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The Church in Conflict – Can Non-Believers Be Saved?
Richard A. Rhem
Minister of Preaching and Theological Inquiry
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Prepared Text for the Address to
The Synod of the Mid-Atlantic, Reformed Church in America
To be delivered at Ramapo, New Jersey
October 4, 1996
Editor’s Note: See “Regarding the Conflict About Christian Exclusivity” for the
edited transcript of the spoken address followed by questions & answers.
Let me begin by saying that we are focused on the wrong question; the issue is
not whether non-believers can be saved, but rather, whether those who yearn for
God and seek God can experience God's gracious embrace outside the revelation
of that grace as it has appeared in Jesus Christ and been mediated through the
Christian tradition. I suspect the question means to raise that issue - can nonbelievers in Jesus Christ as the sole mediator between God and humankind
be saved? But, we ought to be careful that we not give the impression that those
who believe in Jesus Christ are the world's only believers. If pressed, I doubt any
of us would claim that, but our language can be thus construed and create such
an impression.
As for the first phrase in the day's theme, “The Church in Conflict,” there is no
doubt. The Church is in conflict and I have been at the center of that conflict. I
was given the ultimatum by the Classis of Muskegon to recant my views on the
extent of God's grace, on the possibility of knowing God savingly beyond the
limits of the Christian tradition or leave the ranks of ordained clergy in the
Reformed Church. Refusing to deny my conviction that the grace of God is
broader than that grace operative within the Christian tradition, I resigned my
ordination.
How did we come to such a point? A brief review is important in order to
understand the conflict situation because the salvation question was not the issue
that fomented the conflict. The catalyst for the Classis of Muskegon to investigate
my ministry was a feature article in The Muskegon Chronicle on the Muskegon
Metropolitan Community Church. For nearly two years that small community
had been conducting Sunday evening worship in our chapel. We had hosted
a pastoral care seminar on ministry to persons suffering from AIDS. At that
seminar we learned from the pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church that
they were meeting in the basement of a Muskegon bar because they could not
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Richard A. Rhem
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find a church facility open to them. We brought the matter to our Consistory
which unanimously invited the group to use our facility without charge. The
Consistory saw the invitation simply as an act of hospitality.
The newspaper feature appeared on the Friday before the Spring session of the
Classis in March of 1995. The article mentioned that the group met in our chapel
and accompanying pictures were taken in our chapel. At the close of the Classis
session, someone brought up "Christ Community's ministry to homosexuals."
There followed an emotional discussion of our ministry, which can only be
explained as an outburst of pent-up hostility to our ministry in general.
That was the beginning. A task force was appointed to investigate our ministry
to homosexuals. Our Consistory gathered at the request of the task force and
answered their questions - the real question being, "Do you call these people to
repentance?" Our Elders answered yes, that we are all called to repentance every
time we gather in worship. Obviously, that was not the answer being sought. The
interrogators wanted to know if the Metropolitan Community people were
challenged to turn away from their homosexuality. Not being satisfied with the
task force findings, the Classis Executive Committee requested I present myself
for questioning from the floor of Classis at its Fall meeting.
At the October, 1995, meeting, I was asked to give my view of homosexual
relationships. I answered that I believed sexual orientation was for the most part
a given at birth and that homosexuality was not a moral issue. That viewpoint
shocked the Classis. From there it led to the charge that I obviously did not
believe in the authority of the Bible. And further, I was questioned about
salvation through Jesus Christ alone. I am not even certain how that question
came up. The meeting got out of control. There were calls for my immediate
dismissal. Finally, it was moved that the Executive Committee engage me in
theological discussion. On Reformation Day, 1995, the Executive Committee
came to Christ Community for the discussion on the three issues that surfaced at
the Classis meeting:
1. What do you believe and teach about the scriptures as the only rule of
faith and life?
2. What do you believe and teach about the way of salvation apart from
Jesus Christ?
3. What do you believe and teach about the need to repent of
homosexual behavior?
For about two hours I gave account of myself. Although two tape recorders were
used, neither one produced a usable recording. Therefore, one of the Executive
Committee members summarized what they had heard from me and he and
another committee member came to me with the summary. Scanning the
summary, I said I felt my views had been heard and were quite well represented.
I offered to take the summary and put it in my own words, keeping to the same
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Richard A. Rhem
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format and length. I also promised to be as clear as possible so that the issue in
each case would stand out clearly. I then suggested the Classis meet to discuss my
response to their questions at a session in which no vote would be taken.
This was done. On February 1, 1996, the Classis met in special session, breaking
up into small groups to discuss my paper, hoping to come to a consensus on
whether or not my views were within what was judged to be acceptable
parameters of Reformed faith. Of the eight groups, five held I was beyond the
limits, two that I was within and one group couldn't come to a consensus.
With that indication from the body, the Executive Committee called a special
session for February 29. They had decided to drop the issue that had been the
catalyst for the whole discussion - the issue of homosexuality. I suspect they
realized the Classis was getting bad press on that issue and it was the issue the
press grabbed on to. I think, too, they came to recognize that Christ Community
was living out the General Synod's directives concerning pastoral ministry to
persons of homosexual orientation more than any other congregation in the
Classis.
The charge that I have an inadequate view of biblical authority has never been
discussed. Again, I suspect the Classis was not overly confident they could make a
case there and I resolutely rejected their charge.
Thus, the centerpiece of the case against me was that I denied that salvation was
available through Jesus Christ alone. That issue was clear and simple and it
generated emotional response. Because the conflict took on this sharp focus, we
are here in conversation around the question of salvation, not whether nonbelievers can be saved, but whether only those who believe in Jesus Christ can be
saved.
To the question put to me by the Muskegon Classis regarding salvation apart
from Jesus Christ, I responded:
SALVATION
I am a Christian. I trust in, worship and serve God as God has been revealed to
me by God's Spirit in the face of Jesus Christ. For me, Paul has expressed it well:
...the God who said, "Let light shine out of darkness,"... has shone in our
hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of
Jesus Christ. II Corinthians 4:6
That is the God I have preached for thirty-five years, twenty-nine of them in
Spring Lake. The Good News that appeared in Jesus is the Gospel preached at
Christ Community, the Gospel that has built this Christian community.
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Richard A. Rhem
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Is this God, Creator of all - God alone, known by any others through any other
manifestations? Is God's Spirit operative savingly through any other revelation?
My study, reflection and experience would say, "Yes."
There are three answers given to the question of salvation in the Christian
tradition. Although there are shades of difference within each position, for
simplicity's sake, let me define the three positions thus: The exclusivist position
says salvation is available only through Jesus Christ consciously embraced by the
believer. The inclusivist position holds that salvation was accomplished
only through Jesus Christ but some will be included even though they make no
personal appropriation through faith in Jesus Christ.
My position is the pluralist view: Jesus Christ mediates to the Christian
community salvation, but the God of whom Jesus is a true revelation is known by
others in their respective traditions.
I use the example of a cathedral resplendent with stained glass windows. The
windows tell stories, biblical stories, but think for our purposes, for example, of
Jewish folk gathered in the nave, the Christians in the choir, Muslims in the
transepts. Each group is reading the story of faith in their respective areas
through their specific windows, the windows of their tradition. But that is
possible only because there is a common source of light that filters through all the
windows.
I see the respective religions as historical concretizations of founding revelatory
experience, but the common source of all true revelation is the one God - the God
who, for me, is the God whose heart is revealed in the face of Jesus.
It is to that God that I witness; it is to the grace of God that I point. But I can
enter authentically into dialogue with other faith traditions, bearing my witness
but also listening, open to learn new nuances of truth.
All religions are not equally true (or equally false). That is where dialogue and
mutual understanding come in. There is clarification, growth and transformation
possible where such dialogue is entered into without fear and defensiveness, but
with deep trust in the God whose Spirit leads into truth.
Salvation became the single focus of the inquiry into my theology and, in spite of
my affirmation of God's saving grace through Jesus Christ as the center of my
faith and my preaching and teaching ministry, I have been judged as outside
acceptable parameters of Reformed faith because I will not go on to say that only
those who come to God through Jesus Christ can be saved.
