some other deity; they were not now leaving that covenant,
faithful God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob whose law came to expression with
Moses, who had been spoken of by the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah and all the rest.
These were faithful Jewish people who were still dealing with the same God, but a
God now Who had been experienced, strangely enough, in the life of that Jesus
whom they had known. And then this Jesus was crucified but, in the wake of that,
nonetheless, they experienced his presence, as I said a moment ago, not in the
flesh. "The word was made flesh and dwelt among us." But, that was one thing.
This other Easter experience was something else. It was God in the Spirit, Jesus
in the Spirit. How do you give expression to that kind of mysterious, baffling
experience? And yet, how can you be silent if you have had that kind of intimate
experience of God?
The writers of the Hebrews said in many and various ways to our forbears, "God
made God’s self known. But in these last days, God has spoken to us by a son
who, he said, is the express image of God." The word used there is icon, and if you
have had any experience in the lush sanctuaries of Eastern Orthodox churches,
you have seen icons, those paintings of the head of Christ or some symbolism of
the Trinity or some saint. Eastern Orthodox piety and devotion has been
conditioned to have its consciousness raised and its spirit elevated through the
contemplation of the icon. Those of us that don’t know anything about it mock it
and say, "Well, that’s idolatry. Even the Heidelberg Catechism said God will not
be worshiped through pictures or dumb idols." Yet, there are those who, in
contemplation of that icon, find themselves lifted into the presence of God; it’s a
way of devotion or pious expression. The writer to the Hebrews says that Jesus
was the icon of God, the express image of God. He couldn’t have said anything
any more elevated of Jesus than to say that this Jesus in the flesh, the word made
flesh dwelling among us, this one was the very picture, the image, the expression
of God in human flesh.
I return again and again to old John 14, but it’s so revealing of that early
Christian community, trying to give expression to its experience. Now, don’t
think of the disciples sitting around together at a campfire with Jesus in the
midst. This Gospel writer was writing some sixty years later and probably
reflecting the oral tradition of the stories and the conversations and all of that,
and he said, "How can I say that this Jesus, as a matter of fact, was the unveiling
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Richard A. Rhem
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of God?" And so, he pictures them in these middle chapters in John’s Gospel as a
conversation with Jesus where Jesus is getting them ready for his departure "Let not your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me,"
etc., etc.
"In my Father’s house there are many rooms. If it were not so, I would
have told you. I go to prepare a place for you," all of that nice language, and then Phillip who in the fourth Gospel plays the role
of dunce, raises the questions that we all have but feel too self-conscious to raise.
He says, "Oh, Jesus, I’ve really been wanting to say this all along. Just show us
the Father and we will be satisfied."
It’s what we all sigh at one time or another, don’t we? "God, if you’d just show
yourself. If somehow or other I could just get a handle on it, just a glimpse,
perhaps. Just a tickle in my pinkie."
Jesus says, "I’ve been with you so long and you still don’t know. If you’ve seen
me, you’ve seen the Father." This, now, is not what Jesus said. This is what they
said he would have said if he had said what they know to be true. Do you get the
difference? This was their experience, in his face there was God.
We tell the story and we’re going to keep telling the story because somehow or
other the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was there in that
flesh, his face, the human face of God. And so, they who had known Jesus in the
flesh knew him to be crucified, experienced him yet to be alive in the Spirit,
talked about God and they talked about Jesus as the face of God, and they talked
about the Spirit as the Spirit of God, and they had the "stuff" out of which
subsequent generations in subsequent centuries put together using Greek
philosophical concepts to say that God Who is Mystery has been known in
concrete human flesh and continues to be experienced spiritually through a focus
on Jesus who seems to bring up the depths of the mystery.
Today I want to say that Mystery, the aspect of God is Mystery, but Mystery
experienced, and Israel always knew that they didn’t know God in the depths of
God’s mystery. And the Christian tradition which took the God of Israel and put
the face of Jesus on the God of Israel and experienced the Spirit of God through
the mediation of Jesus, the early Church tacked that nuanced adjustment and
understanding of God onto the images and metaphors of Israel, and the images
and metaphors of God for Israel were Ruler, King, more intimately Father. But,
essentially Israel thought in terms of God as the Ruler "out there," "up there,"
engaged in their history and yet beyond their history, and they thought of God as
getting directly involved in human events, although as an imperial ruler removed.
That conception of God we speak of classically as "Theism." Judaism is theistic.
Islam is theistic. Christianity has traditionally been theistic. A theistic
© Grand Valley State University
�Mystery Experienced
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
understanding of God, even though we say it is a triune God, having been present
in the flesh of Jesus and continuing to be present in the Spirit; nonetheless, God
is "out of here," "up there," beyond us, traditionally. And our Christian
understanding of God got attached to that kind of imagery, and the difficulty with
that imagery is that it doesn’t connect easily with what we know about the cosmic
reality of which our lives are a part.
The Episcopal Bishop, John Shelby Spong, Bishop of Newark, has just written a
book, Why Christianity Must Change or Die. Bishop Spong is courageous, if
nothing else, and he dares to challenge that theistic image of God, saying that
image of God is no longer adequate to express how we experience our world. He
says theism has to go. Well, it will go kicking and screaming; it will go with great,
great difficulty. I’ve been trying and trying for some time to divest my head of
theistic understanding and I can’t do it yet, but I’m working at it. I got a letter
Friday from Bishop Spong who said that in 1999 he has one full weekend
available and he’ll give it to us. November 12, 13 and 14 of 1999, Bishop Spong
will come here to help us to disengage from classical, traditional theistic
conceptions of God. So, mark it down now. He will follow in the fall of ‘99, when
in the spring of ‘99, we’ll have Marcus Borg here so that we can meet Jesus again
for the first time. And maybe as we continue to work at this we might be involved
in that advanced guerilla warfare that’s trying to find out how to say God in light
of everything else we experience, because you can just import the old images and
metaphors as long as you don’t want that God to be intimately involved in your
day-to-day experience.
As I said a moment ago, Israel knew that it didn’t know God. I think this is the
point of that old story, Moses in Exodus 33 saying to God, "I know you’re angry
with this people, but you know, if you’re not going, I’m not going." God says,
"Relax, I’m going." Moses said, "Otherwise, how will the other peoples of the
world know that we’re distinct?"
You see, Moses was into exclusivism a long time ago. He wanted to be distinct.
Don’t we all? We all like to be special. He said, "Well, one more thing, then - I’ll
go if you go. You say that you’ll go, but show me your glory."
God said, "Aha, Moses. I gave you my name, the Lord, Yahweh. I Am what I Am. I
will be where I will be. I will be there for you. I told you my name, but my glory
you cannot see. Moses, if I came bare before you, it would blow you away, it
would destroy you. You humankind, you cannot countenance, you couldn’t stand,
you couldn’t take in a raw exposure to my glory. Moses, come here and stand on a
rock next to me. What I’m going to do, Moses, is I’m going to pass all of my
goodness before you and I’m going to put you in a cleft of the rock, I’m going to
put my hand over you and all of my glory will pass by, and when it’s passed, I’ll
take my hand away and you can see my backside. Don’t even think about trying to
see my face. Don’t even think about trying to take in the mystery. But, I’ll hide
© Grand Valley State University
�Mystery Experienced
Richard A. Rhem
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you in a cleft of the rock and pass by, and you’ll get a glimpse after I’ve passed
by."
Some of you who are older remember an old hymn, "He Hideth My Soul in the
Cleft of the Rock" - "He hideth my soul in a dry, thirsty land and hideth my soul
in the depths of his love and covers me there with his hand." The experience of
God is that, in the experience of the terrors of life, we know that there’s a cleft in
the rock and God’s hand protectively covering because more than that we
couldn’t handle. And we can relax in the cleft of the rock with the hand of God
over us, knowing that, as we stammer to try to say something about that
experience, God will be just fine. God is not put in jeopardy when we start
messing with the images and metaphors. If we should someday in the year 2005,
after laboriously for seven or eight years working at this problem, if we don’t blow
ourselves apart, and if we could do it rationally, if we could do it with a sense of
security, with one another in dialogue, if we could keep talking about how can we
say God in the 21st century, then maybe in another half dozen years or so we may
stumble on a way of saying that will be much more in line with the world into
which you graduates are all going.
But, this is my prayer for you - No matter how the images, no matter how the
metaphors are going to change, that you’d still be able to sing something
comparable to "God hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock, in the depths of God’s
love, places God’s hand on me there." Because it’s Mystery. Those that know an
awful lot about the definition of God don’t know it all. And those who don’t know
are on the threshold of wisdom, opening to the possibility of fresh experience.
There were two fleas buried deeply in a forest of hair on a beasty. One said to the
other, "Do you think there really is anything called Dog?"
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/0f02306e0d7a8778d9e7021b4823b1b6.mp3
43d9f0cb3795d0b46fa6d9f525eb2aac
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
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>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
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English
Type
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Sound
Text
Identifier
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KII-01
Coverage
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1981-2014
Format
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost II
Series
Aspects of God
Scripture Text
Exodus 33:23, Hebrews 1:2-3, John 25: 16-17
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-19980614
Date
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1998-06-14
Title
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Mystery Experienced
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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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 June 14, 1998 entitled "Mystery Experienced", as part of the series "Aspects of God", on the occasion of Pentecost II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Exodus 33:23, Hebrews 1:2-3, John 25: 16-17.
Mystery
Nature of Religion
Trinitarian
-
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a2740ad6dadda5118f5d10c8f69ced69
PDF Text
Text
You Can’t Fight It, Paul
From the series: Christian Faith: Interpretations of Experience
Text: Acts 9:4; Acts 26:14, 19
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Eastertide, April 26, 1998
Transcription of the spoken sermon
The Christian faith is one of the great world religions, flowing out of the faith
tradition of Israel and developing from the event of Jesus Christ, as Israel’s faith
tradition, following the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem in 77 CE,
developed along the lines of Rabbinic Judaism. Out of the First Century, then,
two religious traditions developed, both rooted in the Hebrew Scriptures, or, as
the church has traditionally referred to them, the Old Testament.
Religions are rooted in a foundational experience of a person or a people in which
some profound insight overwhelms the subjects of the experience, creating a
whole new perspective on the nature of things: on God, on the meaning of being
human, on the purpose of life. One is transformed and one’s life is reorganized
around that life-changing experience. We can speak of a paradigm shift - some
insight, some discovery throws everything up in the air and a whole new
configuration of reality emerges.
This happens in the natural sciences; it happens in religious understanding.
Perhaps it is most accurate to speak of a foundational experience that effects a
radical perceptual shift.
This happens all the time to all of us in all sorts of human understanding in the
spectrum of human knowledge. Some years ago there was a film with a title
something like, "You Are What You Were When." The powerful impacting events
that we experience during adolescence will shape us for a lifetime. Only a
significant emotional experience later can alter our perception of reality and our
instinctive responses to life.
The Stock Market Crash of 1929 - the experience of the great wars of this century,
the Holocaust.
On an individual scale, this happens to us all - experience and the emotional
response to concrete experiences form our perception of reality. On the larger
canvas of the human story, we see the same thing - A foundational experience
finds expression in a story using images, symbol, metaphor; the story eventually
© Grand Valley State University
�You Can’t Fight It, Paul
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
is probed for its meaning and that meaning is given conceptual expression. We
have an intellectual systematic account of reality on the basis of the foundational
experience.
Moses leads a slave band out of Egypt to freedom - the Exodus becomes the
foundational event of Israel.
The Jewish teacher and prophet, Jesus of Nazareth, is crucified by Imperial
Rome and his followers despair because they had hoped through him God would
bring to consummation God’s reign and then one day, preparing to take up again
the fishing trade in Galilee, Peter experiences Jesus as a living presence and he is
transformed by that experience, declaring, "The Lord is risen."
If such an experience had been limited to the immediate followers of Jesus, all
Jewish, all hoping for God’s final visitation to God’s people Israel, there would
perhaps have been an ongoing Jesus Jewish movement - as there was for a
century or two, but there would probably not have emerged what we know as the
Christian church. To understand that phenomenon into which we have entered,
we must move to Paul, or as he is named in his first appearances in Acts, Saul.
