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“I Thirst”
From the series: The Seven Last Words From the Cross
Text: John 19:28
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Lent V, March 20, 1994
Transcription of the spoken sermon
"After this Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the
scripture), "I thirst." John 19:28
"I thirst," the fifth word from the cross, is as the fourth word is, a word of
suffering. Certainly it is an expression of physical suffering, and we're told by
some who have experienced it that there is perhaps no greater physical anguish
than to suffer thirst. But the word from John, we have learned, is always layered.
Certainly John would point to the terrible physical torment of Jesus. But we’ve
come to know from John that the word is never there at its purely literal or
simplistic level. John always has something more symbolic to say. Note for a
moment, if you would, the contrast of John's lens with the lenses of Mark and
Matthew and Luke. That's been the special angle of vision we've been trying to
sort out in this Lenten series: to use the words of the cross as lenses through
which the respective Evangelists understood the meaning of the depth of Jesus.
These Evangelists, as we have said, were not journalists working for the
Jerusalem Times. They weren't court reporters getting down every word. They
were portrait painters. They were novelist, theologians. They were giving us an
interpretation of what was happening. And I think we get an insight into their
understanding of what was happening by the words they put into the mouth of
Jesus as he's dying – in this case, the word "I thirst."
Note for a moment, the contrasting pictures that we get from John as opposed to
the other three. Don't hear me saying that one is right and the other is wrong.
Hear me saying that they're different because they are being viewed through a
different lens. These are interpretations. For example, last week, we spoke of the
word from Mark and Matthew, "My God, My God, Why hath thou abandoned
me?" In Mark (which we believe to be the earliest of the four gospels) and in
Matthew, this is Jesus' only word. It is a picture of the utter spiritual dereliction
and abandonment of Jesus at the time of his crucifixion. Not so in John. In
John's gospel, the dying Jesus is in charge as he has been in charge throughout
the whole portrait that John paints of Jesus. You remember in the tenth chapter
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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of John, the Good Shepherd passage, Jesus says no one takes my life from me; I
lay it down. Jesus is active in the discharge of his ministry, of his mission. John's
Jesus is a Jesus who is in control of the circumstances. And when he says, "I
thirst," Jesus is triggering something more than simply expressing his physical
anguish. Now the Jesus that John tells us about, again in contrast to the
synoptics Matthew, Mark, and Luke, is a Jesus who when he comes to the crunch
(spoken of by John as "the hour") says, "now is the hour and what shall I say,
Father remove this from me? No for this hour came I forth. Father, glorify your
name." And in the Garden of Gethsemane there is no prayer as in Matthew, Mark,
and Luke, "Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me." Rather, in John
there is simply the arrest in the garden. Peter draws his sword, hacks off an ear of
one of those who have come to arrest Jesus, and Jesus reproves him. Jesus says,
"The cup that the Father has given me, shall I not drink it?"
Do you feel the difference? To the other gospel writers the picture is of a Jesus
who is still struggling against the inevitability. John's picture is of one who says,
"Father glorify your name, the hour is here. Let's go through with it. Give me the
cup. I must drink the cup." What cup? The cup of suffering, the cup
representative of God's will for Jesus’ life following faithfully through all the way.
That cup. But cup? That's interesting, isn't it, to speak of it as a cup. There's a cup
there. Where does that cup come from? Well, it comes from the Old Testament
feast of Passover, doesn't it? John's Jesus is the Passover lamb. Not for Matthew,
Mark, and Luke. The timing of the crucifixion in John is different from the other
three. The other three have Jesus celebrating the Passover with his disciples on
the night before he was betrayed. John has a different chronology. For John,
Jesus is crucified at the very hour when the Passover lambs are being slaughtered
at the temple because for John Jesus does not eat the Passover. Jesus is the
Passover.
What was the Passover? The people of Israel are slaves in Egypt. Pharaoh is
abusing and oppressing them, the sons and daughters of Jacob. God calls Moses
and says, "Take my people out of there." So Moses goes to the Pharaoh and the
Pharaoh says, "No Way, José." God says, "O.K. we'll start a little action." The
plagues. Do you remember the ten plagues? Do you remember what the tenth one
was? The first born of every household would be slain by the Angel of Death.
What would the Angel of Death do? The Angel of Death would pass over the
houses of the people of Israel. That's where we get the name Passover. The Angel
of Death passing over. Well, how did the Angel of Death know if it was an
Egyptian or an Israelite household? The Israelites were prepared by Moses, who
got the word from God.