I have made this point concisely before the Classis. I was very clear that, if they
would scratch the word "alone," I would gladly assent to the statement they called
upon me to affirm. In "A Pastoral Letter to Muskegon Classis Churches
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Regarding our Relationship with the Rev. Richard Rhem," the Executive
Committee wrote:
•
We affirm theological search, questioning, and struggle. Clearly these
are values of the Reformed tradition. At the same time, we affirm the
integrity and the appropriateness of communal belief.
•
We affirm Dick Rhem's love for Christ.
•
We recognize Dick Rhem's respect for and struggle with Scripture.
•
We know that many have been very blessed by the work and ministry
of Dick Rhem as it has been carried out for 25 years at Christ
Community Church.
However, setting aside the issue of personal faith and based on our serious
and sincere consideration, we believe that what is being taught and preached
by Dick Rhem at Christ community Church in regards to the authority of
Scripture and salvation by Jesus Christ must be considered unacceptable.
This conviction comes from out of a time of honest wrestling, and causes us
much pain and sorrow. To the extent that this stance will hurt and bruise
fellow children of God, we do grieve that result.
Having said this, we hereby recommend that, unless Dick Rhem publicly
recant his views, as clearly espoused, which are not fully supportive of the
definitive authority of Scripture and salvation by Jesus Christ alone, Rev.
Rhem and the Muskegon Classis purposefully move toward a peaceful
separation, with humility and a gentle spirit.
Muskegon Classis Executive Committee February 22,1996
It was the "alone" I could not in good conscience declare. I stated in the special
session of February 29, 1996, that I did believe the revelation of God was possible
beyond the Christian tradition and that the grace of God could be mediated other
than through Jesus Christ. I also affirmed that I felt it arrogant to deny that, as
well as presumptuous to declare that God must save universally. But the "alone"
was the part at issue and on February 29,1996, Classis Muskegon voted 2 to 1
against me, thus leading to my being set outside the Reformed Church of
America.
At its June, 1996, session, the General Synod of the Reformed Church seemed to
confirm the decision of Muskegon Classis relative to the exclusivity of salvation
through Jesus Christ. A news release stated:
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Richard A. Rhem
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RCA General Synod Reaffirmed Doctrines of Christ and the
Scriptures
The General Synod of the Reformed Church in America, meeting June 814 at Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa, strongly reaffirmed two
tenets of the church - that salvation is only through faith in Christ and that
the Bible is the Word of God, the only rule of faith and practice. It also
approved (subject to approval by two-thirds of the RCA's 46 classes) a
Book of Church Order change which would require ministers to annually
affirm these beliefs.
The news release did not go on to relate the further action of the Synod which was
reported in the July/August, 1996, issue of The Church Herald.
THE UNIQUENESS OF CHRIST
The General Synod adopted the following resolution upon the unanimous advice
of the advisory committee on theology:
The 1996 General Synod of the Reformed Church in America joyfully and
gladly reaffirms its confession that God's unique, unrepeatable, and
decisive activity in Jesus Christ is the only sure hope for this world. God's
work in Jesus Christ alone saves all who believe. Indeed, there is salvation
in no one else, as the Old and New Testaments themselves teach.
Further, this position marks not the end, but the beginning of the church's
attempts faithfully to witness to the gospel. In our culture, there is an
increasing tendency to view religious issues merely as matters of personal
preference. Such an attitude renders the church's confession more difficult
for many to understand and to embrace. Increasing contact with adherents
of other religious traditions and those outside the Christian faith also
stretches the boundaries of Christian understanding, as Christians
recognize truth and value in religions and perspectives other than their
own, even while challenging them with Christ's unique claims about
himself. Therefore, in light of these changes in our world, the Reformed
Church in America seeks fresh guidance on how to interpret and to live out
its faith in the uniqueness of Christ in the midst of a pluralistic world with
diverse religious perspectives; and further,
The General Synod directs the Commission on Theology, in consultation
with Evangelism and Church Development Services, to engage in a study
on "Christian Witness to the Uniqueness of Christ among People of Other
Faiths" which will both interpret the nature and character of Christian
claims regarding the uniqueness of Christ and also guide Christians in
understanding and assessing the religious experience and claims of those
outside the Christian faith.
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Thus, the conversation in which we are engaged today is part of the RCA agenda
at the present time.
Let me move on now to give the background of my claim that God's gracious
embrace is broader than the Christian Church.
As I do that, I want to be clear that my movement from an Exclusivist position that salvation is possible only through the atoning death of Jesus Christ
consciously embraced by faith - to a Pluralist position - that God's revelation
"happens" not only within the biblical tradition (Israel and Jesus), but also
beyond that tradition in other religious traditions, and, further, that God's
saving grace is mediated also through other traditions beyond the biblical
tradition - is the result of long wrestling with the biblical tradition and the
theological tradition of the Church in the light of my own human experience.
Those three, the biblical witness, the theological reflection of 2000 years,
and present human experience, must be understood as the mix out of which my
present position is arrived at. They are the matrix upon which thoughtful
reflection - the exercise of one's rationality - is focused as one carries on
the interpretive function of the theological task. If I were to identify the catalyst
for my in-depth probing, I suspect it would be my experience of a world marked
by global consciousness in which the great religious traditions, Judaism,
Christianity, Islam and the Eastern religions, Hinduism and Buddhism in their
respective expressions are being practiced in close proximity to each other. I
have for some time questioned the idea that the whole world would be brought to
embrace the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It simply does not appear a likely possibility,
given the long traditions of those great traditions that arose in the First Axial
period, 800-200 B.C., and their present vitality.
Questioning the possibility of world evangelization, I found my concrete
experience calling into question the propriety of the effort to turn the respective
traditions from their path to Christian faith. That experience was a close
encounter with Jewish faith in its concrete observance. In a day-long dialogue
between Rabbi David Hartman and Bishop Krister Stendahl in 1991, sponsored
by the West Shore Committee for Jewish-Christian Dialogue in Muskegon,
Michigan, David Hartman raised the question,
Do I have to deny your truth to affirm my truth?
Do I have to deny your joy to celebrate my joy?
From the depths of my soul, I answered, "No, of course not." It was not only the
actual content of this all-day discussion that deeply impacted me; it was the
manner in which two totally committed religious scholars and leaders in their
respective traditions engaged each other. It was a moving experience to watch
these two persons wrestle with the issue of faithful interpretation.
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That experience led me to accept an invitation to join the West Shore Committee
and that experience has led to many concrete encounters with Jewish people and
Jewish observance - a briss in which I recognized precisely the same yearning for
God's grace to embrace the child, the same commitment of parents and
grandparents and community that I experience at the baptism of an infant in the
Christian community; a Bat Mitzvah at which I experienced the same passage
into spiritual adult faith that we experience at the confirmation of our youth;
Sabbath worship in which the Word is heard and prayers are offered before the
mystery of the God of Israel. Beyond these formal moments of ritual and worship,
it has been my privilege to come to know in meaningful friendship persons in the
Jewish community and sense with them our solidarity in the human family.
Such experience is powerful; it is transforming. It calls in question one's
traditional posture that would disallow the validity of the religious tradition of
the other. One finds the sharp divide created by religious exclusivism eroding.
What does one do with that experience?
If one would be serious and responsible to one's calling to be a minister of the
word and sacrament, one will necessarily be sent back to one's own tradition: to
the biblical story and the theological formulation of the faith. For me, this was
not a new endeavor; I had been wrestling with the biblical word and Reformed
confessional formulations for a quarter century since my return from study in
The Netherlands with Hendrikus Berkhof.
While with Berkhof I recognized that the inability of my own conservative
Reformed tradition to deal with ongoing human experience stemmed from its
understanding of the nature of scripture.
My theological education had taught me that Scripture is God’s inspired word,
infallible in all that it intends to teach. Further, I was taught that Scripture is to
be interpreted by Scripture– an individual passage in light of the whole testimony
of Scripture; there could be no contradictory material within the Bible. The
presupposition was that there was finally one unified biblical witness. To
determine the content of that witness, one had to apply a confessional
hermeneutics – that is, one approached the biblical material with a pre-formed
doctrinal system. To be sure the biblical theological scholars and the systematic
theologians carried on their debates, the biblical people pointing out the gaps and
flaws of the system by reference to biblical texts that did not “fit.” However, in the
Reformed Church and in conservative evangelical theology generally, the system
prevailed – Scripture interpreted by Scripture subsumed and explained away the
contradictions.
In this hermeneutical approach the rich diversity of the biblical witness was
smothered and the diverse voices that came to expression within the canon of
Scripture were silenced.