Now we are dealing not with a Galilean peasant nor with a disciple of Jesus, but
with a well educated, well traveled member of the strictest of the Jewish
groupings, the Pharisees - the group who was serious in its observance of Jewish
religious practices, strictly following the prescriptions of Torah.
Furthermore, we are dealing not with a Pharisee who was open to Jesus as was,
for example, Gamaliel or Nicodemus. Rather, we are dealing with one who is in
the employ of the High Priestly establishment, committed to the stamping out of
the movement that gathered around Jesus, the movement called People of the
Way.
The story of Paul’s revelatory experience is familiar enough. We read Luke’s
account in Acts 19. Luke sees this experience as so critical to the development of
the Christian religion that he repeats the story twice more, in chapter 22 of Acts
and chapter 26.
We in the Christian church speak without thinking of the conversion of Saul or
Paul. But this was not a conversion from one God to another or even from one
religion to another. Paul was born a Jew and died a Jew and never claimed to be
anything else and consistently declared the God of Israel to be God alone, Creator
of all and ultimate Goal of all. Paul was not a convert to a new religion; rather, he
experienced a radical perceptual shift Jesus was indeed God’s anointed one whose death on the cross was the means by
which God effected reconciliation with humankind. Further, God had raised
Jesus from the dead and destined Paul to declare this reality of reconciliation to
the Gentiles, the nations beyond the bounds of Israel.
© Grand Valley State University
�You Can’t Fight It, Paul
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
I cannot here recount the whole story of Paul’s missionary journeys, the tension
created with the Jewish Jesus Movement led by Peter and James, the brother of
Jesus at Jerusalem, and the compromise they reached. I want, rather, to focus on
the interpretive shift that Paul effected on the basis of his experience of being
encountered by the Risen Lord.
Paul had a vision, a revelation, an unveiling. It was a transformation experience
that resulted in new insight and a radical perceptual shift - out of it came the
Christian movement, the Christian church and the Christian tradition.
The shift from the performance principle - righteousness through obedience to
the Law or Torah, observance as a way of life - to the reality of grace: present
existence as a new creation marked by confidence that God has given us our life
as sheer gift to be lived in freedom with joy and peace in loving community. One
enters the reality of the people of God by faith - confidence that this is so. This
was a new conception of the nature of religion - response of gratitude for the gift
of life. Thus, religious observance is because of, not in order to....
A second insight: God has elected not only Israel and not Israel as a biological,
historical people, but also in Christ, the Gentiles, the nations. This was a radical
departure from the traditional conception of Israel as God’s elect.
But, so far, we might agree that all of this is interesting and does explain the
eventual break between Judaism and the Christian church. But, is the radical
perceptual shift effected in and through Paul the last word?
E. A. Sanders raises the question, what if Paul had lived beyond the first
generation of the Jesus movement, or, what if he could have seen out 2000 years
that his apocalyptic scheme of the near end of the age would not happen? We
know what he thought in his own context: the only way to be saved was through
faith in Jesus Christ for both Jew and Gentile.
But, what if he saw from our historical perspective, the Christian tradition, the
continuing Jewish tradition and a world of other faiths - would he still claim
salvation through Jesus Christ alone? Sanders says he personally would vote
against such a claim in any ecclesiastical assembly today and he suspects so
would Paul.
Paul, in Romans, near the end of his career wrestled with the native convictions
he held - that God had chosen Israel and would be faithful to that election of
grace; yet, in his revelation Paul sees access to God by grace through faith in
Jesus Christ, the one largely rejected by the "Elect People," Paul’s brothers and
sisters. There was conflict in Paul, tension. He struggled with this problem in
Romans 9-11, concluding that somehow the Gentiles would be included by grace
through faith in Jesus Christ and, mysteriously, Israel too would be included.
Israel’s large-scale rejection of Paul’s Gospel distressed him; yet he could not
simply write them off.
© Grand Valley State University
�You Can’t Fight It, Paul
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
I am finally encouraged by the confusion of the great Apostle. I like a questioning
Paul. It gives me courage. Paul entered into a present experience of God’s grace
giving him freedom, joy, peace and love. That was his great discovery and he
witnessed to it with passion. In regard to God’s timetable in history, he was
wrong. The present age did not come to an end. The Messiah, the Risen Lord, did
not return in clouds of glory. So, obviously, there were chapters yet to be written
about which the Apostle had no clue. Nor do we.
But, the present possibility of resurrection life, life as sheer gift to be received
with gratitude and lived with wonder - about that the Apostle was quite right - it
is the continuing present possibility for all who have eyes to see it and mind and
hearts open to it.
And, is that not enough - life as gift, sheer gift, the gift of God Whose intention
was revealed in the face of the Crucified, who lives, who is present with us in the
ongoing journey of faith in the adventure of life?
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/329ad83de6f1219e845df9d3fbf957be.mp3
ca726f061c2fb34ff2d90c1137f38730
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
Eastertide III
Series
Christian Faith: Interpreting an Experience
Scripture Text
Acts 9:4, Acts 26:14, 19
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-19980426
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1998-04-26
Title
A name given to the resource
You Can't Fight It, Paul
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on April 26, 1998 entitled "You Can't Fight It, Paul", as part of the series "Christian Faith: Interpreting an Experience", on the occasion of Eastertide III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Acts 9:4, Acts 26:14, 19.
Nature of Religion
Paradigm Shift
Transformation
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6e71df8f6b53adb3b4d3775dcc58b146.pdf
a878857d70a8596b2197c5e07a2facc5
PDF Text
Text
You Can’t Go Home, Peter!
From the series: Christian Faith: Interpreting An Experience
Text: Acts 10:36; John 21:19
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Eastertide, April 19, 1998
Transcription of the spoken sermon
In this season of Eastertide it will be my intention to enable you to see how
Christian faith is the consequence of interpretations of experience. That is true of
all religion. Someone or some group has a significant experience, and out of that
experience comes the attempt to articulate that experience and eventually the
analysis of the experience that issues in a more systematic and intellectual
account of the experience. But it always starts with an experience and the
Christian faith, the Christian church, the tradition of which we are a part everything that it is, is a consequence of a foundational experience and the
interpretations of that experience. For the Christian church, the Christian
movement, the Christian tradition, the foundational experience is Easter. For the
Jewish people, the foundational experience was the Exodus, which is
remembered every year with the Passover festival. This past week the Christian
church remembered its foundational experience in celebrating Easter; the Jewish
community remembered its foundational experience in a celebration of Passover.
That is true, not only of Christianity and Judaism; every great religious
movement has a foundational experience. That foundational experience, then,
cries out for expression.
Have you ever gone somewhere and had some great experience and come home
and tried to tell your spouse or your children about it? You say, "I don’t have
words, I wish I had words, I can’t tell you about it. I just can’t... there’s no way I
could communicate what I just experienced." But, of course, you go on trying to
communicate what you’ve just experienced, nonetheless, and you grab for
language, metaphors, images, symbols, one way or another to try to articulate, to
give expression to that which you’ve experienced, because that which you have
experienced was so dramatic that you need to talk about it. Language is necessary
in order to keep us from exploding when we’ve had that tremendous experience.
Eventually the metaphors and the images and the symbols point to the
experience and then we begin to reflect on the images and the symbols and the
metaphors in order to understand what really was going on down there, the
insights that accrue from that experience which came to expression in image and
© Grand Valley State University
�You Can’t Go Home, Peter!
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
metaphor. That’s when we get the more conceptual analysis of the experience.
That’s the systematizing, the intellectual activity. Now you’re into doctrine and
theology and the movement’s dead. The conceptualization of the metaphors and
images which are the result of the experience - that’s, of course, where we come
in. That’s what you do when the experience forms a movement, a community,
and it takes on a life of its own. And then you pass it along by means of the
conceptual understanding, the analysis of the experience and what it meant. But,
you hope, even so, that the foundational experience will continue to be
experienced again because, if it doesn’t, it is dead. Then you are simply
perpetuating a system of ideas which has no fire, no passion, no transformative
affect on the life.
That is the nature of a lot of religion, isn’t it? That is the nature of a lot of
institutional religion. That is a description of a lot of what goes on in the church;
it is the passing along without passion and fire and a transforming experience of a
system of ideas, and a system of ideas never changed the world and never
changed a person. It is finally, one would hope, in the communication of
experience through image and symbol and metaphor and analysis that the
experience would happen again.
This Eastertide I want us to see that what we have in the New Testament
documents are the interpretations of experience, and those interpretations of
experience are somewhat removed from the event itself. Following the crucifixion
of Jesus and the experience of Jesus as living, present nonetheless, there was the
telling of the story and the building and forming of community and, eventually as
the decades move along, there was the felt need for the writing down, the
documentation of that account of the experience, and so we have the New
Testament documents. And then, of course, if you want to go on three, four and
five centuries into the Christian movement, then you had the whole creedal
development - 325, the Nicene Creed; 451, the Council of Chalcedon. You have
the church for 500 years trying to say what the experience meant. But it started
with somebody having an experience, and we’re going to look at Peter today and
Paul next week, and Mary the third week.
"Peter, you can’t go home." Where do you think Easter happened for Peter? When
do you think Easter happened for Peter? You say, "Well, it must have happened
on Easter Sunday in Jerusalem."
The evidence is not clear. That’s one of the liberating things I hope you will learn
in this Eastertide, that the evidence is not clear. We have Matthew, Mark, Luke
and John, and you simply cannot reconcile those four accounts of what actually
happened. The only thing they agree on is that Jesus was crucified, Jesus dead
and buried, and that Jesus was experienced as a living reality by the community
that followed in his name. But, if you put those four Gospel accounts together,
you will find an impossible complex of meetings and encounters and persons, and
© Grand Valley State University
�You Can’t Go Home, Peter!
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
there is no way to reconcile them. So, I doubt that Peter on Easter Sunday
celebrated the resurrection, was encountered by the risen Lord.
We don’t know, but there is this clue in John 21. Peter was in Galilee and he says,
"I’m going fishing." And the others say, "We’ll go with you." Now, it seems to me
that the picture that the author is painting for us is a Peter before Easter, a Peter
before the experience of that living one, that non-material, living presence, that
same Jesus but no longer in the form of flesh, but in a radically new form. I think
that Peter is going fishing because Peter is trying to pick up his life again, because
Peter’s life had been shattered. His dreams had been shattered; his hopes had
been dashed. Peter, who thought that Jesus was the Messiah, Peter, who thought
that Jesus was going to establish the twelve tribes, Peter, who thought that the
kingdom would come, the heavens would open, that he would be on the inside
track – Peter saw Jesus crucified and not only crucified, but crucified before Peter
could say, "I’m sorry for denying you three times; I’m sorry for my pride and for
my arrogance; I’m sorry for my buffoonery and my bullheadedness, ... all that
makes me who I am. I’m sorry."
Jesus was crucified; Peter went back to Galilee. And he was going to go fishing
because, if our life has been torn apart and all of our hopes and dreams have been
shattered, the thing we need is something familiar, something we can manage,
something we can handle. Peter was going back to fishing. And the others said,
"We’ll go with you."
But, you can’t really go home, Peter, because you’ve seen too much. You know too
much; you have experienced too much. You walked with that one too long, you’ve
sat at table with him, you saw him break bread, you saw him throw the arms of
embrace around the excluded, you saw the compassion that flowed out of him,
you saw the love with which he moved, the compassion that marked his life, the
grace that drenched him. Peter, you can’t go home. You saw too much. You can’t
just go back to your fishing.
Maybe that’s what this 21st chapter of John’s Gospel is about. The weight of
scholarly opinion says that chapter 21 was slapped onto the Gospel that really
concluded with the 20th chapter. I don’t know. It doesn’t make any difference. I
think what the 21st chapter is trying to deal with is the place of Peter in the
ongoing community and his relationship with John, the beloved disciple. So,
what we have here is Peter going fishing, and Boom! There’s a miracle. There’s a
great big catch of fish, 153 fish, after they had labored all night and gotten
nothing. They throw the net on the other side and there they are.