What were they to do? They were to get ready to go, ready to move out, and they
were to have a final feast. The central element of the feast was to be a lamb, a
lamb roasted whole, no bones broken. And with a branch of hyssop they were to
sprinkle the blood of this lamb on their doorposts, so that when the Angel passed
over the Israelites, their first-born would be spared. Every year after that, Israel
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kept Passover, which was a feast, a celebration. What were they celebrating? Sins
forgiven? No, liberation. Freedom. The exodus was perhaps the first great
freedom flight in history, and Moses was that revolutionary leader that led God's
people out of the house of bondage into freedom and toward the Promised Land.
Every year when Israel celebrated the pass-over, there were several cups of wine.
And after the final cup of wine, the feast was over.
Now John has Jesus on the cross saying, "I'm thirsty." Is John telling us simply
that Jesus was thirsty? That Jesus was suffering terrible physical anguish? Yes,
but in this important document in which John is talking about eternal life, do you
suppose in that account John would stop simply to have Jesus say, "I'm thirsty"
to note a physical thirst? Might there be something more going on? Do you note
in the text that we read how Jesus got his thirst quenched? Vinegar. The other
gospels say wine. Whatever it was, how did he receive it? On a hyssop. Hyssop,
the same sort of hyssop that the Israelites used to sprinkle the lamb’s blood on
their doorposts. Do you think it possible that John was making all of those
associations so that we might see that his intention was to present Jesus at this
point as symbolic of the Lamb of Liberation? The Jesus who is always in control
in John's gospel, who says, "No one takes my life from me, I lay it down of my
own free will. I do it for my love for the sheep" et cetera, et cetera. This Jesus
now, becoming aware that it was all finished, says, "I thirst." I think John was
showing us a Jesus in control, who knew now that the work was done. The hour
had gone. The hour was there. He had been lifted up. God was being glorified. He
said, "I am thirsty," which was another way of saying, "Give me the cup. I am
ready to drink it now. I am ready to drain it. I am ready to drain it to the final
dregs."
Now I suspect that every time you have ever heard this word preached on over
the years the concentration has been on the physical suffering of Jesus. I want to
suggest to you that the physical suffering of Jesus is real. And Jesus as a human
being really suffered and that's not unimportant. That's why the creed says,
"suffered under Pontius Pilot, was dead and buried."
Because one of the greatest challenges to the central understanding of the early
church about Jesus and what Jesus did, one of the greatest challenges was the
heresy of Gnosticism. Gnosticism believed that matter was evil, and that God
could never become entangled with matter. And so the Gnostic denied
incarnation, that God could be identified with human flesh, that the word was
made flesh. Gnosticism said Jesus walked on the beach but left no footprints. The
Gnostic said Jesus' spirit had already left him when he was put on the cross
because God could not be identified with that kind of suffering, that kind of
material human flesh.
The early church said "no" to that. This was a man. This man really suffered so
the physical suffering is not to be devalued. Some Latin American Catholics, this
time of year, parade a crucifix through town, and the pilgrims actually flagellate
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themselves and draw blood in order to identify with the physical sufferings of
Jesus. It works for some who have been raised in that, for whom that conveys real
meaning. But I want to suggest that probably, at further review, it's spiritually,
emotionally, and psychologically unhealthy. In Protestantism we have our own
ways of flagellation. We don't carry the crucifix, but we sing awful hymns. They
are full of our vileness, our unworthiness, and of Jesus' awful suffering.
I suspect, however, that if you read through the Lenten hymns, the text of the
Lenten hymns, which are so familiar that we don't even think about them, in all
honesty you would have to say, "no." "No, It doesn't really bring tears to my eyes.
I only say that in a song." The physical suffering is not to be devalued but the
physical suffering is not to be exaggerated either because that misses the point of
what was happening in the death of Jesus.
I do not believe that the death of Jesus was a religious event. I do not believe the
death of Jesus was something that happened between Jesus and God for the
salvation of the world. More and more, I am believing that the death of Jesus was
a political event. The death of Jesus was the consequence of the way he lived,
because the way he lived was a threat to the institutionalized religious hierarchy
and the structure of his society.
Jesus sought the liberation of people. Jesus sought to break all forms of human
bondage. That's what John is telling us when he makes Jesus the Passover lamb.
Jesus was doing for the whole world what Moses did for Israel. Jesus was doing
for the whole world what happened when the slaves were set free from the house
of bondage in Pharaoh's Egypt. John understood the death of Jesus as a
liberating act, as the culmination of a life that had called people to human dignity
and to human rights and to freedom.