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Richard A. Rhem
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My awareness of this failure to listen to the whole diverse biblical testimony
dawned as I read Berkhof’s Well-Founded Hope, a study of the biblical teaching
of themes of heaven and hell, judgment and salvation. From his study I learned
that the scheme of things I had always believed – that faith in Jesus Christ brings
salvation from eternal damnation and failure thus to believe destines one for
eternal punishment – was not the whole story. From Berkhof I learned there are
also passages that point to a universal salvation through the death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Further, I learned that this was not something that lessened Berkhof’s passion for
witness to God’s grace in Jesus Christ but, rather, gave him the hope that
ultimately God’s “Yes” to humankind would prove stronger than the human “No.”
Cautious, not presumptive, nevertheless a positive hope that the gracious God
would overcome all human alienation.
Yet it was obvious that, not only the followers of other religious traditions lived
and died without knowledge or experience of Jesus Christ, but in the secular
society of the West many lived and died without any apparent Christian faith or
practice. How would all those who “died without Christ” be reconciled to God
through Christ? If it were the case that God’s grace was universal in its embrace,
how would that grace be mediated to those who never heard or heard but never
heeded? I was moving away from exclusivism toward an inclusivist
understanding of salvation but had no sense of what was involved in such a move.
After twelve strenuous years of building Christ Community, it was time for a
sabbatical. Without this as my goal, my sabbatical experience set me on a course
of investigation that gave foundation to my nascent inclusivism and paved the
way for my eventual movement to a pluralist position.
In the fall term of 1983, Hans Küng, the noted Roman Catholic theologian, gave a
series of lectures at the University of Michigan entitled, “Eternal Life?” It was an
investigation of life after death as a medical, philosophical, and theological
problem. He faced squarely and straightforwardly all the difficult questions
surrounding the subject, dealing with ancient and contemporary issues, the
question in the history of religions, the modern denial of anything beyond death,
and the near-death experiences recorded in recent years. He dealt with biblical
material, the question of resurrection, the resurrection of Jesus, and the church’s
teaching on judgment, heaven, and hell. The lectures were subsequently
published under the title Eternal Life. By virtue of my sabbatical, I attended the
lectures and was a participant in a cross-discipline seminar with Küng for the
term.
I came away with two striking realizations: first, that there was intense interest in
these questions of death and dying, of life after death, of heaven and hell on the
campus of a large secular university. The lectures had to be moved from the
largest lecture hall available to the Rackham Auditorium. Secondly, I realized
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how little these vital questions were probed in the church, how little reflection I
had personally given to them in my ministry, and how comfortably and
uncritically we in the church have accepted traditional answers.
Once awakened to the questions that are not nearly so simply answered as once I
had thought, and also to the deeply existential interest of today’s people, both
secular and religious, I began to open again questions on which I had come to
premature closure. For me, the greatest surprise came in a new appreciation for
the teaching of purgatory, which was resolutely rejected at the time of the
Reformation and which has received little serious reflection in the Protestant
tradition.
For the first time ever I sought to understand what the ancient tradition of the
Roman Church taught. To my surprise my own mentor, Hendrikus Berkhof, also
recognized a place for some process of purgation following death. He wrote,
God is serious about the responsibility of our decision, but he is even more
serious about the responsibility of his love. The darkness of rejection and
God-forsakenness cannot and may not be argued away, but no more can
and may it be eternalized. For God’s sake we hope that hell will be a form
of purification. (Christian Faith, Revised, p. 536)
I found C. S. Lewis’ treatment of the subject in The Great Divorce profound and
helpful. And in his Letters to Malcolm the imagery is moving.
Our souls demand Purgatory, don’t they? Would it not break the heart if
God said to us, “It is true, my son, that your breath smells and your rags
drip with mud and slime, but we are charitable here and no one will
upbraid you with these things, nor draw away from you. Enter into the
joy”? Should we not reply, “With submission, sir, and if there is no
objection, I’d rather be cleaned first.” “It may hurt, you know.” – “Even so,
sir.”
I assume that the process of purification will normally involve suffering.
Partly from tradition, partly because most real good that has been done me
in this life has involved it. But I don’t think suffering is the purpose of the
purgation. I can well believe that people neither much worse nor much
better than I will suffer less than I or more. “No nonsense about merit.”
The treatment given will be the one required, whether it hurts little or
much.
My favourite image on this matter comes from the dentist’s chair. I hope
that when the tooth of life is drawn and I am “coming round,” a voice will
say, “Rinse your mouth out with this.” This will be Purgatory.
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Richard A. Rhem
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I was convinced. Whatever the nature of the encounter with God at our death, the
redeeming intention of the God of all merely seemed to me consistent with the
whole movement of God in the historical outworking of the covenant of grace. I
returned to the biblical story, reading with new eyes, with new questions, and I
discovered a rich vein of material that pointed to a wideness in God’s mercy I had
never discovered in the Scriptures before. Along with the witness of Scripture, I
found a long line of theologians from the early Church Fathers who affirmed the
universal triumph of God’s redeeming grace.
I summarized my research in an article I wrote for the journal Perspectives
(September, 1988)”
Throughout Christian history some have understood God’s redemptive
action in Jesus Christ to be universal in its scope. The early church was far
more universalistic in its understanding of the radical renewal of reality,
the radical alteration of the human situation through God’s action in Jesus
Christ, than was the church of subsequent centuries. Among the fathers of
the early church we find statements pointing to the final conquest of evil
and rebellion, if not within history, then beyond, through some kind of
purgation process. Clement of Alexandria wrote,
Punishment is, in its operation, like medicine; it dissolves the hard
heart, purges away the filth of uncleanness, and reduces the
swellings of pride and haughtiness; thus restoring its subject to a
sound and healthful state (Pedagog,1.8).
Clement’s more famous pupil, Origin, wrote,
…God is a consuming fire, what is it that is to be consumed by him?
We say it is wickedness, and whatever proceeds from it, such as is
figuratively called “wood, hay, and stubble” (I Cor. 1:ii), which
denote the evil works of man. Our God is a consuming fire in this
sense; and he shall come as a refiner’s fire to purify rational nature
from the alloy of wickedness… (Contra Celsum, Lib. IV, 13).
Gregory, bishop of Nyssa, declared,
All evil, however, must at length be entirely removed from
everything, so that it shall no more exist. For such being the nature
of sin, that it cannot exist without a corrupt motive, it must, of
course, be perfectly dissolved and wholly destroyed, so that nothing
can remain a receptacle of it, when all motive and influence shall
spring from God alone (De Anima et Resurrectione).
Theodore of Mopsuestia held
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That sin is an unavoidable part of the development and education of
man; that some carry it to a greater extent than others, but that God
will finally overrule it for their final establishment in good.
Among these early Christian thinkers there is no denial of evil and sin, but
they seem to entertain no doubt that God will finally conquer the last
vestige of evil and restore all things through remedial punishment.
It was not until 544 A.D. at a local council called by Justinian that the
teaching of universal salvation was condemned.
In the Perspectives piece I brought the discussion closer to our time, referencing
Karl Barth.
In our century the question of universalism has surfaced in Reformed
theology in the work of Karl Barth. Berkouwer’s early study of Barth was
entitled, The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth. Barth’s
detractors labeled him a Universalist and wrote him off as dangerous. Yet
the matter is not that simple. Barth resisted systematizing; he defied neat
pigeonholing. In a lecture delivered to a Swiss Reformed minister’s
association in 1956, he reflected on those early, heady days and the
theological ferment he fomented. He entitled his remarks, “The Humanity
of God.” One consequence of the humanity of God, Barth maintains, is that
the sense and sound of our word must be fundamentally positive. He
writes:
To open up again the abyss closed in Jesus Christ cannot be our
task. Man is not good: that is indeed true and must once more be
asserted. God does not turn towards him without uttering in
inexorable sharpness a “No” to his transgression. Thus theology has
no choice but to put this “No” into words within the framework of
its theme. However, it must be the “No” which Jesus Christ has
taken upon Himself for us men, in order that it may no longer affect
us and that we may no longer place ourselves under it. What takes
place in God’s humanity is, since it includes that “No” in itself, the
affirmation of man (The Humanity of God, p. 58).
After developing that notion, Barth raises the question, “Does this mean
universalism?” He then makes three observations “in which one is to
detect no position for or against that which passes among us under this
term” (p. 59).