John’s Gospel begins with the wedding at Cana; they run out of wine. Jesus
produces more wine than any decent wedding reception could possibly use.
Where Jesus is, there’s abundance. Where Jesus is absent, there’s lack.
© Grand Valley State University
�You Can’t Go Home, Peter!
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
Is John telling us things that really happened? Or, is John painting a picture for
us? Is John trying to tell us about this One? Of course, he’s trying to tell us about
this One. There probably never was a wedding in Cana and there probably never
was a breakfast on the Sea of Tiberius. But, there was this One, this Jesus who
was crucified and who, in the wake of his crucifixion, was experienced as not dead
but still alive, a presence.
So, the author tells us about the abundance of the catch and, in the intimacy of a
breakfast on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, what happened was the same thing
that always happens. Jesus had been crucified. Peter is off in Galilee, trying to
run away. But, now Peter and the other disciples have a breakfast around the
charcoal fire, bread and fish, and you know, it’s like it always was, like nothing
changed, like he was right there. They sensed his presence in the inclusiveness of
that intimate breakfast. Peter thought he could go home, and instead gets
commissioned three times over to match the three times of denial (nice literary
stuff) in order to say, "Peter, you are charged with responsibility for this ongoing
movement. Feed my sheep. Tend my lambs. And Peter, the bottom line is this follow me."
When Peter was called in the first place, Jesus said, "Follow me." And the postcrucified Jesus says to Peter, "Follow me." And somehow or other, in the midst of
the experience, Peter is convinced that that same Jesus Christ for whom he had
so many hopes and dreams was with him still, living still, in the life of God, going
before him, calling him to follow, calling him to keep the movement alive, calling
him to do all that he had seen Jesus do in a continuing, growing movement of
resurrection in this old world that is a Good Friday world.
In this world that is a Good Friday world, there are those signs of resurrection
and Easter keeps happening. That’s the only reason that we are here, 2000 years
later, because Easter keeps happening. We are not here because there was a body
that came out of a tomb 2000 years ago. We are here because the living Christ
continues to confront those who look out into their world and suddenly, in a
moment, experience the presence of the resurrected one, and scales fall from
their eyes and they see. We’ll see next week that it happened to Paul. And I think
it happened to Peter in Galilee along the lake as he was going fishing. Suddenly
he realized that Jesus was not dead, but alive, that all the hopes and dreams that
had been crushed in Jerusalem were not really crushed but simply channeled into
a new direction in which he was to lead the flock into the future into a Good
Friday world with marks of Easter.
Jesus was born into this world and the doctrine of the Incarnation roots the
whole foundational experience of the Christian church in history. Something
happened back there. There was a Jesus. He was flesh of our flesh and bone of
our bone and he was crucified, dead, and buried. And following that experience,
here and there, now and again, someone saw him, experienced him, and
continued to follow him. That’s what Easter’s all about. That’s why Easter keeps
© Grand Valley State University
�You Can’t Go Home, Peter!
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
happening. That’s why Easter is not on a Sunday three days after crucifixion.
Easter is the moment in the world when the risen One is experienced as a power
of the future.
For example, on February 25 of this year a new president was inaugurated in
Korea, Korea that had been in the throes of military dictatorship and oppressive
domination for so long, and the new president had behind him a General Chung,
who, in 1980 came within a hair’s breadth of executing the new president who
was a dissident at the time. But this new president, before he was inaugurated
with the then reigning president, agreed to the liberation of political prisoners
because he said, "In my new regime there will be no political retaliation." A sign
of Easter in this old world that is still a Good Friday world.
Nelson Mandela spent 18 years in a cell and is able now to entertain the President
of the United States and even give him a lesson or two in moral authority, and in
South Africa, within the last decade, there is a transformed situation with all of
the problems that still remain, but it is a sign of resurrection in this old world
that is still a Good Friday world.
Do you still remember in the late 80s when we would not ever have expected it,
would not have dared dream about it, the Berlin Wall fell one day and that great
divide, that impasse, the Iron Curtain, was removed? We move again into
tribalism and ethnic cleansing and it’s not as though everything is rosy, but we
are moving at least; there are signs of resurrection in this old world. It is possible.
I can paint with you a very dark picture of the human situation and then I can
also point to you signs of resurrection and of Easter, because there are people
now and again, here and there, for whom the scales fall off their eyes and they see
what Jesus stood for and what Jesus was - the inclusivity of his table fellowship,
the compassion of his life, the grace of God that flowed through him, and there is
transformation, there is salvation, there is healing, there is the mending of
creation, here and there.
Peter, you can’t go home. You can’t go back fishing, because there’s a Roman
soldier named Cornelius who needs to hear about Jesus. Peter has a vision.
Cornelius has a vision, and sends for Peter. Peter comes, having had the scales
fall off his eyes at the Sea of Tiberius, but only partially. And now he’s confronted
with a concrete situation.
"Now, what do I do? Jesus said, ‘Follow me.’ What does that mean, now? Here’s
Cornelius; he’s a Roman soldier; he’s a Gentile. Jews by law according to Torah
have nothing to do with Gentiles. I can’t be an observant Jew and sit at the table
of a Gentile. I can’t even go over the threshold of his house!"
More scales. Rubbing his eyes. Coming into Cornelius’ house, not too sensitively
saying, "You know, I shouldn’t be here." He knew he shouldn’t be there; his whole
training, his whole tradition, his whole study of Torah said he shouldn’t be there.
But, he hears Jesus’ word, "Follow me." Maybe he said, "What would Jesus do?"
© Grand Valley State University
�You Can’t Go Home, Peter!
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
And he opens his mouth, moving now beyond the initial experience, but on the
basis of the experience, and says, "Well, my, I see that God shows no partiality."
Do you hear it? Can you sense at all what that meant to Peter? That God shows no
partiality?
Peter, you have to be kidding. You’re running counter to your whole experience
as God’s special, elect people.
But, you see, the worm continues to turn, and the insights continue to come from
those who have had their eyes opened and begin to draw the implications of what
they see, because when you see it, you can’t go home. Once you see it, the word of
Jesus, "Follow me," is compelling. Once you see it, you recognize that the world
needs to see it, that there is salvation in no other way, that this is the way and the
life and the truth, that there is no way to God except the way that Jesus opened.
So, you go into Cornelius’ house and you start telling the story of Jesus and sort
of, to justify this bold act, you say, "Jesus is Lord of all. Jesus is Lord of all. This
Jesus that I follow, this Jesus that was crucified, this Jesus was right. This is
God’s way; this is God’s intention; this is the embodiment of God’s love, of God’s
grace. Jesus is Lord of all. Therefore, with fear and trembling, I will follow him.
I’ll take one step at a time, but I will follow Jesus because I have seen the Lord is
risen. The Lord is risen, indeed." Easter happened when Peter thought he could
get away by going home.
I have a good friend who celebrated his 80th birthday recently who chided me a
little bit for forcing him to rethink some things theological, and he wrote a
beautiful piece about in his 80th year, thanking God that he still has opportunity
to repent of the narrowness and the exclusiveness of his faith journey and to
begin to see brothers and sisters of every stripe as loved by God. Easter can
happen even when you’re 80, and when it happens, there’s no going home.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d4f2eafa53bb6d14b6245ee69fd1126c.mp3
a1467201ddc35b87c23e68cd96654d4d
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
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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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
Eastertide II
Series
Christian Faith: Interpreting an Experience
Scripture Text
Acts 10:36, John 21:19
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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KII-01_RA-0-19980419
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1998-04-19
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You Can't Go Home, Peter!
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/
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eng
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Text
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on April 19, 1998 entitled "You Can't Go Home, Peter!", as part of the series "Christian Faith: Interpreting an Experience", on the occasion of Eastertide II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Acts 10:36, John 21:19.
Easter Experience
Inclusive
Nature of Religion
Resurrection
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b9f08d479468c8f1d31fac7ff41f5f95.pdf
648844b3872966b310cab47d13bf6d19
PDF Text
Text
Living Before the Face of God: The Social Dimension
From the series: Meeting God Again For the First Time
Text: Micah 6:8; Matthew 6:10
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
November 16, 1997
Transcription of the spoken sermon
I pulled a book from my shelves this week. It had been there for a long time. I
always knew it was there, but I had never read it. I purchased it in the early 70's.
It was published in 1970. To show you how ancient it is, it cost me $1.25. I pulled
it down now because of its title, its title which I thought might have something of
interest to say to the theme of this morning’s message, which is, "Living Before
the Face of God: The Social Dimension." The title of that book is The Politics of
God, and I smiled to myself as I realized that, from the time I came into the
ministry until the present, I’ve done a 180° turn. When I came into the ministry, I
was strictly warned not to bring politics into the pulpit. In fact, we all know that
in polite conversation one is not to speak of religion or politics. In preaching it’s a
little difficult not to speak about religion, although some do it successfully. But,
politics – derived from the Greek word, polis, which means city – I’ve come to
see, has everything to do with the biblical tradition on which we stand. The faith
of Israel, which came to expression in Jesus, is from beginning to end very
political in terms of its concerns for the polis, the city, or, extended, for the
human community. The wellbeing of the human community is of extreme
concern to the God of Israel, to the God Who comes to expression in Jesus Christ.
One cannot be faithful to the biblical tradition without taking seriously the social
dimension. It is there from beginning to end.
While we ought never to neglect the personal dimension, as we said last week, it
is the social dimension that is by far the major theme of the biblical tradition, and
it is interesting to me that I could have missed that in all of my years of training
and the early years of my ministry. But there are two ways to avoid that social
dimension. I pursued the first way in the early years of my ministry. That is the
way that is represented in the question – listen to the question, see if you
recognize the question – "Where will you spend eternity?"
Now, for one thing, that’s a question addressed to an individual and, secondly, it’s
a question that takes the focus off the present and this world and focuses it on the
world to come. I was very good at that. Most of you are happy you never knew
me. I would have been trying to get you saved. Not so much to make your life
© Grand Valley State University
�Living Before the Face of God: The Social Dimension
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
good here now, but to get you secured for eternal life in heaven. That was my
focus. I didn’t understand anything else. I thought that’s what it was all about.
In the more recent decades, the social dimension of the biblical tradition has
been avoided by an equally individualistic approach, but this time, the approach
of self-fulfillment or peace of mind. It’s a focus on me and my comfortable
adjustment in life. There was a very acute sociological analysis of American
society published in 1985 called Habits of the Heart and, in that analysis of
American society, American society was characterized by the phrase, "The
therapeutic society." Not therapy in the sense of the clinical technique that deals
with emotional or psychic disorder, but therapy in the sense of enabling us to be
adjusted in our environment, in our situations. Now, there’s nothing really wrong
with that, except to reduce the function of religion to be an agent for my personal
adjustment is hardly worthy of the religious traditions that have marked the
human family down through the centuries.
But, in either case – whether the focus is on the individual to bring that person to
personal salvation for eternal security in heaven, or whether it is on the
individual to create peace of mind and self-realization here and now - what is
missed is that social dimension which is in the scriptures from the beginning.
Israel was born in a liberation movement. The founding event of Israel was the
Exodus, and in those opening chapters of Exodus, you remember that the God of
Israel was one who was understood to hear the cries of the people. It is stated in
those opening chapters: the cries of my people have come to me, and God calls
Moses to lead those slaves out of Egyptian bondage.
Walter Brueggemann speaks about the royal consciousness of Egypt that had a
totalitarian grip on the people who were held in oppressive economic
exploitation. And that regime was legitimated by the royal priesthood. Israel
moved out of that situation of slavery and into its own land and, for a couple of
hundred years, lived under what we could describe as a theocracy. God was king.
No more of that human monarch on the throne that led to oppression. But
memory is short, and before long there was that debate within Israel. There were
those voices saying we want to be like other nations. We need a king. And Samuel
warned Israel about the implications of establishing a monarchy. But,
nonetheless, it was established. And it went not so poorly with Saul and quite well
with David, but you remember Solomon whose oppressive public works projects
threw the people into servitude again, with economic exploitation and political
oppression. It was a domination system all over again.