Jesus' life was not, first of all, a religious life, the life of some aesthetic or some
monk. Jesus, in the name of God and in communion with God, with a vision that
he felt he received from God and a call and a claim upon his life by God, sought to
liberate people, sought to bring dignity to people, sought to include the excluded
ones. He sought to touch the lepers, to break down the barriers and all of the
exclusivism that ruled people out. And because he did that, they killed him. Jesus
was the Passover lamb.
And now he said, "I'm thirsty" in order to trigger the final cup and to empty it,
and to complete his work, his work of human liberation. He knew it was now
over. He had done what he could do and now it was in God's hands. That's the
real nature of Jesus' suffering. The physical suffering should not be devalued but
the focus on the physical suffering, and to try to identify oneself with a poor
broken Jesus, is to privatize it, to individualize it, to spiritualize it, and to fail to
realize that Jesus lived radically in this world.
Jesus lived in order to change the world. Jesus lived in order to set people free
from political bondage and from religious structures that bind, and from every
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form that devalued and dehumanized the person. It was a political act, and it
happened in the world.
The best example I know in the twentieth century was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. About
once a year I get this book out. This book cannot be replaced. It's sacred to me. As
you know, it kept me alive in Europe: Letters and Papers from Prison.
Bonhoeffer joined a group that conspired to assassinate Hitler and was
imprisoned when the plot failed. And, as you know, on April 8, 1945 he was hung.
Bonhoeffer tells in these Letters about how he talked with a French pastor whose
goal was to be a saint. And Bonhoeffer said, "I respected him even though I
disagreed with him." But he said, "I myself thought that I could acquire faith by
trying to live a holy life," in other words, the whole religious thing. He says, "It
was at that period in my ministry that I wrote The Cost of Discipleship". And he
said, "I still stand by that book, but I would make some changes now.” Now he
has sat in prison. Now he has seen the world explode. Now he has faced the awful
hellish demon of Nazism, and he says, "I am discovering up to this very moment
that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to believe. One
must abandon every attempt to make something of oneself. Whether it be a saint,
or a converted sinner, or a churchman, a righteous or unrighteous one. This is
what I mean by worldliness. Taking life in one's stride and all its duties and
problems, its successes and failures, its experiences and helplessness. It is such a
life," he says, "in which we throw ourselves into the arms of God and participate
in the sufferings of the world." Here he was in prison for a political act because of
his religious conviction and he says, "I don't want to be religious. I want to be
worldly in the sense of participating in the world, in the things that God is about,
in the causes of human liberation." Then he says, "Then I join the sufferings in
this world, and I watch with Christ in Gethsemane."
To be a Christian does not mean to be religious in a particular way, to cultivate
some particular form of asceticism, but to be a person, a human being. It is not
some religious act, which makes the Christian what he or she is, but participation
in the sufferings of God, in the life of this world. That was tough business. That
was tough business for Bonhoeffer. For him to be a follower of Jesus was to join a
political conspiracy to assassinate Hitler. See, it had nothing to do with the
sanctuary or the altar. It had to do with the life of this world. It had to do with
what goes on in Washington and Beijing and the power centers of the world. It's
not easy.
Bonhoeffer wrote lines that are the most moving that I know of because I suppose
they speak to me, in the poem "Who Am I?" And he tells about how others say,
"My goodness, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, you are so full of joy, so full of power, of
hope, you are such a strong man, and they clung to him in prison. But he says,
"To myself, Oh, I am weak, full of fear, and trembling. Who am I, this or the
other? Am I one person today and tomorrow another? Am I both at once, a
hypocrite before others and before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?
© Grand Valley State University
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Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions. Whoever I am, Oh God, thou
knowest I am thine."
I think that is a modern story of what Jesus was about. He suffered but he might
have said, “The physical anguish of thirst was nothing compared with the
torment within my soul. I believed God called me. Did God call me? Did I get it
right? Why me? Who am I? Who am I to turn over institutions and traditions?
Who am I? Have I got it right?” It's not easy to stick with one's conviction and to
live by one's vision. It's much easier to fold up one's tent and fade off into the
sunset.
Sometimes I wonder about some of you who stick with the church. Why do you
do it? Sometimes I wonder about myself. There certainly would be more peaceful
ways to live one's life. Why care? Why make an issue? Why stick to one's guns?