Barth suggests one ought not surrender to the panic that that term seems
to spread before informing oneself exactly concerning its sense or nonsense. One should, he contends, at least be stimulated by Colossians 1:19
and parallel passages to determine whether the concept could not perhaps
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have a good meaning. And he suggests finally that the ‘danger’ with which
universalism seems to be attended should be balanced by concern for an
even greater danger: a theology that fosters suspicious questioning
because of its own legalistic perspective and morose spirit.
Of this Barth is certain: we have no right to set limits to the lovingkindness of God which has appeared in Jesus Christ. Rather, he argues, it
is our duty to see and to understand it as still greater than we have seen
before.
And, of course, my mentor, Hendrikus Berkhof, was an important guide for me as
I wrestled with issues of ultimate concern. I wrote,
Hendrikus Berkhof gives a full discussion to the question before us in
Well-Founded Hope, the chapter entitled “The Double Image of the
Future.” He deals seriously with the biblical witness but concludes, as was
stated above, that Scripture leaves us with a double track. Countless
attempts have been made to subsume one track of texts under the other by
ingenious “exegetical tricks” but, Berkhof concludes, “we cannot smooth
out this contradiction in the New Testament.” All that we read about the
future, texts offering consolation and texts of warning, do not “fit together
like a jigsaw puzzle.” In the case of the passages giving warning, these
present the gospel in its nature as a call to decision; the passages offering
consolation give hope and the promise of eventual salvation of all.
We must hear both witnesses; we must not reduce one to the other. But we
cannot simply allow them to stand with no link between them. Berkhof
suggests we pronounce them “one after the other,” for “only the person
who has learned to tremble at the possibility of rejection may speak about
universal salvation.”
It is the believing church, declares Berkhof, that can confess the last secret.
In the end it is the power of God’s “yes” that triumphs over the
recalcitrance of the human “no.” This is our last word but a last word that
must be spoken if we believe God is ultimately not powerless or cruel or
arbitrary, but rather infinite in mercy through Jesus Christ.
Summarizing his conclusion on the issue in Christian Faith, Berkhof
writes:
We know that the covenant means that God’s faithfulness ever and
again does battle with man’s unfaithfulness. What ultimately will be
forced to yield: divine faithfulness or human unfaithfulness? Paul
raised that question with respect to Israel, as the trial grounds of
God’s relationship to man; and he ends with the confession: “God
has consigned all men to disobedience, that he may have mercy
© Grand Valley State University
�Can Non-Believers Be Saved?
Richard A. Rhem
Page14
upon all” (Romans 11:32). These considerations compel us, not to
detract from the gravity of the human “No” against God and its
consequences, but to think just a little more of the divine “Yes” to
recalcitrant humans. God is serious about the responsibility of our
decision, but he is even more serious about the responsibility of his
love. The darkness of rejection and God-forsakenness cannot and
may not be argued away, but no more can and may it be eternalized.
For God’s sake we hope that hell will be a form of purification.
(Revised edition, p. 536).
Is this universalism? Karl Barth was unwilling to be so labeled and rightly so. In
my own wrestling with the question I have come to realize that it is not for us to
dictate to the Eternal God what is or what must be. It would be arrogant to deny
that God’s gracious embrace did not include all; it would be presumptuous to
insist that it must. But for me, the serious revisiting of the biblical story and
reflection on the Christian theological tradition convinced me that the extent of
God’s grace is far wider than I had ever thought. As I concluded the piece I wrote
for Perspectives:
In light of God’s gracious election in Jesus Christ, of God’s steadfast love
and covenant faithfulness, of God’s infinite power and patience, we have
good reason to trust and confidently hope that the habit of God’s heart will
finally heal every wound, overcome all opposition, and gather all God’s
children safely home.
References:
Hendrikus Berkhof. Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Study of the Faith.
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1979, Revised edition, 1986.
C. S. Lewis. Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer. Harcourt, Inc., 1964.
Richard A. Rhem, “The Habit of God’s Heart,” Perspectives, September 1988, pp.
8-11.
© 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
Sound Recordings
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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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Address to The Synod of Mid-Atlantic, Reformed Church in America
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Reformed Church Synod of Mid-Atlantics, Ramapo, New Jersey
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RA-3-19961003
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1996-10-03
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Text
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The Church in Conflict - Can Non-Believers Be Saved?
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Richard A. Rhem
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eng
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Talk created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on October 3, 1996 entitled "The Church in Conflict - Can Non-Believers Be Saved?", as part of the series "Address to The Synod of Mid-Atlantic, Reformed Church in America", at Reformed Church Synod of Mid-Atlantics, Ramapo, New Jersey. Tags: Inclusive Grace, Nature of God, Pluralism, Global Community.
Format
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application/pdf
Global Community
Inclusive Grace
Nature of God
Pluralism
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/384a27df4b20d81730ae7c095d9b40fb.pdf
fd99db3f702022f96e129766ec1a1527
PDF Text
Text
Your Elephant Is Showing…
Pottawattomie Park Potluck Picnic
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
July 23, 2008
Prepared text of the Talk
No, this is not about your Republican Party affiliation if that be the case with you.
Your Elephant is the total package that makes you you except for your reason –
your faculty of critical rationality.
I am over my head here…but this is a picnic and I hope this can be fun for us to
examine our assumptions, prejudices, and deeply held beliefs as we negotiate
life’s journey.
It may be especially interesting for us, many of whom have experienced a
disruption in the pattern of our spiritual life and practice over the past four years
and find ourselves in the midst of a political campaign that began in a much too
lengthy primary season and now is heating up as we move toward the party
conventions.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
How have I come to be the person I am?
How have my religious beliefs been formed and how deeply do I hold
them?
Why am I a Republican, Democrat or Independent and how do I
respond to the political discussion?
What do I think and feel about nation and the rapidly emerging global
community?
Do I hope the U.S. maintains superiority – the imperial power? Is that
nationalism?
And isn’t nationalism especially dangerous in the global community?
Or, in our emerging global reality, don’t we have to begin to form world
government?
And then, finally, what impact on my political, social, and economic
views does Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount have? Or, more broadly, am I
shaped as a follower of Jesus with implications for my political, social,
and economic views or is my religious life a thing apart from the nitty,
gritty of my world?
© Grand Valley State University
�Your Elephant is Showing…
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
I have been frustrated by these questions over the past couple of years. My valued
conversation partner has been Peter Hart who has been pursuing an investigation
of the make-up of the brain as it has evolved in the emergence of the human
being. One of the critical areas of research and reflection in the last years has
been the relationship of the brain and human consciousness.
The brain has been called a meaty computer – and some would reduce the human
being to chemicals and electrical circuits – all a purely physical phenomenon.
But what of human consciousness? What of our capacity to transcend the purely
physical reality in awareness, in social relationship, in spiritual experience?
You won’t be surprised that I believe we are more than the totality of blood,
nerves and neurons. Obviously I would affirm that “added plus” of spiritual
being. However, I have been very interested in how the physical make-up of the
human being – and particularly the brain – has evolved and how one’s attitudes,
beliefs, assumptions and prejudices are shaped by the physical underpinning of
the spirit or mind.
One of the things that I learned from Duncan Littlefair was the amazing fact that
matter has given rise to spirit. Here we are, creatures who live with awe and
wonder, and ,if we be religious, with reverence and gratitude and the spiritual
dimension which has been birthed from matter. Matter has given birth to that
which transcends the material.
Again, let me be honest: I am over my head here; I have only an inkling of what I
am trying to express, but my point is that the material that has birthed the
mind/consciousness/spirit is still immensely engaged in the determining of the
human being’s thoughts, feelings, beliefs and commitments.
That is where the Elephant comes in. In an interesting book, The Happiness
Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt uses a most interesting metaphor to describe the
mind/body relationship. Picture an elephant with a human rider on its back
holding the reins. The Rider is our Reason – our rational capacity. The Elephant
is our whole physical being – nerves, hormones, emotions, etc. that make up our
total being. Haidt writes:
Like a rider on the back of an elephant, the conscious, reasoning part of
the mind has only limited control of what the elephant does. (p. xi)
The metaphor is a vivid representation of the relationship of our conscious,
rational selves as we struggle with our unconscious biological, neurological
structure that is the Elephant upon which we are perched.