But there was one thing that saved Israel from being just like all the other
nations, because, with the rise of monarchy, came the voice of prophecy. If I were
to name what gift Israel has given to the world, it would be that prophetic voice,
that prophetic voice endowed with the spirit of God that had the courage to speak
truth to power. That is the prophetic function and, in Israel’s history, that which
© Grand Valley State University
�Living Before the Face of God: The Social Dimension
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
shaped it, made it unique was that prophetic voice that was always addressed to
those who abused the people.
I could have chosen most any prophet. I could have chosen passage after passage
to illustrate what I am trying to say this morning, but I felt that Micah’s language
was so descriptive as he addresses the leaders of Israel, addressing those who are
responsible for the political and religious leadership of the nation.
"You hate good and love evil. You tear the skin off my people and the flesh
off their bones. You eat the flesh of my people, flay their skin off them,
break their bones in pieces, chop them up like meat in a kettle, like flesh in
a cauldron."
He goes on to excoriate the prophets who play for pay, who have a word of peace
for those who can pay, but no word at all for those who don’t put something in
their mouth. He criticizes the priesthood which carries on an empty ritual,
legitimizing a regime that is full of injustice, lacking all compassion. And then in
his conclusion, he says,
"Because of this terrible oppression of the vast majority of the people, Zion
will be like a plowed field and Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins."
Well, there are those who say, "Well, what should we do? Would the Lord like
1,000 calves, 10,000 rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn, the fruit of my body?
Would this please the Lord?" To which the prophet says,
"Look, you know what the Lord requires - to do justice, to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God. It isn’t that difficult."
This was the prophetic description for a society marked by justice and
compassion. That prophetic voice came to expression again in Jesus. Over against
that politics of exclusion through temple rites and holiness and being the right
kind of people, Jesus countered with a politic of compassion. We sang together
the Lord’s Prayer in which Jesus was teaching his disciples to pray and in which
we have the words,"Thy kingdom come." In other words, your rule prevail. Thy
will be done on earth as it is in heaven. The focus is here and now. Thy will be
done, here and now, as it is in heaven. The Sermon on the Mount, in which the
Lord’s Prayer appears, also has the Golden Rule, which wasn’t original with Jesus
and has come to expression in several different forms. But, as a matter of fact, it
still is very much at the heart of the social concern, albeit in that more personal
relationship: Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you. And the very
statement is in marked contrast to the rather flippant attitude of so much of
contemporary society symbolized in a bumper sticker I saw recently which said,
in Old English print, "Do Unto Others and Split." Jesus, in the tradition of the
Hebrew prophets, called for a politics of compassion and embodied in his
ministry, in his table fellowship, in his openness to all, that access to the grace of
God and that embrace by God of all people. And it was in his challenge to that
© Grand Valley State University
�Living Before the Face of God: The Social Dimension
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
established authority, reflecting very much the established authority of Micah’s
day although without a reigning monarch, that Jesus was crucified.
Someone has said that there were three times when the justice and compassion
which God wills for society had been rejected - one time in the Hebrew
monarchy, a second time in the ministry of Jesus, and then a third time when the
emperor Constantine established the Christian faith. That establishment of the
Christian faith by Constantine has often been characterized as the conquering of
the empire by the Gospel, but has turned out in all truth to be the co-opting of the
Gospel by the empire, because from 313 on, with the legitimization of the
Christian faith, throne and altar once again came together. The throne created
space for the altar and the altar legitimated the throne. Just as the kings of Israel
had their retinue of prophets and priests who were paid to speak the party line
and to speak no other line, just so the temptation of the church has been to
baptize the regime rather than to stand over against it, in the name of the God of
Israel, in the name of Jesus, and to say human community is to be structured
other than the way it is.
Well, what are we to do about it? It is such a massive problem. Are you aware that
our world, our society, our global society and even particularly our American
society are in a state of crisis, and that the crisis is not really a crisis of abortion or
sexual orientation or crime on the streets? The crisis is rather the structures and
the systems by which our societies are shaped and formed, the way in which they
function. We are coming to see rather lately that the problem with the failure of
human community is a systemic problem. It is not that there are not a lot of
people of good will. It is not that there are not a lot of people who are trying to do
good things. It is that the very way in which our systems, political and economic,
are structured continue to exacerbate the problem rather than move us toward
world community. In our own country, just to cite one facet of the crisis, there is a
growing gulf between the rich and the poor. Let me give you some statistics, just
to help you take that in. During the 1980s, 90% of the total increase in income
went to the wealthiest 20% of the population. The remaining 10% of the increase
was spread over 90% of the people. Obviously, that has to lead to the growing gulf
between the rich and the poor. In 1963, the ratio of CEO salaries to average
worker salaries in the same company was 41 to 1. Now, being the local CEO, I
think that’s fair. 41 to 1. That was 1963. You know what it is now? 225 to 1. You
know what it is in Germany right now? 20 to 1.
In 1963, the wealthiest one percent of families owned 23% of the wealth in terms
of homes and cars and stocks and savings. The wealthiest one percent owned
23%. In 1994, the wealthiest one percent owned 44%. In the U.S., the ratio of
annual income received by the top 10% of the population compared to the bottom
10% is 6 to 1. For comparison purposes, in Finland it’s just over 2 to 1, in France,
2 ½ to 1, in Germany and the United Kingdom, 3 to 1. These statistics simply
point to an inevitable growth in the gap between those who possess and those
who lack. It is a trend. That’s the direction in which it’s moving. But those
© Grand Valley State University
�Living Before the Face of God: The Social Dimension
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
particular statistics are only signs of something that can be seen in the social
structures. Education, for example, is lacking severely in poor areas of urban
blight, but is doing well in fortunate areas like ours. And yet, even here one
doesn’t have to scratch too hard to find a begrudging of that which is the future of
society.
In those areas where wealth abounds, there are growing gated communities.
Now, I like gated communities. I like to feel safe and secure behind those walls, to
know that there is a guardhouse and a guard. And one can understand the growth
in gated communities among the wealthy because there is so much crime and
violence in society, and crime seems everywhere and out of control, and the need
to build more prisons and to gain more prison beds is in the news all the time.
Might we ask, might we ask why? Are American people simply more prone to
crime? Or is there something in the social situation of our own country and our
own time that is exacerbating that move to crime and violence? Are we so inured
with the American dream? Are we so shaped by a consumerism culture that,
failing to realize it, we turn violent? And is it possible that there can be human
community where there is more crime on the street and more gated
communities? We will not be able to survive that way. There is no human
community that way. If you take God out of the equation, if you take human
decency out of the equation, it is simply this, that any world that has people who
have nothing to lose is a dangerous world. It cannot be a world of human
community. It is simply a practical matter, of wisdom, even apart from God, even
apart from the God of Israel, even apart from the way of Jesus, even apart from
just plain human decency as we have been shaped by the biblical tradition.
It is not an easy matter to address. I am not an economist. I am not a sociologist,
and you must be tired of blustering rhetoric from the pulpit that would lay a layer
of guilt in order to execute better performance. That’s not what this is about. It is
extremely complex. It is a global problem. But, do you sense that it is a very real
crisis in our world, and would anyone refute the fact that it is a central biblical
concern and therefore that about which we must be concerned? Is it not true, as
the followers of Jesus in the tradition of the God of Israel, that domination
systems, economic exploitation and political oppression, poverty, hunger, people
living below a subsistence level where there is nothing but hopelessness and
despair - is that not something about which our souls should be wrenched?
I was criticized after the first sermon because all I tried to do was raise the
consciousness, whereas it was claimed I should have a passionate appeal to do
something. Well, I’m not sure that it’s my responsibility to solve the problem.
Why is it any more my responsibility to put the new system together than yours?
Aren’t we in this together? There are those of you with greater expertise than me.
And together, in community, if we are concerned about it, then ought we not to
be putting our creative heads together and our creative caring, passionate souls
together to say, "How in the world can we make this a more humane world?"
© Grand Valley State University
�Living Before the Face of God: The Social Dimension
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
What would happen if we took our PAC money, Political Action Committee
money, and pooled it and stormed Lansing and Washington and buttonholed our
legislators and even greased their campaign fund a little and said to them, "What
are you doing for the least of these, my brothers and sisters?" Rather than make
sure you vote correctly on that amendment that will create a tax loophole so I can
give more to Christ Community? You see, you don’t need a guilt-inflicting sermon
from a preacher without expertise as to how to solve the thing.
Hear me. Hear me. There is a social dimension to our faith and together we must
address those structural, systemic problems that make for multitudes of
humankind a human existence less than fully human. God cares, and we must
care, too.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2c12c6f0dcec875c0e2de9196996ba51.mp3
09d5104dee4b9dc88eca42b11bade194
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
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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
Pentecost XXVI
Series
Meeting God Again for the First Time
Scripture Text
Micah 6:8, Matthew 6:10
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
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KII-01_RA-0-19971116
Date
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1997-11-16
Title
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Living Before the Face of God: The Social Dimension
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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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
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application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on November 16, 1997 entitled "Living Before the Face of God: The Social Dimension", as part of the series "Meeting God Again for the First Time", on the occasion of Pentecost XXVI, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Micah 6:8, Matthew 6:10.
Compassion
Inclusive
Nature of Religion
Prophetic Voice
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/061f039f53e1b1909c7a957f5f2e39d8.pdf
ab7384b8853b936c8ef9c57ad3f7e62e
PDF Text
Text
A Simpler Way
From the series: Meeting God Again For the First Time
Text: John 4:23-24
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
October 5, 1997
Transcription of the spoken sermon
The writer of the fourth Gospel tells us explicitly that he was very intentional in
the creation of the Gospel he wrote: John 20:30-31 - a portrait painted, a story
told, that you might believe that Jesus was the Messiah, thereby finding life
through his name.
This one, the author believed, came from God and was the embodiment in human
form of God’s being, purpose, and grace that, through God’s Spirit, possessed him
and filled him.
The God Who in the beginning breathed the creative process into being was now
breathing life in a new dimension in and through this one, Jesus - Jesus was
anointed with God’s Spirit. The Hebrew word for that anointing was Messiah; the
Greek word, Christ.
John was writing at a time of great turmoil, tension and ferment in the Jewish
community. The center of Israel’s life and worship - the symbol of God’s presence
in their midst – had been destroyed in 70 A.D. by the Roman occupying power.
How now would they maintain their peoplehood, their identity as God’s chosen
ones? The dominant group emerging was the Pharisaic party - to become the
group that eventually determined the Judaism of the future, the Rabbinic group
ensuring that Judaism would be a people of the Book, the sacred text.
But, in the last decades of the first century, the movement stemming from Jesus
was a viable contender. The followers of this crucified one whom his followers
experienced as living and present to them made up a significant segment of the
population. But they had reached out beyond the narrow confines of the Jewish
community; they had, in quite revolutionary fashion, formed a Jesus community
among the Samaritans with whom the Jews lived in great hostility and even
among the Gentiles - that is, with non-Jews.
At least in part, the fourth Gospel was written to root this outward reaching of the
very early movement in the understanding and ministry of Jesus himself.
© Grand Valley State University
�A Simpler Way
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
The reason is obvious:
There were strong differences in the Jesus movement that in its early stages was
exclusively Jewish. There were Jews who believed Jesus was the Messiah and the
End was near, the reign of God approaching, but who failed to see the reason for
reaching out beyond their own. And there were others - think of Stephen and of
Paul who felt the call to bring the story of God’s grace in Jesus to the nations.
In other words, there were advocates of a purely Jewish Jesus community and
there were advocates of a universal mission. I think that is the rationale by which
the Gospel writer chose the story of the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well who
was encountered by Jesus.
I will not retell the story; suffice it to say that Jesus chooses to go from Judea in
the south to Galilee in the north by the direct route which takes him through
Samaria, a hostile territory peopled by those the Jews considered alien, whose
worship the Jews considered false, even though the Samaritans stemming from
the ten Northern Tribes of Israel shared the Mosaic heritage, following the
Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Scripture.