Bonhoeffer refers to Luther, who was called to account because of the oppression
of the church and he said, "Here I stand, I can do no other." Can do no other, yet
you could have done other, Martin Luther. You could have said, "Forget it." You
could have said, "Oh, have it your way." But somehow or other he couldn't. He
had to say, "Here I stand. I can do no other."
Jesus certainly knew what he was about. Jesus undercut all of the sacred, solid,
secure ways by which the power leaders of society controlled the masses and
maintained their position. Like the article in the New York Times said, referring
to the lobbyists against Clinton's health care plan: The Gold Diggers Are Lining
Up In Washington. They're also jockeying for positions so that when it finally
comes down they will be in a position to cash in. That's what the world's about. It
is about power. It is about greed. It is about oppression and abuse and the
dehumanizing of people and the using of people for personal prerogatives. And
every once in a while there is a Bonhoeffer or a Mother Teresa or a Martin Luther
King. And they get killed, just like Jesus got killed.
Now Jesus said, "I'm thirsty." John said Jesus said, "I'm thirsty." What John is
really signaling to us is that Jesus was saying, "Give me the cup. Give me the cup.
I'll swallow it to the last drop because I know it's over, but, by God, I've lived my
truth."
If you really are serious about identifying with Jesus' suffering, I'll tell you what
you do. Don't go off in a closet with a hymnbook and read those awful hymns and
weep a while. Hear this word of Jesus: "If you would be my disciple, take up your
cross, and follow me." I've got to warn you it could prove very painful, but the end
thereof is joy inexpressible. What, greater possession could you possibly have
than your soul intact?
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Dublin Core
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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Interfaith worship
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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Event
Lent V
Series
The Seven Last Words of Christ
Scripture Text
John 19:28
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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1994-03-20
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I Thirst
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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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An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on March 20, 1994 entitled "I Thirst", as part of the series "The Seven Last Words of Christ", on the occasion of Lent V, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: John 19:28.
Inclusive
Lent
Liberation
Passover
Way of Jesus
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Suffering: The Need For Another
From the series: Job and Jesus: The Mystery of Human Suffering
Luke 22:14-24
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Maundy Thursday, April 8, 1993
Transcription of the spoken sermon
We can bear just about anything if we are not alone. We can go through just
about any valley if there’s someone to walk with us. Unless, of course, we are
accompanied by friends like Job had in his deep valley. We call them “miserable
comforters” because, although they started out well, by sitting silently for seven
days and simply being present to Job, they could not keep silence once Job began
to reveal the intensity and the depths and the darkness of the anguish that he was
experiencing. The real test of a friend is whether or not they can just absorb all of
that pain and darkness that sometimes erupts out of the human heart when it is
in the intensity of the dark night of the soul. Job’s friends couldn’t do that. They
began to protest against Job’s cries to heaven and his cries against heaven. I
suppose that it is because of the experience of a Job, for example, that most of us
live lives of quiet desperation, not really revealing who we are. And not really
bringing to expression the things that are in our depths.
I have a book on my shelf, an old book really, written by John Powell, Why Am I
Afraid To Tell You Who I Am? Well, of course, I know why I am afraid to tell you
who I am. If I really told you who I was, if I really dared to reveal myself, would
you still be able to embrace me? Could you still love me? Or, with Job’s friends,
would you begin to perhaps defend God, or whatever. Why Am I Afraid To Tell
You Who I Am? That’s part of the deep anguish of human suffering: to feel
isolated and alone with no one to whom to reach out and to reveal.
The anguish within. Jesus understood that. On that night in which he was
betrayed, he sat at table with his disciples. It may have been the Passover Feast or
it may have been the night before Passover. In any case we are told it was at the
time of Passover and it was that gathering around the table. I chose Luke’s story
because of what seems to be a rather peripheral side note I suppose, and yet it’s
the kind of thing I wanted to say tonight. Jesus sits at table and in the fifteenth
verse he says, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you.” In the
original the word is repeated. “I have desired with great desire.” Used once as a
noun and once as a verb, expressing the intensity of that desire, that yearning,
that longing.
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Richard A. Rhem
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Jesus knows now there is no question about what lies before him. So in this dark
night of his soul he gathers around him, with him, those whom he had come to
love and to whom he had given himself. He says, “I desire with such great desire
to celebrate this feast with you.” In our darkest moments we really need another.