We pride ourselves on being rational, thoughtful, conscious persons. And some of
the time we are thoughtful, mindful, civil, rational, decent creatures. We take up
© Grand Valley State University
�Your Elephant is Showing…
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
the reins and guide the elephant in paths of righteousness, love, compassion and
civility.
But then something happens that goads the elephant, prods the beast and then
the beast will demonstrate a mind of its own and our sane, deliberate reasonable
response is washed away by the power and strength of our accumulated
evolutionary past which finds place in our being. Suddenly the Elephant shows
itself.
(Note: the Rider is not separate from the Elephant in the metaphor – Rider and
Elephant are one.)
When all is calm and collected, the Rider (or Reason) guides the whole. When the
Elephant is challenged/threatened/cornered, the reasoning part, the Rider,
doesn’t have a prayer.
Haidt’s book goes on to describe the development of the brain, its respective parts
as they developed in our long evolutionary past and I am not going into that. I
have not the competence to do that, nor is that my purpose. I am using the
metaphor and that to which it points to talk with you about the issues I
mentioned above in order to prod you to ask yourself some interesting questions
about what you assume are your well-thought-out positions on some important
questions. I intend this to be fun – an exercise in self-exploration, hopefully
bringing insight and self-awareness – an exercise in self-knowledge.
And so, let me come back to my introductory questions. Let’s begin with the
religious dimension of our lives: Why are you a Christian?
Well, because Christianity is the one true religion, right?
Now I suspect, were I addressing most Christian gatherings, the answer would
be, “Yes, of course.” But for this group, after some years of struggling with the
issue of Christian exclusivism, I would expect a more nuanced response – We are
Christian because, for most of us, we were born into Christian families.
We have come to understand the nature of religious tradition: a founding story /
a community developing a tradition / a way of life / the moral dimension.
Our Elephants are exclusivists. Tell the Elephant there is light and grace in other
traditions and the Elephant feels threatened.
Think back about how perhaps you struggled with that question. I remember my
own painful journey. And remember we were judged to be outside the pale of
Reformed Faith on this issue.
© Grand Valley State University
�Your Elephant is Showing…
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
It is interesting that a recent study by the Pew Research Center claims the
majority of Catholics and Protestants now believe there is salvation in other faiths
– an encouraging sign. But you may remember, in our conflict with the
Muskegon Classis, I said, “Scratch the word alone in the claim of ‘salvation
through Jesus Christ alone’ and I will sign on” – and the answer was “No way.” A
dozen years later I am amazed that was even an issue; but for me, for us, to come
to that point was a struggle.
Our Elephants are exclusivists.
Does that mean I can go anywhere, to any kind of religious community and find
my heart warmed, my mind opened, my spirit fed? No, not at all. My Elephant or,
better, my being, has been hard-wired not only to be religious but has been
formed by faith, vision, understanding, liturgy, worship experience, hymns,
sacraments, etc., and it is those religious observances that touch me, move me,
inspire me, challenge me and bless me altogether. My rational part – the Rider in
me – understands I am the product of a long conditioning process that I have
come to understand in its misty, mythological origins, in its evolving forms and
present expression that I affirm, I choose.
To use an image that, when I first used it, got me into trouble – The Cathedral at
Chartres: An Englishman, Malcolm Miller, gave fascinating lectures in the
Cathedral. He told how, before the printing press, the cathedral was the village
library – the stories told in stained glass. The biblical story was recorded in the
windows of the respective sections of the cathedral. Depending on the section –
nave, chancel or choir – you “read” one of the stories.
I thought to myself, one tradition reads one story, another one reads another –
but the light that made the stories come alive was of a common source. I became
a pluralist in that moment.
If I choose, perhaps I can move into another “picture”. If I’m seeking, I may
explore. Some even cross over. But I’m not so inclined. My faith understanding at
this point satisfies me. And for the rest, I bless them.
Perhaps I can say it this way: my rider has made peace with my elephant and in
things religious my elephant is not easily roused. I have made a choice which
ministers to the deep traditioning that formed me. I am at peace.
Let’s move to the political dimension. I know one is not supposed to mix religion
and politics but I’ve been reckless before.
We are in the midst of a presidential campaign. Will it be McCain or Obama? Are
you a Republican or a Democrat or an Independent?
© Grand Valley State University
�Your Elephant is Showing…
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
We live in a time of too much media coverage – too many talking heads with too
much air time. And since the real issue is audience share/ advertising/ the
bottom line, the reality is not thoughtful, reasoned discourse appealing to our
rational nature but rather which channel can best rouse the elephant in us. And
the elephant does rouse, doesn’t it?
I was raised in a staunch Republican home. I have said before, it seems I am
always out of step with the times. As a child I remember table conversations in
which FDR was the evil Satan. As the years went by, I learned FDR was ranked as
one of the great presidents who constructed the safety net that has been in peril
from the party of my birth. I find I’m not a very good party person anymore just
as I am no longer a religious exclusivist.
Yet there is an elephant dimension in me that created a feeling of guilt the first
time I pulled the lever for a democrat. In Chicago on Monday I paged through a
few books at Borders. One was George Lackoff’s The Political Mind. I was
interested because I have recently read Drew Westen’s The Political Brain and
Lackoff refers very affirmingly to Westen’s book.
The Political Brain does something like Haidt in The Happiness Hypothesis in
that he demonstrates how we make our political choices. We only think we are
being calmly reasonable in our political choices when it is really our Elephant
talking most of the time. We find those political leaders highly reasonable and
persuasive when they are feeding our elephant appetites, while their opponents
sound off-key. What is really happening to us is the triggering of all sorts of
factors below the level of our consciousness. It can be rather depressing at first
blush when I realize what is really going on – I would like to think I’m an
intelligent, balanced, well-informed, fair-minded citizen, only to realize that I am
a bundle of sub-rational prejudices and predispositions that I paste on the
respective candidates.
We wonder why politics becomes so divisive, so mean, so negative and then we
learn that what is being appealed to is not our reason and civility but our
passions, our prejudices, our fears – in a word, our elephant. Will that ever
change? I’m really not sure. It is really not as though it is everyone else’s
problem; I too am a big elephant with a little reasoning rider. Awareness helps. I
become aware that there are factors affecting me on issues and candidates that
cause me to react positively or negatively and, from time to time, I may be
tempered in my reaction or I may give the one who is not the candidate of choice
for me a bit of leeway. But the closer the issue comes to my elephant core, the
more difficult it is for me to keep some objectivity in place.
In the Democratic Primary there was much discussion about the issues of gender
and race.
© Grand Valley State University
�Your Elephant is Showing…
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
Did Hillary suffer from bias against the idea of a woman in leadership? Certainly
there is a percentage of the population that would refuse to vote for a woman no
matter who she was. And no doubt there is a percentage of the population that
will refuse to vote for Obama because he is black.
And in each case this will be by some who will state the fact openly, but probably
a large percentage for whom gender or race are determinative below the surface –
that is, folks who would deny that consciously and yet be controlled by those
issues subconsciously. I wish I could say for me such subconscious prejudice is
not the case but that would only show how little I understand myself.
Are we doomed forever? No, I think we do make progress. In the case of religious
exclusivism, as we saw, there is progress against exclusivism. And in the recent
primary battle, it was between a woman and a black man. And it is highly
possible that a black man (or bi-racial) will be elected. That is quite amazing. But
the reality of the elephant remains as we make our political choice.
Finally, let me come to an issue I deem by far the most critical, namely, the
question of what kind of a world we envision and are committed to strive for. I
began with the religious issue and moved to the political issue, in each case
attempting to point out how our reasoned judgment is strongly controlled or at
least influenced by our subconscious formation and conditioning. The elephant
when roused clouds the rational judgment, which we assume informs our
judgments. All that background heritage we carry seeps through our reasoning
processes.
So it is as regards our global vision.
Let me make a couple observations: In its founding vision and founding
documents, ours is a truly remarkable nation. We began in bloody revolution.
The heroes of the Revolution we celebrated on the Fourth of July were freedom
fighters. We rebelled against the Royal Crown – the legally established authority
which considered us terrorists.
We tend to forget that historical fact when we engage in pushing down revolts
around the world.
But I would argue that the nation that was born – the founding vision – was
remarkable – was ahead of anything at that time – the divine right of kings, the
feudal systems and emperor worship.