It is in Samaria at the place of the ancient well of Jacob that Jesus engages a
Samaritan woman in conversation. He asks for a drink of water from the well,
only to offer her living water. The writer’s literary technique is to reveal the soul
thirst of this woman for the truth. The conversation issues in a question that
divided the Jews and Samaritans: the Samaritans claimed their Mt. Gerizim was
the place of true worship, pre-dating the establishment of Jerusalem later by
David, while the Jews, of course, contended it was at Jerusalem that God caused
the Holy Name, or the Presence, to dwell.
This allows the Gospel writer to put Jesus on the side of those who saw the
universal implications of Jesus’ ministry "Woman," he says, "the hour is coming and now is when you will worship
the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem ... The true
worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth."
Without attempting to give an in-depth explanation of that response, it must be
obvious on the surface that Jesus here points to a new situation and a new
manner of worship and devotion.
He does not say worship at Mt. Gerizim or Jerusalem had never been true
worship, or that God could not be worshiped at one place or the other.
He does, however, relativize the question of place which would represent the
whole apparatus of the cultic forms used in the worship of the respective
communities.
© Grand Valley State University
�A Simpler Way
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
We have come to a moment in the practice of religious worship, Jesus contends,
according to this account, when place and all the external accouterments that go
with it become matters of indifference.
The external forms of worship are intended to be and can be means by which,
through which, the human spirit comes into communion with the divine Spirit the liturgy, the ritual action, the very physical space designated for the worship of
God, can be vehicles of grace through which the communion with God is affected.
The setting and the manner of our worship is not a matter of indifference to be
tended to in a slovenly way. But they are the triggers only to bring us to
awareness of the Holy, of that transcendent source of our being by whose grace
we live and move and have our being.
It has been characteristic of Christian preaching to set Jesus and thus Christianity
off from Judaism as a spiritual religion over against a religion of outward
observance. This is a distortion and it misses the point.
Jesus was a Jew.
Jesus was not saying Judaism as a religion was being superseded, to be replaced
now by Christianity. Jesus was pointing to the nature of true worship and the
temptation of all religious worship to become an outward form lacking inward
transforming power.
The result of this encounter is not Christianity - Jewish - 1 and Samaritan
devotion - 0.
Worship that is inwardly aware of the gracious ground of our being is present in
many religious traditions. Formalism, devoid of Spirit, is to be found, as well, in
all forms of religious devotion, Christianity included.
But, that in no way detracts from the stunning breakthrough that Jesus
represented in his life and teaching. Jesus saw the temptation of the religious
institution to make itself exclusive and absolute and he broke through the false
barriers that purported to demarcate the only true way. Jesus saw the demonic
barriers that walled people off from one another, defining those who were in and
those who were out, the accepted ones and the rejected ones.
He conversed with a Samaritan. Jesus saw the oppression and domination of
women by men who considered women of a lesser subhuman class. In a society
where a man prayed daily thanking God he was not born a woman, Jesus
conversed with a woman, treating her with respect and dignity and human
decency.
Jesus saw the restrictive limitations of religious and cultural patterns and dared
to defy them, to shatter them and to declare by word and action a new day, a
© Grand Valley State University
�A Simpler Way
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
movement toward a fuller humanization of society. And Jesus did it not because
it was in the cultural air, but because he believed that is the way God intended it.
God is Spirit. God must be worshiped in spirit and in truth. Jesus refused to bow
to social custom or religious regulation when those violated the reality of the
Spirit.
Traditional definitions, conventional wisdom, social mores, cultural patterns - all
of that, for Jesus, needed constantly to be examined, reformed, transformed in
the light of the spiritual reality that comes from inward awareness and
attentiveness.
There are times of cultural crisis when old ways are challenged and foundations
crumble. We are in such a time; it has been a long time building - perhaps since
the 15th century, or certainly since the 18th. It is my contention that the church has
not yet faced the implications of the modern period. The structure of faith and
biblical understanding in which I was nurtured and trained and that has shaped
the Christian tradition, Protestant and Catholic, is largely the product of the postReformation, a 17th-century paradigm of biblical faith impacted very little by the
explosion of knowledge in the modern world.
The Christian tradition from which we stem still speaks in terms of an absolute
truth it claims to possess and an exclusive truth to which it must bring the world,
denying the salvific value of all other traditions.
I included a couple of paragraphs from Gordon Kaufman’s God, Mystery,
Diversity as an alternative to the absolutism and exclusivism claims of Christian
orthodoxy. I think what Kaufman is contending is very much in the spirit of what
Jesus said to the Samaritan woman The hour is come when the model can no longer be pronouncement of our
way as the only way. Rather, the time has come when the Spirit is calling
us to break down the barriers we have erected.
Is it not ironic that the one who threw down the exclusionary barriers that
divided people and defined the truth is, in the Christian church, made the
absolute revealer of God and the exclusive source of the grace of God?
The disciples returned from buying food to find Jesus in conversation with a
Samaritan, and a woman at that, but they dared not mention it. Instead, they
said, "Eat." But, Jesus wasn’t hungry any longer. The conversation triggered in
him the realization of the deep hunger in the hearts of humankind. He was a man
obsessed with his sense of calling to do God’s work.
"Look around you," he said. "Don’t you see the spiritual hunger ... see how the
fields are ripe for harvesting?"
© Grand Valley State University
�A Simpler Way
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
Don’t you see it?
The mainline churches are limping badly and the world is spiritually starved. The
Promisekeepers have tapped into this spiritual hunger, but I don’t think the
answer lies in what is an attempt to return to yesterday with a strong dose of
emotion. The megachurches are flourishing, but there is no attempt to re-think
the faith in the modern world.
Jesus said neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem - old forms can’t bear the
weight of truth for our world. The old institutional alignments are dead - the old
orthodoxy cannot prevail.
But, God is God.
There is yet living water flowing to quench the thirst and satisfy the hunger of the
soul - if only we would let go, wait with openness and awareness to hear and
sense what the Spirit is saying to us. If only we would give up our certainties and
wait in the darkness, trusting that the living God will show us wonders of which
we’ve not yet dreamed.
Reference:
Gordon D. Kaufman. God, Mystery, Diversity: Christian Theology in a
Pluralistic World. Fortress Press, 1996.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c657977270b6d84ea29123f64fdadf45.mp3
63a277b14df03c33cbf65eb7249af756
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
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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
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
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost XX
Series
Meeting God Again for the First Time
Scripture Text
John 4:23-24
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Gordon D. Kaufman. God, Mystery, Diversity: Christian Theology in a Pluralistic World, 1996
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-0-19971005
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1997-10-05
Title
A name given to the resource
A Simpler Way
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 October 5, 1997 entitled "A Simpler Way", as part of the series "Meeting God Again for the First Time", on the occasion of Pentecost XX, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: John 4:23-24.
Awareness
Follower of Jesus
Inclusive
Nature of Religion
Spirit
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e8fe37a112257c26aace32ba40fc3346.pdf
d7b3417b7cd2257d01e14bb1764cc202
PDF Text
Text
Religion: Has It a Future?
From the series: Meeting God Again For the First Time
Scripture: Romans 7:14-25; Mark 8:11-21
Dr. Duncan Littlefair
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
September 28, 1997
Transcription of the spoken sermon
(Mr. Rhem)
It is for me a very great pleasure and privilege to introduce to the congregation of
Christ Community and our friends visiting with us today the Rev. Dr. Duncan
Littlefair. My friendship with Dr. Littlefair goes back over a couple of years
through one of those wonderful providences when a friend of his became a friend
of mine, and we found ourselves on Tuesdays enjoying table fellowship and
absolutely wonderful conversation. We meet on Tuesdays religiously. During the
past couple of years in which we have been through some difficult waters, it has
been a source of great encouragement to me to come to know Dr. Littlefair. His
strength and his vision have steeled my purpose. As I said to the 8:30
congregation, when I reflected at the lunch table about the things we were dealing
with, Dr. Littlefair told me that they had handled that 100 years ago at Fountain
Street Church in Grand Rapids and, when I came with some brave new insight, I
found out that he had published it in a primer on religion 50 years ago. I don’t
know why some of us are so Johnny-come-lately, slow to learn, if not slow to
speak. As we gathered around that lunch table, it was obvious to me that there
was fire in the belly, there was a sermon brewing, ready to be delivered, and so I
broached the subject, asking Dr. Littlefair if he would be our guest at Christ
Community. He has been in our worship and warmly affirmed us, but he goes a
step further in giving us the gift this morning of his presence in this pulpit. I want
to say to you very sincerely that I am deeply moved and greatly appreciative of his
presence here this morning. Welcome, Dr. Duncan Littlefair.
(Dr. Littlefair)
You cannot be human without being religious. You may doubt that in the course
of my presentation to you this morning, but I want it to be in your mind. You
cannot be human without being religious.
Now, there are very many levels of humanity, and there are equally many levels of
religion. You can have a profound religion. You can have a trivial religion. You
© Grand Valley State University
�Religion: Has It a Future?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
can have an intellectual understanding religion. You can have an ignorant
religion. You can have a religion that is equal to the best of knowledge, or you can
have a religion that is full of superstition, but religious you must be if you’re going
to be human. Or, I like it better the other way, to be human means to be religious.
There has never, ever been a people anywhere in the history of this globe (and
that history goes back a long, long way now; we’ve extended it enormously),
never any people without a religion. Isn’t it, then, more than just a little absurd
that any one religion should claim that it is the only way? If you stop to think
about it, can you imagine anything more absurd than for one religious people to
proclaim that its way of reverencing and worshiping this Creative Source that
makes us is the only way? And Christians have done that all these centuries.
They’re still doing it! Criticizing this church because it moves out to the
possibility - that’s all you’re doing - move out to the possibility that there are
other ways. I cannot contain myself when I hear such stupidity and prejudice as
to assume that there is no other way but your own.
And as a result, Muslim faith grew out of Christianity and Judaism, you know. Of
course you know. And, Islam faith claims that it’s the only valid way and scorns
the Christian, or the Christian scorns the Muslim and the Buddhist. And I’ve been
prophesying for some ten years and I think that it will come to be that any crisis
that occurs in this world will be a crisis between these two faiths proclaiming
themselves to be absolute and the only way. And they are meeting. As Colette
made mention in her prayer, they are meeting across the world and they are
fighting each other. They will engage in mortal conflict. The tenth and eleventh
centuries all over again, and this is the twentieth, moving into the twenty-first. I
know of no institution in the world that is as riddled and ridden by superstition
as religion.
Now, I want to make the definition of religion. I have said that it was a universal
product, that there was never a person or a people without it, never a people, and
that’s historically true, archeologically, anthropologically true, but I’m going to
define religion for you and follow my definition in the course of my discussion
because it doesn’t run counter to what I’ve said, it’s a definition and a description
of it. Religion is to care. That’s all. To care.
Care about what? I think anything. Anything. We start off with our children. We
encourage their caring on their level, whatever it is. Care for money? Fine. Then it
will be your religion. It is the religion of many people. Stupid. Trivial,
insubstantial, insufficient. But, it can be a religion. But, if we start out with
religion as caring, see, then you come to a place like this, this beautiful place, and
you join yourself together with other people like you, beautiful congregation in
this building. I’ve been here, I’ve seen you and felt you. You come to a place like
this, you see, to deepen your caring. To illumine your caring. Enlighten it. Make it
more profound. Make it more impressive and make a greater impact with it on
yourself, and let the chips fall where they may, because you have a society of
persons who care, you’ll have a caring society.
© Grand Valley State University
�Religion: Has It a Future?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Now, I want to mention that I think we are in a cultural crisis in the world. A
cultural crisis is not something that occurs in a lifetime, not a few years or
months, you know. It’s a long, long thing. Our cultural crisis has been brewing for
350 years, maybe 400, we don’t argue about 50 or 100 years in this sort of thing.
It started with the beginning of the scientific approach to knowledge. Not until
the 1500s, Galileo the middle of the 16th century, 1500s, the beginning of the
scientific approach to the world, not to go on here say, not to go on folklore, not
to go on imagination, not to go on superstition, not to go on campfire ideas, but
to begin to probe the nature of the world to see what it’s like, what it’s truly like.
Not until the middle of the 16th century.