If there is only someone to whom we can speak. To whom we can reveal
ourselves. With whom we can feel so safe that we know that there is nothing that
we can reveal about ourselves that will result in our being condemned or judged
or rejected. Then we can go through just about anything. Job’s friends proved
flawed at that point. Actually, Jesus’ friends did too because, when they went
from table to the garden, he said, “Stay with me and pray.” But they fell asleep.
We do let one another down so often at the point of our greatest need – that need
to know that we are not alone, that our darkness is shared, that our pain is being
absorbed by another, and that no matter what we are going through for whatever
reason there is still someone there with us. We can go through almost anything if
we are not alone.
It was appropriate that this series of Lenten midweek meditations conclude on
this night, the theme of which has been the Mystery of Human Suffering, because
Passover is really the Old Testament feast of liberation and freedom and
deliverance from the cauldron of human suffering. Sometimes I wonder how I
lived so long without seeing some things that are so very plain, but for some
reason or other I know that, in my growing up and in my training and many years
of my preaching, I have identified the Lord’s Supper with the death of Jesus for
our sin. I perceived it only as a feast of atonement, or a feast of celebration of
atonement. Now I believe that is not necessarily the case. A festival of atonement,
the Great Day of Atonement, was in the seventh month, the tenth day of the
month and it led into a harvest festival, the Feast of Booths, or the Feast of
Tabernacles. But that wasn’t Passover.
Passover was the annual celebration of the deliverance from Egypt. The Exodus
was that prime central event of salvation when God with mighty arm set God’s
people free from the house of bondage, from the slavery of Egypt. You read the
opening chapters of Exodus. You read how the cries of God’s people went up to
heaven. God heard their cry. The terrible suffering, which is duplicated all over
our globe tonight. The horrendous measures of a pharaoh whose power was
threatened by the growth of the population of a people. An oppressive ruler. An
absolute monarch, totally unfeeling. All of the anguish of that Hebrew situation in
Egypt is a paradigm of the ongoing suffering of humankind in the midst of
history, and finally God says, “Enough.” And God sets God’s people free. God says
to Moses, “Have the people roast a lamb and be ready to move because this is the
night of freedom. It is the deliverance from the oppressive human situation of
bondage.” God set God’s people free. That is the Old Testament experience to
which Jesus connects this meal that we celebrate tonight.
In the intensity of his own anguish, having suffered what he suffered – “My God,
if possible, lift this cup from me.” All of the darkness that he endured, all the
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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suffering that was his lot – all of that, gathered now and coming down in a heavy
shadow upon him, he gathers with those whom he loves. I wonder if he wondered
if this Passover he was celebrating, or was about to celebrate, was a sign that God
might do again then what God did in Egypt? Maybe so. Maybe he came to
conclude that it was not through his teaching, through his modeling out, but that
somehow or other he was going to effect the change that had to be effected in the
midst of that people, in his dying. We don’t really know, except that we know at
this point he knew inevitably that he would die. But would his death be the
means of deliverance and liberation? Would his death be the way by which Israel
would be set free, and then perhaps the whole world?
Human suffering is the constant chronicle of darkness. It was true in Egypt in
Pharaoh’s time. It was true in Jerusalem in Jesus’ time. It is true all over our
globe tonight. Yet we come to this Passover Lord’s Supper to remember, but also
to hope. To remember, to be sure. But the Passover in its initial celebration was a
feast with sandals and backpacks ready, of a people who were ready to move into
a new future. They were ready to go. They were coming out of darkness and they
were moving toward the light. They ate bitter herbs. They ate unleavened bread.
They didn’t forget that from whence they were going to depart, but they knew
that they were on their way to something new.
So, for us the Lord’s Supper is a Eucharistic feast. It is a feast of Thanksgiving
because we take bread and break it, we take the cup and pour it, and we know
that it cost the life of one who loved us and gave himself for us. But we know that
we do this hastily, hastening toward Easter and toward the light and toward
resurrection. So we come, perhaps in our darkness, but we come as a community
together because that’s what Jesus intended so that we would never have to be
alone. So that we could take one bread and drink from one cup and know that we
were bound together in community, in communion, because you can endure
almost anything if you are not alone. Jesus would make us brothers and sisters,
one of another, caring for one another, supporting one another, being there for
one another. Knowing that in this darkness the light will dawn, experiencing here
in the bread broken and the cup shared, the community in communion that will
enable us to move into the dawn of Easter.