I am no expert on all of this. I am attempting simply to make the point that our
emergence as a nation was a remarkable move forward in the establishment of
human dignity, human rights, and democratic government. We are still a young
nation relatively speaking but have been a laboratory of human community. We
© Grand Valley State University
�Your Elephant is Showing…
Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
have established a free and prosperous, creative and innovative nation. In a word,
this nation has been an impressive human achievement.
To be sure there are dark shadows aplenty in our history – one of the most
glaring –slavery and the continuing racism that manifests itself. I am not denying
where we have fallen short but the ideals of our founding and the embodiment of
those ideals has been a remarkable human experiment.
Having said that, I must say that we are in serious danger of compromising those
ideals. And here I want to suggest something that may rouse the elephant in
you…
In 1989, I think it was, the Berlin Wall fell as the Soviet Union imploded. It was a
glorious celebration. The long Cold War ended. We remained the one great super
power. No one could touch us. What a moment that was and what grand
possibilities that presented.
Leaving gaps in recording the history of the last two decades admittedly, there
arose political thinkers who saw the possibility of a unipolar world – the era of
America – one world power dominating the globe. A study paper was produced
that outlined the future direction.
But the world was only apparently at peace. There were festerings of the human
soul in many places. The most serious challenge from what we have named
Islamic Fundamentalism – 9/11 happened.
And we are all too well aware of the failure to deal with that terrorist act as a
police action. After removing the Taliban from power in Afghanistan, it became
an occasion to invade Iraq. The rest is history…
In his 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush named North Korea, Iran
and Iraq as “the axis of evil”. The 9/11 event gave power to the neoconservative
movement that had produced that unipolar version during the presidency of the
first President Bush. (At that time in a sermon I criticized that axis of evil
characterization with its hostile tone suggesting we should rather use our position
at the pinnacle of power to change the world.)
Imperial America was born – American Empire – and there we are today. I won’t
bother you with statistics but military power is deployed around the globe. A war
in Iraq – and Islamic terrorism still a threat to global community.
What might have happened if at the pinnacle of power we had changed the way
the world relates in global community? What if we had used our overwhelming
power/ wealth/resources to unite the world through the alleviation of poverty,
world health care and education, lifting up people aspiring to a humane
existence?
© Grand Valley State University
�Your Elephant is Showing…
Richard A. Rhem
Page 8
There is a problem with empire. It remains in power by domination, through
military might. It is always threatened and needs to react to challenge. Empires
must always look over their shoulder and guard their flank.
And this too – empires rise and fall, and in the meantime sustain themselves
through endless war – until they die exhausted.
Now being a preacher I cannot help but refer you to Jesus who came preaching
the Kingdom of God. He was born in a time of brutal empire to a people living
under the heel of Rome. But he changed the world through the power of love.
Love your enemies…and when they crucified him, he prayed, “Father, forgive
them…”
And it worked too until the Church became the Empire with all the trappings of
pomp, glory and power. But the memory of the dangerous life and message of
Jesus has never been defeated.
Of what practical significance is this? You watch your elephant rise up….
1.
2.
3.
Carefully, responsibly we must yield our sovereignty using all our
resources to create a world government;
There must be total nuclear disarmament;
There must be an end to war.
I know, I know. I hear the “Yabuts”.
But what is making everything in you rise up to write that off as an “impossible
dream”?
Oops – your elephant is showing…
References:
Jonathan Haidt. The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient
Wisdom, 2006.
Drew Westen. The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of
the Nation, 2007.
© 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
Sunday Potluck Picnic
Location
The location of the interview
Pottawattomie Park
References
Jonathan Haidt. The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, 2006. Drew Westin. The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation, 2007.
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-0-20080723
Date
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2008-07-23
Title
A name given to the resource
Your Elephant is Showing...
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
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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
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on July 23, 2008 entitled "Your Elephant is Showing...", on the occasion of Sunday Potluck Picnic, at Pottawattomie Park .
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Arc of Justice
Brain Science
Exclusivism
Pluralism
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/cf542e792610e5009a2907825faefceb.mp3
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The Holy Family – God’s Elect?
From the sermon series: Once Upon A Time…
Text: Genesis 27:1-4, 18-40; Romans 9:1-18
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
November 24, 2002
Transcription of the handwritten sermon text
Laying out sermon series or setting down themes and texts for a 2 or 3-month
period or for a season such as Advent or Lent is hard work. It is a creative process
that cannot be coerced. Sometimes a couple of days of rather intense struggle
leave me empty and, then again, a whole series may take shape in a moment after
such struggle. And sometimes I can move methodically through the subjects set
down and sometimes the series takes on a mind of its own and I find myself going
where, in the setting down of the series, I never dreamed I would go.
Such is the case with the present series of sermons from Genesis.
Last Sunday you applauded as I ended the sermon suggesting we may need a
moratorium from our respective ancient texts – the Jewish Scriptures, our Bible,
the Koran of Islam – because the texts are being used in too many instances as
justification for hatred, violence and war. Then I suggested we lay down our
respective texts and look each other in the eye, meet heart to heart as human
beings – Jew, Christian, Muslim, three peoples, three faith traditions, with one
common ancestor, Abraham.
Do you know the first time ever a sermon of mine received an ovation? It was the
last Sunday in October, 1992. I was asked to represent the Reformed Church at a
conference at Brandeis University – a conference on congregational participation
in Judaism, Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. All three were recognizing a
falling off of congregational membership and involvement and the conference
was called at Brandeis at the Jewish Center there to reflect on what was
happening and to show models of some successes in the respective faiths.
It was Reformation Sunday. I had been asked to preach at the opening session on
Sunday evening. On Sunday morning I concluded the sermon here by saying on
that Reformation Sunday we should all go to Geneva and then on to Rome to pick
up the Catholics, then to Constantinople to heal the breach between West and
© Grand Valley State University
�The Holy Family – God’s Elect?
Richard A. Rhem
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East. Then to Medina where Mohammed received his revelation and then all of us
together return to Jerusalem where we could be the one people of God.
You applauded. I was dumbstruck; it had never happened before. But I touched a
nerve – and something in you said, “Yes.”
That happened last week too – and the appeal was the same: moving beyond the
divisions that have proven so perilous and finding our common humanity before
the face of the Mystery toward which we all grope and yearn.
Nancy said, “Now I suppose you’ll never retire, after getting an ovation.” I said,
“Oh, yeah! How would you like to come back the next Sunday?”
I relate this because I became aware again of the intuitive sense of the people – in
this case, you – but I wonder if it is not true of a good many people in any given
congregation – the intuitive sense that religion should build community, should
bond and heal, and that religion is being misused, abused, twisted when it is the
stimulus to derision, hatred, violence and war.
And, as I said, sometimes a series takes on a life of its own and takes me where I
did not intend to go. But here I am seeing what I did not intend to deal with,
seeing what is not new to us but seeing it in a new and powerful way: seeing how
religion is tribal and leads to tribalism and thus potentially to alienation, hatred,
violence and war.
There would be no problem with tribal religion if it were recognized that that is
what we have and if we could seek the Face of God through our respective stories,
rituals and moral codes, but that has not been the case with the Abrahamic faith.
There is a universalizing tendency, which is understandable because we claim to
be speaking of God, the Creator, the ultimate, the One True God, and thus there
has been a tendency to absolutize our vision, our understanding.
This doesn’t seem to be a problem in the East, and Judaism considered itself a
light to the nations but without the need to proselytize. The universalizing
tendency in Christianity has led to the idea that we are to evangelize the world,
that the world will be saved through Jesus Christ alone and the rest are lost. This
has been the Christian mission. And Islam – sometimes it seems to claim
absolute status, sometimes not, in the course of its history.
In any case the danger comes from fundamentalism in each of the Abrahamic
faiths, and this mentality is the same, whether Jewish, Christian or Islam.
And to come back to my suggestion last week that we take another look at the
ancient texts – you understand I am not suggesting we forget our respective
founding stories, but I am suggesting that we hear them but not absolutize them
as if they were the Word of God, that we see them as human products containing
© Grand Valley State University
�The Holy Family – God’s Elect?
Richard A. Rhem
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within themselves all the negative potential of human tribalism, of overagainstness of one group over another.