It wasn’t until the middle of it the 17th century, which Whitehead calls the century
of genius, that we even discovered the circulation of the blood. And that was the
same century that Newton discovered the nature of gravity. And since then we’ve
been growing so wonderfully in our ideas and appreciations so that now, after
350 years, it’s beginning to take account. It hasn’t taken hold yet. People feel it,
but intellectually it’s not clear. And even our leaders are not talking about it
enough because it’s a frightening thing and they don’t want to offend people.
They don’t want to frighten them, but they are frightened. The people of the
western hemisphere are frightened, and rightly so, because we’re discovering that
we live in a world that can brush us aside like any of the thousands of species that
have been brushed aside, failed and lost out in the past, that can happen to us,
too. We’re not that long established, you know.
I like to point out that the human life has been here maybe a million years and
the dinosaurs were here 100 million years. Now, if you understand the nature of
scientific progression of knowledge and facts, then that has to be significant to
you. And the cultural crisis is that we have to come to the conclusion that things
are in our hands. Oh, I know that I violate most of the ritual that goes on around,
even in this enlightened church, and some of the ritual that goes on in my church,
but we have to come to the conclusion that we are on our own in this world! I
don’t know how any intelligent person could avoid coming to that conclusion, I
just do not understand it. There is to be no divine intervention! There is no
miraculous intercession. Hasn’t been. Is not now, and never will be.
I like the little story in the New Testament, which is a very important book to me,
of Jesus in the midst of a circus, a parade. The man stood up in a tree so that he
could participate in it, and Jesus said, "Come on down. Come on down,
Zaccheaus, and get out of that tree. We’ve got things to do." We’ve got things to
do. Did you hear Colette’s prayer? I have difficulty hearing behind there, but I
heard it. We have to save our environment. We have to save the air. We have to
save the water and make it open and accessible for quality and human living. We
have to save our woods. We have to deal with our hatreds, with our tribal loyalties
and devotions. We have to deal with our selfishness. We have to deal with our
ignorance. We have to deal with our hatred, which leads people to fight against
each other, killing neighbors year after year. No matter what we do, we cannot
© Grand Valley State University
�Religion: Has It a Future?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
stop it. This is a cultural crisis and religion is so far showing its awareness of it by
its frantic, absolutely frantic retreat into what I call "warehouse religion,"
emotional binges without the slightest degree of interest in pursuing knowledge,
understanding, and wisdom. Just emotional expression.
Now I want to say, after having indicated that the cultural crisis is hinged on
knowledge, that this kind of knowledge has really nothing to do with religion. I
have a principle that I introduced to the men at lunch and I jokingly call it "The
Littlefair Principle." I thought I might as well, nobody else has said it.
To the degree that any religion depends upon the repudiation of
knowledge and truth and facts, it is to that degree of dependence
spiritually ignorant, illiterate, and unworthy.
Now, the alternative:
To the degree that any religion is founded upon and dependent upon
knowledge of the world, it is to that degree, spiritually invalid.
I have not excluded religion, now, because religion is to care. But, if your caring
involves you repudiating the best and most established knowledge, it’s obviously
unworthy, too trivial for any people to adhere to. But, if you make a religion out
of the facts, you’re missing the whole point of a religion, which is to care.
Now, we do not allow the religionists to tell us what the facts are. That would be
ridiculous. They’re not trained to do it, obviously, are they? You want to know
about the earth, what it’s made of? You want to know its structure, you go to the
geologist, don’t you? They know. They have learned. They’ve applied the scientific
method. They have irrefutable facts, not some dream that arose around a
campfire about what the nature of the earth was. No way.
You want to know about the human body? You go to a biologist. And let me tell
you that I’ve heard from the biologists that if you don’t know the biology of the
last 20 years, you’re ignorant, biologically speaking, so great has been the
advance and growth and knowledge of the body. But, you don’t ask a religionist
about the nature of the body.
You want to know about the structure of things like this? And the rocks and some
trees? You don’t go to the geologist, you go to the physicist and the chemist. He’ll
tell you.
You want to know about the history of life on this planet? You go to the
anthropologist. They’re the ones who have been doing the studying on this thing,
and they know. They’re not guessing, they’re not hoping. They have facts, and
those facts are important for anybody trying to live the modern world so that you
can make your caring an intelligent thing.
© Grand Valley State University
�Religion: Has It a Future?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
One other point: We’re on the stage of the democratization of religion. I’ve been
wondering about this for some time and it suddenly occurred to me that what I’ve
been after all these years in my ministry is the democratization of religion. Isn’t it
amazing that we make God a monarch? Have you thought about that? We make
God a monarch. We don’t believe in monarchies! Goodness sakes, we abolished
them long, long ago! Even Japan. Certainly the monarchy in England, Britain, the
one outstanding one is just decorative, it’s not the essence of the British Republic.
We don’t talk about monarchs, but we make God to be sitting on a throne. We
have people supplicating Him, fawning over Him, flattering Him. Most of our
prayers are forms of flattery equivalent to a courtier and an emperor. God is not
Louis XIV. Surely that ought to be clear to us. Degradation. Can you see Jesus on
a throne? Can you really see that? You grew up thinking about it, having it given
to you, and maybe you’re hearing it as adults, too - can you see Jesus on a throne?
The man who put his arms, figuratively, around a prostitute and made her his
best friend - that’s an emperor?
My God and I walk through the fields together,
we laugh and talk as good friends should and do.
Our voices ring with laughter.
My God and I walk through the fields together.
You have your choice. Jesus talked about God as a father, and I assume the best
of fathers is like a friend that you laugh and talk with and walk through the fields
together.
Now, I want very briefly to go to describe something more about religion as
caring. I want to define Spirit for you, and I’ll be back next week, I trust, to talk
some more about it. But, I want to define the Spirit. It just doesn’t get defined. I
do a lot of philosophical reading and it just doesn’t get defined, and I’d like you to
take it home and think with it, about it, and put it together with my notion that
religion is to care. Spirit is to feel while you are aware. Now, listen to this - it’s
not a "thing," almost anyone surely knows with their fourth-grade mind that it’s
not a "thing." It’s not something that resides in the body and comes out. We’ve
thought that for centuries. It’s too late for that kind of thinking. We’ve got things
to do. The Spirit is a part of the body and so much it is a product of the body, and
is never found apart from the body. No Spirit apart from the body. And I gave it
the simple definition and I defy you to exhaust it. You or the geologist or biologist
or anthropologist or any physicist or chemist - it’s a feeling awareness. Doesn’t
sound like very much, but it’s the essence of being human.
We’re not very aware, you know. I challenge you to go back over your drive here
this morning to come to church - what do you remember of it? What were you
aware of when you were driving? Oh, if something happens, you’d see it, if a red
light came on or some child crossed the street, or somebody was driving - you’d
see that and react to that, I know. Squirrels do that. But, what do you feel? What
© Grand Valley State University
�Religion: Has It a Future?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
are you aware of? Most of us live in a sleep, really almost 100% sleep. You can
carry on business jobs just by being animal responsive. But, to be feelingly aware.
Do you see this beautiful hanging? Maybe you notice that it’s red or black or
white, but are you aware of it? Are you aware of that beautiful brick wall that you
have? It’s so fascinating to me. I’ve spent my ministry in a church with the most
magnificent stained glass windows in America. I find this wall just a total
fascination. I come in and I sit there and I look at it and I think about it. What are
you aware of? Are you aware of the grass? I’ve been aware this whole season long
of leaves. I can’t believe the wonder of a leaf. And then of the trees - they stagger
me! I cannot comprehend them. And I sit and look and I walk and look and I feel.
The grass - yes. Leaf? - yes. Tree? - yes. Anything. How about a person? Are you
aware of the person that you’re living with? Or is it like your awareness of driving
to church? Women are particularly alert to this. Do you see the face? Do you see
the concern? Do you see the agony? Do you see the depression?
"You have eyes," said Jesus, "and you don’t see." Mr. Rhem read that this
morning. It’s the most profound spiritual observation. "You have ears, but you
don’t hear. You have hearts and you don’t understand. Woe is the person." To
feel, to be aware of anything - anything!
This is God’s world. I hear Him pass in the rustling grass,
I see Him everywhere.
My listening ears all nature sings.
Feeling awareness. And then you treasure it. It’s no use bothering people about
Sunday religion, but, of course, true, it’s wonderful to have it, that kind of Sunday
following a custom, routine - it’s not enough! If you’re going to treasure your
spirit, you have to treasure it every day! Or you lose it. Very few people ever
arrive at the spiritual level, you know that. Jesus knew it. Every spiritual person
has known it. You have to treasure it. You have to pay attention to it as if it were
important, as important as the money you used to care for. Or the success, or the
arrogance, or the pride, or the power. You have to treasure it, because where your
treasure is, there your heart will be, and where your heart is, there your treasure
will be, and if you have a treasuring of the spirit, you have something that nothing
can take away - neither life nor death nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor
height nor depth nor any other creature. Nothing! You treasure it, and you’re
grateful for it.
You’ve got to be grateful, because you didn’t make it. If you want to get down to
the heart of religion, here’s another one of those fundamental things - you didn’t
make it! The thing that you treasure. You didn’t make the leaf, you didn’t make
the flower, you didn’t make the tree, you didn’t make yourself, you didn’t make
your mind, you didn’t make your body. It’s a gift. We call it the gift of God, don’t
we? So, you have to be grateful. No spiritual person swaggers with the qualities of
the Spirit. No. No swaggering with the Spirit. It’s just the utmost of gratitude.
© Grand Valley State University
�Religion: Has It a Future?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
And then you celebrate it. You celebrate it by - you come to church and you light
candles and you listen to that beautiful, beautiful music, and you have a birthday
party or you give a gift or you bake a cake and you gather your friends around and
you hold hands, and you say, isn’t it wonderful, the gifts that are ours? That’s a
celebration, and there’s no religion without it. You have to have the Spirit there to
make the celebration significant and real. Now, that’s a description of religion as
best as I can do for you.
What’s the language of religion? Just a word or two now and that’s all. What’s
the language of religion? I said of religion, not about religion, because the
investigation of religion or of anything falls into the realm of scientific categories.
You explore religion like you explore the structure of a city or of an institution or
of a piece of metal. Thus, we use technical language when you want to discuss the
nature of religion. But, what’s the language of religion? I keep trying and I’m a
preacher and I should know how to do it and I feel so helpless at it, and I want to
tell somebody what it means to be in rapture by that blossom that I saw out my
window. How do I do it? How do I tell somebody how much I love them? I don’t
know how to do it; you stagger and you stumble. We don’t do very well at it. Well,
the language of religion is story, it’s poetry. Poetry is the nature of religious
language, because you’re explaining. You see something and you just let go. I
keep thinking of David dancing before the ark of the Lord - just totally feeling. He
expressed it in dance, like you do here so frequently.
I have an enduring memory of being out there last spring sometime and you had
all those children dancing down the aisles. And there was one child who caught
my imagination so that I didn’t want to lose myself in the panorama of it.
Interestingly enough, on the way home, the wife of the person I was driving with
said, "I know who you meant. I saw that, too." What was it? I don’t know. I
couldn’t describe it. But, that girl - she exemplified it to me, with all those
children she exemplified the Spirit, the miracle and wonder of being human. We
use myth and story, legend and song and dance and art. These are the language of
religion. Mr. Bryson plays that organ and has that choir sing so beautifully they’re singing of the Spirit, if you have ears to hear. How better could you
describe Paul’s dilemma, which is yours and mine - "I want to do good and I can’t
because the evil’s all around me. I want to do good and the evil takes over. I know
that in my heart reigns the law of God, but there is another law, the law of my
members entangling me in sin." How would you describe this?
Well, it’s never been better done than it was in our religious heritage. In the
beginning the world was wonderful, beautiful, and everything was there. And
then God made man and it was all right then, too, except that man ate of the fruit
of the tree of knowledge. The fruit of the tree of knowledge. And then he became
like one of us - gods, says the Bible. Knowing good and evil. And if you know good
and evil, you’ll never, ever be totally free! Because the evil is always there; it’s part
of being human. And that’s our biblical story.