I experienced the breaking of bread and the sharing of a cup in a remarkable way
a couple of months ago. Before I went on vacation I told you that a friend of many
of us, Ernie VanDam – Ernie and Doris who were here for many years – that
Ernie was on the threshold of death. I did not think by the time I got down there
he would be living. In fact I anticipated getting down there and coming back for
his funeral. We got down there and he had come home from the hospital with
tubes, sacks, bags and was a shadow of himself. But yet it was Ernie, irrepressible
Ernie. Then in the middle of our stay we had a call from a couple of other of our
people, Marilyn and Weldy Brumels, who wanted to stop and see Ernie. I said,
“Meet us at the gate and we’ll go in together,” because I had something up my
sleeve. I brought a shirt with clerical tabs along with me. Not to wear at the pool.
© Grand Valley State University
�Suffering: the Need for Another
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
(Laughter) But just in case. When we arrived at Ernie’s I said to Doris, “Open a
bottle of wine and give me some bread.” Then the six of us—with Ernie in his
hospital bed with sacks and tubes and things—we broke the bread, we shared the
cup. I hugged him; I kissed him. All of us were weeping together. Loving each
other. Made one with bread and cup.
I don’t know whether Ernie will be back here or not, but I know that together we
experienced the possibility in the darkness and the vulnerability and the
mortality of the human situation, of that which lifts and enables us to transcend
all of that. It happens at a rail like this, with a table like this and with people like
this.
You can go through almost anything if you are not alone.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2d992fc99977251c0e25d15c0a54e8e8.mp3
0853f52f2670acfc25b9e5b905e5f08d
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
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
Maundy Thursday
Series
Job and Jesus: The Mystery of Human Suffering
Scripture Text
Luke 22, 14-24
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-19930408
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-04-08
Title
A name given to the resource
Suffering: The Need For Another
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on April 8, 1993 entitled "Suffering: The Need For Another", as part of the series "Job and Jesus: The Mystery of Human Suffering", on the occasion of Maundy Thursday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Luke 22, 14-24.
Community of Faith
Empathy
Job
Passover
Suffering
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3aeb1da99a1b23368086d8f1980c0b97.mp3
eaf1999e48b447d216d28e09f18a0868
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e832f434b13602fb3edfeec7c26aa640.pdf
07ce538fb677fdfcd2d487f3bd88711d
PDF Text
Text
Eucharist: A Means of Grace, A Sign of Presence
From the series: The Sacramental Character of the Church
Text: Exodus 13:8; Mark 14:23-24
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Pentecost III, June 28, 1992
Transcription of the spoken sermon
You shall tell your child on that day, it is because of what the Lord did for me when I
came out of Egypt. Exodus 13:8
... This is my body. ...This is my blood... Mark 14:23-34
Jesus knew now that inevitably he would die. It must have filled him with all
kinds of questions. We know that he left the supper and went into the garden and
was stricken with grief - his soul full of anguish. We know on the cross he cried
out in dereliction, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Jesus was not
a marionette on a string, simply going through the motions as though he was
some invader from outer space, some extraterrestrial visitor who was sent down
by God to execute a certain plan and then return again. Jesus walked this way,
slugged it out in the genuineness of his human existence, fully faithful to the
vision, to the calling he understood himself to be called to. And now inevitably he
was going to die. Everything that he had claimed was seemingly crashing in
around his head. The New Testament scholar Edward Scheelebeeks says that at
least in this supper, at least in this moment, Jesus just had begun to appropriate
his death into whatever God was doing in him and through him. He must have
known now that, unless he had totally gotten his signals crossed, unless his life
would come to futility, somehow or other what God was doing, inaugurating
God’s rule would have to be comprehended in this inevitable death that loomed
before him.
It was Passover and as a faithful Jew, Jesus would keep Passover with his
disciples. As he gathered with them, feeling already the weight of the morrow, he
took the bread and blessed it and broke it and gave it to them and said, “This is
my body.” And when they completed the meal, he poured another cup and said to
them, “This is the covenant in my blood. And when you eat this bread and drink
this cup know that I am with you. Remember me.”
It must have been in reflecting on Jesus’ death and his resurrection and the
amazement of the encounter with the living Lord after Easter that the Church
© Grand Valley State University
�Eucharist, a Means of Grace…
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
began to formalize that meal. It was obviously in the pattern of the Old
Testament - God delivering Israel from the bondage of Egypt. Moses said to
Israel, each year on the anniversary of this deliverance celebrate this meal, this
Passover feast. And so they remembered and experienced again the deliverance
of God from the bondage of Egypt, and on the night in which he was betrayed,
Jesus at Passover time, gathered with his disciples around the table and gave that
Passover feast this twist that now it would be a remembrance of him, of his death
and of his life. And through two thousand years the Church, as its central act of
worship, gathered at the table, broke bread, poured the cup and remembered
Jesus.