Let’s look at today’s lesson: Esau and Jacob. The story: Is this God’s idea? This is
a story written to explore, to justify the existence of the Jewish people. Reaching
back to Abraham, Jewish faith understands the Jewish people as God’s chosen,
the Elect of God – elected to be light to the nations, to embody the rule of God on
earth, to teach the nations Torah– God’s way of life.
In its positive statement this is a grand vision: not through conquest or
domination, not even by effecting conversion to Judaism, but by its very being
and by its Torah as a law or way of life, Israel would be the world’s teacher.
And its ancient past is some story: Sarah, Hagar, Isaac, Ishmael, bitterness,
heartbreak… amazing that their dysfunction and human misery should be
recorded as a peoples’ past. There is a self-critical awareness and honesty in the
Hebrew Scripture. The Hebrew prophets, too, criticize the nation.
Today: Esau and Jacob. The story: the struggle in the womb, the elder shall serve
the younger, father Isaac loving Esau; mother Rebekah loved Jacob. The deceit of
Rebekah and Jacob in securing Isaac’s blessing for Jacob and Esau’s piteous cry,
“Is there one blessing only, Father?”
What a set-up for discord. And, of course, this is explaining the situation of the
time of the writer, written back into the past – the present explained in terms of
the past – of God’s choice, God’s accomplishing God’s purposes through human
deceit.
To think of it makes one’s head swim. This is the Holy Family? This is God’s
Elect?
Well, let’s go again to St. Paul, this passionate Jew who has been converted to the
conviction that Jesus was God’s Messiah, God’s promised anointed One, who
would effect salvation for Jew and Gentile through his death and resurrection.
This Paul brings the message of the God of Israel acting through the Jewish
Messiah, Jesus, to the Gentiles, the nations, and he meets with success. However,
his own kinfolk are not convinced. Many are but it must have been obvious to
Paul that the mass of his people did not share his conviction about Jesus and that
is deeply troubling to him.
That is the problem he struggles with in Romans 9-11. If the Jews don’t turn to
Jesus as Messiah they are missing out on God’s salvation. They are missing the
boat. Well then, is God unfaithful to his promise to Abraham?
As we saw last week, Paul says, “No.” All of Abraham’s seed is not in the Elect
line: through Isaac, not Ishmael. Now, today, we move along a generation to Esau
© Grand Valley State University
�The Holy Family – God’s Elect?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
and Jacob. Paul is trying to defend God against the charge of failing to keep the
promise to Abraham and to Israel. So his argument: God has always worked
through the chosen, the elect. Not Ishmael, but Isaac; not Esau, but Jacob.
And why? No one can say. God has the prerogative of showing mercy where God
will, having compassion where God will. The choice cannot be questioned. There
is not a way behind the simple fact of the choice.
Brueggemann uses the best term – inscrutable: God’s inscrutable will. Listen to
Romans 9:11f:
…for the children being not yet born, neither having done anything good
or bad, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of
works, but of him that calls…
Nothing to do with character/worth/morality.
….
Then verse 13:
…I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau.
But what are we to say? Injustice?
I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy… Period.
Verse 18:
So then he has mercy on whom he will and whom he will he hardens.
Well, I’ve been tortured by that for years. It didn’t seem fair. Finally, just yield to
it! Who are you to question? And positively – Grace – not merit/work, lest
anyone should boast and Election to service not privilege.
If one believes the Bible as the Word of God – an infallible, inspired word – what
is one to do?
Well, I think it’s time simply to recognize what is going on here: tribalism, overagainstness, rivalry.
Paul was a Jew. He was captivated by Jesus and believed God’s plan for history
was coming to its climax. He believed the God of Israel was God alone and now
God was moving into history and beginning to bring all things to their
consummation…and so he interpreted the present, his experience, in terms of
Israel’s history. – Why are all his countrymen not believing in Jesus? Well, all of
Israel never did belong to the chosen line within the nation.
© Grand Valley State University
�The Holy Family – God’s Elect?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
Is this fair?
God can do as God wills.
Malachi 1: 2-3 – Jacob loved and Esau hated. Obviously a present situation of
threat, alienation and potential violence explained in terms of the ancient story
which is imputed to God.
I simply do not believe it was some word of God that sent Hagar and Ishmael
away. I do not believe God chose Isaac in the womb before the twins were born,
nor that God was party to the deceit perpetrated by Rachel and Jacob on old
blind Isaac.
Look at what literalizing them does. For example, the orthodox Rabbis who
transmitted the tradition about the promise of the Land of Israel to Abraham the
Patriarch such that a young student assassinates Rabin, who as a military hero
was able to lead peace negotiations with Arafat.
Or the terrorists who on 911 flew those airplanes into the New York Trade Center
and the Pentagon as acts of worship and martyrdom to Allah in the cause not of
Islam in its total faith tradition but on the basis of selective interpretation, which
places terror in the mind of God.
As I was contemplating all of this I was reminded of my friend Krister Stendahl.
You remember him – thin as a pencil, thus appearing 7 feet tall – the Dean of
Harvard Divinity School for 20 years and for 10 years Lutheran Bishop of
Stockholm –a great New Testament scholar and a gracious man. He was my
surrogate Bishop during the years of conflict. He preached for us one Sunday,
and of course you remember the title – Shepherds, Good and Bad – but the
weekend theme was “Good religion opens the mind and warms the heart. Bad
religion closes the mind and hardens the heart.”
I took his study on Romans off the shelf. Krister loves the Scriptures and he is a
marvelous interpreter and preacher. In regard to these chapters, Romans 9-11, he
understands Paul as seeing the unbelief of the Jews in his time as the means by
which the Gospel is taken to the Gentiles. But he interprets Paul as believing God
will redeem Israel in God’s own time and manner.
And then I remembered that N. T. Wright, who preached here in May with
Marcus Borg, had just completed his commentary on Romans published in the
New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary. It is a massive work and Tom Wright and
the Commentary on Romans is indicative of the stature he holds in the academic
world. He is, as we experienced, a gracious gentleman and a brilliant scholar. He
is also a conservative evangelical several paces to the right of where I am and, as
we experienced, also of Marcus Borg.
© Grand Valley State University
�The Holy Family – God’s Elect?
Richard A. Rhem
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So I thought what does Tom Wright do with those chapters 9-11? Well I was not
surprised. Tom Wright takes Paul as authoritative, writing under the Spirit’s
inspiration. So God is involved in the Isaac/Ishmael issue and in the Jacob-Esau
issue. And I was reminded of my early years when passages that seemed so
contrary to my human experience had to be interpreted so as to put a good spin
on what really seemed simply incredible.
Tom Wright is careful to guard against using Paul and these passages as
justification for anti-Semitism, for attacks on the Jews for not believing Jesus as
the Christ, the Messiah. Nonetheless Tom reads Paul in the traditioned fashion as
seeing Israel’s story leading to Jesus as the Messiah and as the failure of the
Jewish people to thus believe as leading to their exclusion from the Kingdom.
Whose reading of Paul is correct? Two brilliant interpreters; both taking the text
seriously, both deeply committed Christian scholars: two interpretations, both
can be argued.
One, Krister, includes Israel, and in the other the Christian Church supercedes
Israel and those of Israel who do not come to God in faith through Christ are lost.
And as I wrestle with this I have no doubt where I stand – it is with Krister, even
though Tom Wright’s interpretation is certainly there as well. But then I move
beyond the impasse.
The whole conception of God needs overhauling.
The biblical God throughout is a God running the show: intervening, interposing,
controlling, working out a plan in history with sovereign power. And that is the
God of the ancient text. I want to hear the text. I want to know that whole
tradition. I want to understand how the Christian faith inevitably claims things
that are untrue. And frankly, I do.
And then I need to have the courage to argue with the text, to critique the text
and to bring to the text everything else we know about the reality of which we are
all a part. Then I want to bring our global consciousness to the text. I want to be
able to think. I want to bring our knowledge of other faith traditions and of
historical consciousness, realizing how these traditions developed.
I need to remember that the great civilizations of the East were not even in the
purview of the three Abrahamic faiths. And I must add to the mix my
understanding of religion and see it for what it is – tribal stories – with all the
limitations and dangerous potential of tribal loyalty. And then, for many who
have come to see the primitive tribalism of the religions, perhaps one would
simply throw up one’s hands and be done with it.
But look where that would leave us – where vast multitudes are today, adrift
without anchor on a sea of meaninglessness in a pitiless universe.