© Grand Valley State University
�Religion: Has It a Future?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 8
You want to describe the miracle of life, the wonder of being human, the wonder
of a child which is where we see it most and should not confine ourselves there,
do you want to describe the miracle of the birth of a child - how would you do it?
Well, we’ve had a description, a poetic, beautiful description that has been a
cardinal part of my heart for all these years that I’ve been thinking about dreams.
There was a man and a woman, simple man and woman, carpenter and his wife they had to go to a distant city and she was with child. But, they had to go and it
was a difficult, long journey, and it came on wintertime and they were up in the
mountains and the time for her came, and they didn’t know what to do and there
was no place to go. There was a little village up in the mountain and every place
was filled because everyone else was going as they were going to this thing that
had been called by the emperor, and they had no place, no place in the inn or
anywhere. And the innkeeper gave them a place where the cattle were. Not much,
was it? Oh, no, but it was something. It was a gracious act and it was some
comfort and protection, and they were there with the animals, you see, and she
gave birth to her child and it was just a miracle. And there were three kings who
had been out on the road for a long time, looking for the glory of God. And they
had been told that they could find it, and there was a star that they had to follow.
And they followed that star for many days, many weeks, and finally the star came
and stood over a stable. Stood over a stable. And they knew that that was the end
of their search. They went in and found the child, and they brought their gifts as
tribute to the miracle of God in human life. And there were some shepherds out
in the fields, not just the kings, but some shepherds, ignorant shepherds. And all
of a sudden, when they were keeping watch over their flocks, the air was filled
with angels singing, "Glory to God in the highest, for unto you is born this night
in the city of David a Saviour." And the shepherds went off, left their flock and
went up into the stable to pay tribute to the glory of God and the child.
You have ears but you don’t hear. If we were to listen, if we were to listen,
anytime, we’d hear the angels singing.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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6045c2bbb3d6bbc772595a6cf13df566
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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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Pentecost XIX
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Meeting God Again for the First Time
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Jeremiah 7: 1-7,, 11-15, Mark 13:1-2
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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1997-09-28
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Religion: Has It a Future?
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on September 28, 1997 entitled "Religion: Has It a Future?", as part of the series "Meeting God Again for the First Time", on the occasion of Pentecost XIX, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Jeremiah 7: 1-7,, 11-15, Mark 13:1-2.
Awareness
Compassion
Nature of Religion
Story
Wonder
-
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PDF Text
Text
Is Christianity Dying?
From the series: Tough Questions; No Easy Answers
Scripture: Habakkuk 1:1-5; 3:17-19; Luke 3:1-9; 19:37-38
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
August 10, 1997
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Is Christianity dying? That is a tough question and there is no easy answer. Let
me acknowledge at the outset that no one can answer that question with
certainty.
Is Christianity in trouble? Yes.
If that is challenged by pointing out that it is in trouble in Europe and the West in
general, but flourishing in Africa and some other regions, I would respond by
saying that the same secularizing tendencies and advance of scientific knowledge
that have put it in peril in the West will have to be dealt with wherever the
Church extends itself.
I suspect Christianity as an institutionalized religion is dying in the form in which
we have known it. But, perhaps the question, "Is Christianity Dying?’ is not the
best way to formulate the question. It would be better to ask as does Charles
Davis in the book he entitled What Is Living, What Is Dead in Christianity
Today? And I even prefer a further sharpening of the question: "What can
Christianity become for us?"
That is a crucial question and that is the really critical matter: What can this 200year-old religious tradition, through which and in which we have been formed,
become for us?
To become a significant shaper of our lives and an ongoing, dynamic faith
tradition, Christianity must undergo a major creative transformation. Continuing
on its present course in fundamentalist form, or even in strongly orthodox or
timidly mainline expression, Christianity will not continue.
Let’s probe this question and as we do, I will do as I have been driven to do
throughout this series - I will focus on the phenomenon of religion because,
obviously, Christianity is a religion and to examine it, we must be clear about the
nature of religion.
© Grand Valley State University
�Is Christianity Dying?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
Lest you forget, I say again; religion is a construct of the human mind. We create
religions as human beings.
A religion is a humanly constructed symbol system that provides an orientation
for our lives, supplying us with a map for negotiating life’s passages, offering us
an interpretation of culture, history, human action and the transcendent Mystery
of our existence.
Feuerbach in the 19th century saw religion as a human invention arising out of the
human situation of need and threat. In Feuerbach’s understanding, God was
simply a human projection of one’s own idealized self.
We have recognized the genius of Feuerbach’s analysis of religion, but we have
demurred at one critical point; we have claimed that the creation of religion on
the part of humankind is the consequence of a prior address from beyond or from
our depths, an address that puts us in question, that calls forth our response in
the form of religious faith, devotion and practice.
Religious faith or awe or wonder or fear is response to an experience of some
Reality. Charles Davis writes,
The reality experienced in faith does not manifest itself as an object. It
reveals itself as the term of a feeling response but remains hidden from us
or unknown inasmuch as it does not appear to consciousness as an
apprehensible object. ... feelings rest upon a oneness between the subject
and what is felt.... Feelings are responses springing from what we are.
They are responses of our being to reality as we meet it. Our feeling
responses depend upon what we have become as beings, what we are as
persons. Feelings are the resonance of reality upon human subjects, the
arousal of our personal being through union with a reality present to us. In
the case of religious feeling, the response of our spiritual effectivity to
transcendent reality precedes knowledge and continues without any direct
knowledge of a kind that would make the term of that response a known
object. The reality that draws us where our own being falls off into
nothingness, the reality that gives a sense of basic fulfillment at the center
of our emptiness, remains outside our intellectual grasp. (pp. 9-10)
Feuerbach’s claim that religion is a merely human activity with no referent
beyond the human subject remains an unproven and unprovable assertion. The
same is true for the claim I make that faith is response to that which encounters
us, to the Mystery that meets us, but can never be grasped because it remains
hidden.
This is the watershed; the great Divide. But the claims are beyond verification;
each of us must decide if we believe we are addressed by Someone, Something
beyond us, or, conjuring up a fiction.
© Grand Valley State University
�Is Christianity Dying?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
To conclude the latter is the end of religion as a viable, meaningful human
activity; to conclude the former sees the variety of religions and religious beliefs
and practices as modes of response to a Reality beyond us, although present to
us. And that is our claim.
That being the case, we can see Christianity as a human creation in response to
the Mystery as manifested in Jesus of Nazareth.
In sum: we affirm the Mystery we term God and we affirm the nature of that
Mystery as defined in Jesus, the concrete, human, historical expression of the
Mystery.
Well, perhaps you breathe a sigh of relief; Christianity is then a genuine article, a
faith response to the Mystery of Reality, to God. And that is true enough, except it
is not the only religious response to the Mystery; religion is a universal
phenomenon of humankind. Are we prepared to say that our response in the
Christian tradition is the only response that reveals the Mystery and mediates a
saving, healing communion?
That’s one question; but there is a second: Has the tradition faithfully and
adequately responded in light of the ongoing drama of creation and human
development?
Let’s deal with the second question first and let us be reminded of the temptation
to which all religion in institutional form is subject, the temptation to freeze a
given form and absolutize it, denying the dynamic movement of history and
human development, and thus denying the imperative that the religious symbol
system remain open to re-symbolization, to fresh expression and new forms.
I chose the scripture lessons with this tendency of religious institutions to
absolutize themselves in mind.
A late seventh century B.C.E. prophet in Judah surveyed the moral and spiritual
life of his people and found it wanting. Habakkuk, in the prophetic book that
bears his name, cries out to the God of Israel,
O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
and you will not listen?
Or cry to you, "Violence!"
and you will not save?
In a word, the prophet cries out to God to do something to turn the nation from
its spiritual decay. The writing goes on to record the Lord’s response - the work
becomes a dialogue between God and the prophet. God’s response:
© Grand Valley State University
�Is Christianity Dying?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
... a work is being done in your days that you would not believe if you were
told.
We learn that Judah is indeed in for judgment and that to be inflicted by the great
and growing power of Babylon. Thus Habakkuk has his answer: God is doing
something, but now the prophet has a larger problem. How can the God of Israel
utilize a pagan power to bring judgment on God’s chosen people? Judah had
strayed from God’s ways and the prophet sought God’s movement to judge and
through judgment bring grace. But Babylon or, as they are called in the text, the
Chaldeans? No way! That was too much. Israel was God’s chosen; Judah was
God’s special people. Habakkuk simply could not conceive of God raising up a
foreign power against God’s own.
That attitude was always present in the tradition of Israel and always challenged
by Israel’s own prophetic voice. It is such an attitude that was attached by John
the Baptism who called the Jewish people to repentance on the banks of the
Jordan River outside Jerusalem.
It was the first century C.E., a time of apocalyptic expectations, a time of great
ferment and expectation of some dramatic in-breaking of God ringing down the
curtain of history. John the Baptist, like Habakkuk before him, was a fiery
preacher of judgment calling God’s people to repent and prepare to meet their
God.
But the party line of the religious establishment resented such radical preaching
and the exposing of their spiritual and moral apathy. Were they not God’s elect,
immune to God’s purging action? No, claims John the Baptist.
Do not begin to say to yourselves, "We have Abraham as our ancestor;"
for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to
Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees... Luke 3:8-9
Jesus, too, ran headlong into the religious establishment, the guardians of the
institutional forms and traditions of Israel. Luke tells us of the Palm Sunday
procession to Jerusalem. The disciples are praising God with joy and no doubt
displaying a festive holiday spirit. The Pharisees tell Jesus to make them cease
their celebration, to which Jesus responds,
... if these were silent, the stones would shout out.
And Luke tells us, Jesus came over the crest of the hill and saw Jerusalem in full
view and he wept. He wept for what he saw as the inevitable horror that would
befall the city because of the mind-set, the spiritual blindness he had encountered
in the Temple establishment, which was also the center of political power.
© Grand Valley State University
�Is Christianity Dying?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for
peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. ... you did not recognize
the time of your visitation from God. ...Luke 19:41-44
What is my point?
Simply this: Religion is a human construction in response to an address from
beyond, an encounter with the Mystery of Reality that becomes present in the
consciousness of humankind. All religious response is not the same, offering
equal clarity or illumination, resulting in equal fruitfulness in human lives. Some
responses are the result of penetrating insight, the Gift of the Spirit. Some have
less of beauty and elevating capacity, but no religion is absolute; none is without
human limitation and distortion. And none is absolutely essential for the
unfolding of the Mystery of the cosmic drama.
Let me expand on that for a moment. I raise the question, "Is Christianity
Dying?" in this message. I would never have conceived of such a question when I
arrived here in 1960, nor when I returned in 1971. To contemplate the demise of
Christianity would have been beyond the boundaries of my thinking. Jesus was
God’s supreme and last word; Christianity the one true religion, the result not of
human construction, but totally of God’s revealing. History was moving toward
an End at which point Jesus Christ would appear on earth and bring in the
Kingdom of God.
It never occurred to me that such simplistic thinking was one more instance of
Habakkuk’s horror at the thought of Babylon breaking Judah, or John’s
opponents who said, "Hey, we have Abraham as our father," or the religious
establishment who refused God’s visitation in Jesus.
Neither was I at all aware of the uncritical arrogance of such a position;
o
The arrogance of assuming God’s ways were synonymous with the
human religious response of my tradition;
o
The arrogance of assuming no other human religious response
could be the consequence of a genuine encounter with God;
o
The arrogance of assuming God’s ultimate purposes could not be
accomplished apart from my religious system.
It just never occurred to me. In spite of the prophetic core of the Hebrew
Scriptures and the ministry of Jesus in his own conflict with the established
religious structure, I failed to see that I had made an idol of my own tradition and
absolutized it, as though God had created it rather than recognizing it as a human
creation of response.
© Grand Valley State University
�Is Christianity Dying?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
That it is a human response, a human construct does not mean that it is not
response to authentic encounter, that the encounter has not yielded genuine
insight into the nature of the Mystery as gracious, nor that the structured
response does not mediate healing grace. All of that, I believe, is true of our
Christian faith tradition; all of that has indeed been the fruit of Christianity.
But, it is not the only tradition; it is not alone the true glimpse of the Truth.