Remembering is an important part of our human experience. This week as a
nation we will pause and remember the birth of this nation. For us the 4th of July
has lost some of its luster, I suppose. We don’t know tyranny and oppression, by
and large. Some of those who have just emerged from it will tell you how deeply
moved they are at the celebrations that remind them of their roots and their past,
able now again in the freedom that they know, to celebrate them with joy. But we
will pause and we will remember, and yet what we will do on the 4th of July is
really nothing compared to what Israel was called to do by Moses.
The understanding of that ritual, that celebration, in their experience, in the
categories of their thought, in their language, was to call them not simply to
remember an ancient event but, remembering, to bring it present, to represent it,
so that they could with each succeeding generation enter into that experience.
The youngest child had a part to play. We’ve celebrated Passover suppers here at
Christ Community during Holy Week, and the youngest child has a part to play
because that youngest child is to be incorporated into the experience. Not just
ancient history, but the present experience of being a people of God’s grace,
separately claimed. Each generation was to enter into the experience personally
to appropriate that which was celebrated with joy centuries before. Maybe the
closest we come to it is the spiritual, “Were You There When They Crucified Our
Lord? Were you there when he rose up from the grave?” Not simply to remember
something past, but, as it were, to bring it into the present - to experience its
power even here and now. That, I think, was the Hebrew experience of Passover
and is to this day. And that was the model on which Jesus, when he gathered with
his disciples at the table, was saying to them, I suspect: “I don’t know what in the
world God is doing but, somehow or other in my presence with you, God is
present to you and in this cup of fellowship, in this bread, we are one, and in
whatever future God has in store, I will be with you there as well. So take bread,
remember me. Take the cup. Know my presence.”
One of a former century wrote these words which I think are rich with imagery,
trying to grasp what it is that happens when we taken these elements.
The blood that we must drink or have no life in us, that precious blood of
Christ is not the blood of his poor crucified body. But it is of that body of
© Grand Valley State University
�Eucharist, a Means of Grace…
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
which he is the head and we are the members. It is the life’s blood that
flows from his heart of hearts into the veins of us his spiritual members. It
is the blood that is the very life of him who living by the Father drinks the
very wine of God and of heaven, and which becomes in us the very life of
God.
Sounds mystical. I don’t know quite how to understand that, but the intention
should be clear. Jesus gave us something that, like the Passover feast down
through generations, would incorporate each new child of covenant grace into the
experience of God’s grace.
The Church is a place where the means of grace are regularly offered. We speak of
baptism and the Eucharist or the Lord’s Supper - those two sacraments. There
are more I think. And we speak of the preached word as the means of grace: a
channel, a vehicle, a way by which somehow or other God’s grace becomes
tangible in our experience – a way beyond the idea and the truth of it to the
experience of it. A means of grace.
In the Church we have the baptismal font with its water, by which we are initiated
and have that sign of belonging. And we have this table set with bread and cup by
which we come to remember, but, in remembering, to experience the presence of
our Living Lord, who binds us together as brothers and sisters and sends us out
forgiven and renewed again, energized, enlivened with the life of God flowing
through us to be God’s people in the world. The Sacramental Character of the
Church: How can I preach? How can I use words that might enable you to
experience?
I said last week, I come to doubt preaching, preachers, and sermons when I see
the distortion. Oh dear friends, the distortion in the Church of the Word of God.
When I hear sermons that twist the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, I wonder if it
is not a time in the Church when we need a moratorium on preaching? Perhaps
we ought simply to come here and baptize our young and those who come to faith
and break bread, and drink the cup and hear the words, “I love you. This is my
body. This is my blood. You are forgiven, renewed, embraced by grace. You, for
all the world, for all time, just come here for a while without words.”