Earlier I raised two questions: Has Christianity faithfully and adequately
responded to the Light of the ongoing drama of Creation and human
development, and is it the only response that is genuine response to the Mystery?
To the second question, I answer "No." To the first "Yes" and "No." Yes,
Christianity has been a faithful response mediating true insight and grace, but
"No," in the sense that it has become frozen, absolutized itself and failed to
continue to remain open to new knowledge requiring new symbols bearing fresh
understanding of the Mystery that is God, the cosmic process, the meaning of
human existence and the wonder of it all.
Unless Christianity undergoes creative transformation, it will die. In a recent
interview in The Christian Century, a Yale professor of the philosophy of religion
speaks of the failure of Christianity any longer to provide the integration of all
other elements of life. Louis Dupré contends,
... religion must in some way integrate the profane and the sacred.
Obviously, Christianity no longer plays an integrating role in the life of
modern societies. Certainly for most people in the West, especially in
Western Europe, it has lost its creative, formative power. Christianity has
become simply one element of civilization among many others, and by no
means the most important. In the past religious integration was handed
down by a tradition. But that tradition itself has lost its authority in the
eyes of our contemporaries, including most believers. (July 16-23, 1997, p.
655)
Dupré sketches a historical perspective much as we have been attempting in this
series. Why, he was asked, is it especially difficult to be Christian in our time? To
that question, he responds,
Culture as a whole has become secular in a way that it has never been
before. One may plausibly argue that the 18th century was the first nonChristian century. Most leading thinkers and artists, even if they were not
opposed to Christianity, ceased to take their inspiration from it:
secularization became dominant. Still, even at that time, Western culture
was so penetrated by Christian values and ideas that one might mistake
entire passages of Voltaire or Diderot as having been written by believing
Christians. Eighteenth-century culture was still steeped in a tradition that
had been Christian since its beginning, and it was extremely difficult for
these thinkers to free themselves from a language saturated with religion.
© Grand Valley State University
�Is Christianity Dying?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
The 19th century was different. It was an epoch marked by a virulent
antitheistic campaign to clean the culture slate of all Christian traces. Yet
these attacks were the work of an elite; culture at large retained distinct
remnants of its Christian roots.
Even today ties still exist between Christianity and culture in Europe and
more so in the U.S.. But on a more fundamental level, the West appears to
have said its definitive farewell to a Christian culture. Little of the old
hostility remains. Our secular colleagues are happy to recognize the debt
our civilization owes to the Christian faith to the extent that the faith,
having been absorbed by culture itself, has become simply another cultural
artifact. Christianity has become an historical factor subservient to a
secular culture rather than functioning as the creative power it once was.
The new attitude of benign atheism was, I think, prepared in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries by the three most prominent secularizers of the
time, Marx, Freud and Nietzche.
The interviewer then asks:
Why single them out? How did they differ from the earlier atheists you
mention?
For Marx, Freud and Nietzche, the idea of forcibly eradicating religion had
become unnecessary. Religion for them was a passing symptom that was
rapidly vanishing by itself. Already Marx had moved beyond the idea of
atheism as a mere assertion of the unreality of God. For Marx,
concentrating on atheism distracts us from the positive task of liberating
humanity from social oppression. Lenin’s active atheism, in which he used
the state to try to destroy religion, is actually a fallback to earlier attitudes
about religion. Freud admitted that no one can be forced not to believe.
But as rational thought shows nothing in favor of religion and everything
against it, to persist in a faith because no argument can decisively refute it
is for Freud the sign of a lazy mind. Nietzche preached a spiritual gospel, a
new religion without God, beyond Christianity and atheism, that could still
learn much from the old faiths.
Moving further in that direction, contemporary secular culture, especially
in its communications media, shows a surprising openness toward
religion. But little suggests that this interest surpasses the purely
horizontal cultural level. Culture itself has become the real religion of our
time, and it has absorbed all other religion as a subordinate part of itself. It
even offers some of the emotional benefits of religion, without exacting the
high price faith demands. We have all become atheists, not in the hostile,
antireligious sense of an earlier age, but in the sense that God no longer
matters absolutely in our closed world, if God matters at all.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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Further along in the interview, Dupré suggested what I believe will be essential if
Christianity is to be renewed and find new and vital expression. He had spoken of
the necessity of individual spiritual renewal and then the statement was made,
Your view of the spiritual life seems to encourage interfaith encounter.
He responded,
In our age we have come to understand our faith within the context of the
aspirations, desires and needs expressed in so many forms since the
beginning of the human race. We have learned to respect these many ways
of humankind’s longing for God in the light of our own faith. Some
Christians have been inspired to integrate pious attitudes and meditative
practices derived from other faiths within their own, without betraying
Christianity’s unique identity. In doing so they are following ancient
examples. Christians have received so much from the Hebrew mother faith
of which they are no longer aware. Also from the fourth century on, Greek
fathers generously borrowed Neoplatonic speculation to an extent that, via
Gregory of Nyssa, Dionysius and Maximum Confessor, late Greek piety has
shaped the very nature of Christian mysticism. Why should we then not be
allowed, as even the desert fathers were, to borrow meditative exercises
that centuries of pre-Christian practice have left us?
In fact, here also the analogy of faith urges us to see the existence of other
religions in the light of God’s providence. Buddhist silence may help the
Christian in deepening insight into the mystery of the Trinity where the
Father is the silent source of the eternal Word. And how could God’s
omnipresence in Vedantic Hinduism not remind the Christian of the
Spirit, qui replevit orbem terrarum—who fills the entire world? Such
analogies cannot be fortuitous to the Christian mind, and we do well to
heed them as signs of a divine Providence that, with loving care, rules not
only Christians but all humans.
It would be wrong, however, to regard these analogies as justifying a
syncretistic relativism that entitles each person to compose his or her own
religious collage. This attitude, all too common today, shows a lack of
respect not only for one’s own faith but also for those faiths one so casually
dismantles for spare parts. It is yet another manifestation of that radical
anthropocentrism, the main enemy of sincere religion, that tempts
believers to bring the language of transcendence down to the level of
purely human wants and choice. Without detracting from the providential
nature of other faiths, Christians cannot ignore the fact that this same
Providence has led them to a faith that is not a "choice" but, for those
chosen to it, an absolute summons. To relativize faith is, I think, to subvert
its fundamentally divine character.
Here I think Dupré points to that which we have begun to experience -
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
Page 9
that encounter with other genuine faith traditions not only leads us to a
new respect for the breadth of response to the Mystery in the broad
spectrum of religious traditions, but also deepens us in our own faith
tradition and enhances our own spiritual experience, enriching it and
authenticating it as indeed revelatory and the mediator of grace.
What we are recognizing is the distinction between faith as response to the
address of God, the Mystery of our existence, and the structure of beliefs that
are formulated in response to that revelatory encounter. Such a formulation of
beliefs is the human construction of a religious tradition. The encounter is
initiated from the other side. Religion is the consequence, a human activity of
reflection and the attempt to give some shape to the experience of the Mystery. In
the words of Charles Davis,
The absoluteness of faith is the absoluteness of total demand and total
response in an experience of unrestricted love in relation to hidden
transcendence or mystery. Faith is the drive toward transcendence, the
thrust of human beings out of and beyond themselves, out of and beyond
all the limited orders and human certainties under which they live, in an
attempt to open themselves to the totality of existence and reach unlimited
reality and ultimate value. It is a total response to the felt reality of a total
demand. That absoluteness of faith should not be confused with a
certitude of belief. (p. 67)
Faith, Davis points out, gives assurance of a lived relationship, not absolute
intellectual certitude. The human construction of religion takes the form of
concepts and propositions. These cannot give absolute certitude; they are human
constructs, not to be identified with the Divine. They are pointers, gropings,
partial, limited, in a word - human.
As David claims,
Faith has a paradoxical character. It is a presence that is at the same time
an absence, because no positive experience can lay hold of the
transcendent. At the heart of faith is a negative experience, an experience
that seems like a non-experience, because it is the breakdown of every
finite experience, of all our concepts, images and feelings. Faith follows a
narrow path between idolatry on the one side and nihilism on the other.
Much religion is idolatrous inasmuch as it absolutizes some finite
experience or expression. When faith is not idolatrous, it is difficult to
distinguish from nihilism, because the presence it mediates is as
transcendence, an absence on the human level, its plentitude is a void or
emptiness of finite reality and meaning, its love co-exists with a sense of
abandonment. What distinguishes the negative experience of faith from
the unfaith of nihilism is precisely the refusal of closure, the willingness to
accept a world without boundaries, even though on the cognitive level that
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
Page10
demands the surrender of a stable truth, a fixed center, a final meaning of
our religious texts and of our human existence. (p. 76)
Is Christianity dying?
In its present form, unless it undergoes creative transformation, "Yes."
But, God is not dead; the Mystery continues to breathe through the whole cosmic
process, enlivening all that exists, beckoning us toward fuller spiritual life. And
the concretization of the Mystery in the humanness of Jesus, in which our faith
tradition finds its center, still challenges us to humane existence lived in the
Presence of God.
This is the amazing possibility to which this incredible moment in our life
together calls us; this is the opportunity of a lifetime. We are cut loose, set free,
not to separate ourselves from our spiritual heritage, but to open ourselves to a
whole new appreciation of the encounter from beyond ourselves, calling us
beyond every limited understanding and formulation to wonders not yet dreamed
of.
Thus, Christianity will not die, but live, transformed, standing in continuity with
the heritage of faith we have entered into, continuing to provide us with insight,
meaning and confident assurance.
Its authentication will be its capacity to connect with our ongoing human
experience. No longer will authoritarian claims, whether of tradition, Church, or
Bible, be submitted to. That is not to deny the reality of divine revelation; it is
simply to recognize in Davis’ words, that
The appeal to revelation belongs to a culture in which the important truths
concerning human life and society are handed down by teachers having
authority and are proclaimed for acceptance as sacred.
Such a culture no longer exists for us. Post Enlightenment, the appeal is rather to
critical rationality and that presupposes an open community of discourse in
which all the members participate in seeking knowledge and in which any claim
to acceptance must rest upon evidence and argumentation open to scrutiny and
criticism by all.
Biblical criticism will not be reversed. We simply know, as Davis declares,
The typical biblical book does not come down to us all of a piece from
some acknowledged prophetic figure or divine messenger, but as the
documentary sediment of the history of a people, with originating factors
too complex for disentanglement with more than changing probability.
This has changed our understanding of the authority of a biblical text. It is
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Richard A. Rhem
Page11
not that of an oracle from on high but that of an expression of the religious
identity of a particular people. (p. 110)
Nevertheless, what we find in the Bible are paradigms of faith, expressions of the
total response of persons and a community of persons whose experience of
having been addressed elicits the absoluteness of trust in the Mystery of grace.
Habakkuk found himself in turmoil over the ways of God; his parochialism was
shattered; he did not pretend to understand. But his encounter with the Holy One
of Israel issued in that beautiful expression of trust with which his writing
concludes. In a word, he says, "Strip me of everything, let disaster come;
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation. God,
the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, and
makes me tread upon the heights.
Such trust is absolute, even when life is confusing and answers to our questions
evade us.
Such trust is enough in life, in death.
References:
Charles Davis, Interview, The Christian Century, July 16-23, 1997, p. 655f).
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/db1c0b8c4e1d51a10971cd4c559cc50d.mp3
08823404cd64b316f074b5e2c0838f97
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
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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
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost XII
Series
Tough Questions: No Easy Answers
Scripture Text
Habakkuk 1:1-5, 3:17-19, Luke 3:1-9, 19:37-38
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Charles Davis, Interview, The Christian Century, July 16-23, 1997, p. 655f.
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-0-19970810
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1997-08-10
Title
A name given to the resource
Is Christianity Dying?
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 August 10, 1997 entitled "Is Christianity Dying?", as part of the series "Tough Questions: No Easy Answers", on the occasion of Pentecost XII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Habakkuk 1:1-5, 3:17-19, Luke 3:1-9, 19:37-38.
Mystery
Nature of Religion
Pluralism
Religion as a Human Construct