Our Reformation tradition was a reaction, of course, a necessary reaction, and
corrective at the time. And we claimed that we kept pulpit and table on the same
level, but we didn’t at all. The pulpit has loomed so large; the table has almost
faded into oblivion. I am so conditioned by that. The shelves of my library are a
parable: Last night I walked around them to my dismay. Although I knew it
already, I actually got up from my desk and looked. On the shelves are yards and
yards of books on preaching. Hardly six inches of books on the sacraments. I was
so frustrated - I could preach to you for a solid year on the Eucharist and not
mine the riches of its truth. I don’t even know where to begin. I don’t even know
how to do it. I am feeling - probing after something - the sacramental character of
the church! Our worship has been so anemic, so impoverished, and so noisy with
© Grand Valley State University
�Eucharist, a Means of Grace…
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
words. We have never learned to worship! And I find myself almost at a loss to
lead you into a fuller experience of grace. How can I enable you somehow or
other to taste and handle things on the scene? How do you experience God? How
does grace reach you? What setting? Some of you would tell me that grace
reaches you around the table of an AA meeting. Some of you might say simply to
come into this place, to hear the music begin, to see the candles flicker, to have
the table set. Some of you, simply feeling the body of the one next to you,
reminding you that you are not alone and you are part of a community. I don’t
know how to tell you. But I do know that there is in the experience of the
Eucharist a level of experience that does not come filtered through the head, but
is able to move down through the head and into the heart and into the gut. We
are so intellectually oriented, so word oriented, so impoverished in our worship.
How can I help you, maybe even this morning, to have some fresh experience of
grace made tangible?
I am moving in my own experience, to the frustration of some of you. It was said
not so long ago by a very fine member of this congregation, “By now Dick Rhem
ought to have his mind made up and know what he believes.” Not so. Oh, I know
in whom I believe, but there’s so much more. We have been so impoverished in
our experience, and as I said, I try myself to reach after it and find that it needs to
be more than a head-trip. There needs to be those means - those vehicles of grace
that can grasp us somewhere here so that grace become tangible.
Would you open your life to some new possibility? You have been so conditioned
to come here and hear a sermon. You have been so conditioned to be a spectator
in worship, to have something done to you and for you. Would you think that
there might be a richer experience of worship than you have ever yet
experienced? Could I invite you on a pilgrimage of opening your life to something
more than the noise of words, that just perchance there might be some touch of
grace? I understand the elders in Geneva in the 16th century. The Eucharistic
celebration had become encrusted with custom and superstition, and magic, and
abuse. I understand their reaction. I understand the elders of Geneva who said
that Eucharist would be celebrated only four times a year, and then it will be
special; then it will be exalted. I understand. But a great tragedy has stemmed
from that. For I feel the feast has not become so very special. The greater
consequence is that we lost our appetite for it. So many of us, born and bred on
sermons, could even do without it. I believe the Church is on a shaky foundation
if it lives by words alone. It is this water. It is that bread and that cup that keep us
right at the heart of it all: the grace of God incarnate in Jesus Christ our Lord,
who loved us and gave himself for us.
I remember, over fifty years ago, a Lord’s Day as though it were yesterday. I must
have been in kindergarten. I had gone to morning worship with my father and my
three sisters. It was Communion Sunday. We came home and my mother was
preparing dinner and my sisters were helping, and my father, as he often did, sat
in the rattan rocker on the huge screened-in porch that spanned the front of the
© Grand Valley State University
�Eucharist, a Means of Grace…
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
huge, huge old house we lived in, and child-like I bounced up to him and said,
“Daddy, when can I have that bread?” A child’s question moved him to tears and
he looked up at me and said, “I pray for the day you have bread.” And I heard him
tell that story time and time again. And I feel impoverished because I could not,
as my grandchildren can here, sit between my father and mother and take the
bread and take the cup. If only he could have taken me next Lord’s Day. If only I
could have knelt with my father and received the bread and heard the pastor say,
“Jesus loves you.” It would have been an impression more lasting even than that
front porch scene.
I am so thankful that we are learning to take bread and cup, opening our lives to a
dimension of the grace of God that comes in another way. I invite you to put away
your resistance, to short-circuit your presuppositions, to let go of all your former
experience and today for the first time take the bread, and take the cup and ask
God to make Jesus alive to you. I invite you.
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981-2014
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost III
Series
The Sacramental Character of the Church
Scripture Text
Exodus 13:8, Mark 14:23-24
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01_RA-0-19920628
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1992-06-28
Title
A name given to the resource
Eucharist: A Means of Grace, A Sign of Presence
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on June 28, 1992 entitled "Eucharist: A Means of Grace, A Sign of Presence", as part of the series "The Sacramental Character of the Church", on the occasion of Pentecost III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Exodus 13:8, Mark 14:23-24.
Eucharist
Grace
Jesus' Death
Passover
Sacrament
Worship