© Grand Valley State University
�The Holy Family – God’s Elect?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
And so I return to the stories, not now as divine revelation, but as human stories
of folk who have wondered about the meaning and purpose of life, about how to
live, how to find comfort and joy and truth and security. And I can look to the
stories that make up my story:
The story of Jesus – Paul wasn’t interested in the historical Jesus. He saw a
divine action in the cross and resurrection for the salvation of the world soon to
be consummated. He was wrong about that.
But what about Jesus? What about Stephen who died like Jesus, praying for his
killers and Paul standing by? What about what Jesus embodied? Is there still
something there? Can you imagine Jesus in Jerusalem today? Can you imagine
him a Jew turning away a Muslim?
Tribal religion has fueled the fire of violence and war. It has been exploited for
ethnic advantage, for social control, for domination – and always there is an
ancient text which is appealed to, a tribal story which is universalized,
absolutized, used to bludgeon the other.
Do you really believe there was a family filled with intrigue, conspiring, deceit,
treachery, hatred, and alienation that would be God’s Chosen, God’s elect? In
spite of groveling in the dust saying I am nothing and all is of grace, pure grace is
being chosen – and almost inevitably the chosen ones become proud of their
election and absolutize their story.
Isn’t it time to see those stories for what they are and to claim therefore not that
God is not the Creator Spirit of the whole but that our gods have been too small –
tribal gods made in our image. Must God – the Mystery of Being, the Infinite – be
indeed the God of the Whole, of the whole creation, of the whole movement of
history, of the whole human family – named variously, worshiped in many
different ways, imaged in diverse manners, yet the Mystery beyond our limited
tribal stories?
© 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/.
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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Interfaith worship
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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Event
Pentecost XXVII
Series
Once Upon a Time...
Scripture Text
Genesis 27:1-4, 30-45, Romans 9:1-18
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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2002-11-24
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The Holy Family - God's Elect?
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Richard A. Rhem
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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 November 24, 2002 entitled "The Holy Family - God's Elect?", as part of the series "Once Upon a Time...", on the occasion of Pentecost XXVII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Genesis 27:1-4, 30-45, Romans 9:1-18.
Abrahamic Faiths
Interfaith
Non-exclusive
Pluralism
Universal Grace
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Text
God in the Mirror of Christmas: A Child
Advent IV
Scripture: Hebrews 11-4; Luke 2:1-7
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
December 23, 2001
Transcription of the spoken sermon
The thing that I want to say to you this morning is really quite simple. I broached
the subject last week; it is the realization on my part of that tension within the
New Testament between the Christmas story and what it mirrors about God, and
the post-Easter biblical material that speaks of the triumph and the reign and the
coming again of Jesus with power to reign and to judge. As I indicated last week,
I have lived with that tension for years and years and I never recognized the
tension. It never struck me that to speak about the one who came in poverty and
humility and then to speak about that one who came as coming again with the
splendor of royal power was giving me two pictures of God, two mirrors.
It was reflecting God in two contrasting ways: the mirror of Christmas, that is the
mirror of the God with the human face– the God who is in the manger as a child
in all of the vulnerability and all of the beauty of that moment which we will
celebrate again tomorrow evening – and the God of the rest of the New
Testament is the same old God, the same almighty, omnipotent God who is in
control, the God who at the right moment will send the Son and the Son will
come in glory and splendor with power to reign and to judge, and there will be
the vindication of the righteous and there will be vengeance on the wicked. That
whole judgment scene of the God in control, the sovereign Lord of history, that
picture of the New Testament is strung throughout the whole New Testament,
and if you want to read it in all of its bare horror, read the book of Revelation.
That picture is in contrast to what the Christmas story mirrors about the nature
of God.
Last week we read in John's Gospel, "In the beginning was the divine intention,
and the divine intention became flesh and dwelt among us. No one has ever seen
God but the son has revealed God." Or Paul's statement "We have seen the light
of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Or the statement
from the Epistle to the Hebrews that I read a moment ago, where how could it be
more explicit? Jesus is spoken of as the Son who is the exact image of God, the
reflection of the exact nature of God. That's the Christmas story, and what God is
mirrored as being in the Christmas story is a God of vulnerability and ultimately,
© Grand Valley State University
�God in the Mirror of Christmas: A Child
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
finally, a God of love. Christmas is about heaven touching earth with love.
Christmas mirrors a God who moves by love to persuade, but never coerce, for
the child that is the central focus of this Christmas season is a child with all of the
wonder of a child, dependent, vulnerable, beautiful, innocent, harmless - there is
a picture of God.
But that stands in such sharp contrast to the revelation of God in the rest of the
story, almost as if Christmas happened and the life of Jesus happened, Jesus of
the Sermon on the Mount, counseling compassion over against the good and the
evil, the righteous and the unrighteous as reflective of God's attitude and spirit.
Jesus of the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus of the parable of the Prodigal
Son, Jesus - all those stories of the God who draws near, the God who is full of
grace, the God who is accessible, the God who is approachable. Jesus of Passion
Week who goes right into Jerusalem and speaks his truth to power and is
crucified for it, not resisting. Resisting only violent response, praying finally for
his enemies, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”– that Jesus
gets jettisoned on Easter, and from there on the Christian story and the Christian
Church has become one triumphalistic procession down through the centuries,
waiting for that one who came in humility and vulnerability, to come in smashing
glory.
How could I preach for years and years and years and not feel that contradiction?
And which God do we choose? Well, of course, we choose the God who raised
Jesus from the dead. Of course we choose the God who will bring history to its
culmination point. Of course we will choose the God who has time in his hand,
who will call the shots, who will send the Son in clouds of glory to judge the quick
and the dead, finally to reign. Of course, that's the God we will choose, the God
we can worship. That’s the God we can be secure with, that's the God who can set
things right.
And what happens to the God of the child? What happens to the God mirrored at
Christmas? What happens to the God with a human face? We talked about that
last week, but I want to say this week one further insight on this whole week, and
that is that, in spite of the fact that we have moved too quickly from Christmas, in
spite of the fact that we pray, "Come, Lord Jesus," nonetheless, every year we
come back to Christmas. We can't forget it. We can't get it out of our system. We
can't get it out of our bones. Every year we come back to this moment. Every year
we begin to experience the magic and the wonder of Christmas. Every year we
come again to bow before the manger that holds the child, and every year it
happens again. We all know it. There is no question about it. The world is a softer
place this weekend. The world is a softer place at Christmastime. The tear flows,
the lump in the throat, the old carols stir something deep within us. The simple
and beautiful story told again moves us.
I've already celebrated Christmas because I have gone through a couple of
rehearsals for the early service for tomorrow night. So, I know the baby gets born
© Grand Valley State University
�God in the Mirror of Christmas: A Child
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
again, a real-live baby cries, and as I stood as one of the narrators for the story,
being beautifully portrayed by our lovely young dancers and our shepherds, and
Mary and Joseph, as I saw it again yesterday, I was cognizant myself of the fact
that it does move you again. It happens again. It's a lovely story. It's a story that
reaches the deepest part of the human being, and we come back to it every year,
and it's the same old story but it's new every year and it moves us every year, and
we celebrate every year, and we rejoice in it every year, and I want to submit to
you that we do that because it has gotten into the marrow of our bones and we
know intuitively that that story is the ultimate truth. We know that the love that
came down at Christmas reflects the grain of the universe, the truth deep down in
things.
You see, most of the rest of the year, we don't live that way. Most of the rest of the
year, we simply get caught up in all of the power games and all of the power
structures, political life, economic life, social life. We move away from Christmas
and we forget the radicality of the vision that we have seen. But, for just a little
while, we remember and it touches us because it is true. It is the final truth. And
there is that within us that knows it is the final truth. Jesus is our window to God.
Jesus isn't the only window to God. Jesus isn't everybody's window to God, but
Jesus is our window to God.
I appreciate the fact that a dozen or so of you sent me the last page of Time
magazine, the essay by Rosenblatt entitled, "God Is Not On Your Side Nor On My
Side." I like the fact that so many of you thought of me when you read it, because
it tells me that you are listening and that you identify with me with that kind of
idea. I appreciate that fact. But, Jesus is our window, and I want to tell you, Jesus
is a radical window. Jesus is a magnificent window. Jesus is a window on God
that is so profound and so magnificent, that we ought not to miss it. It is so easy
to take it for granted because it is the old, old story and we know the story so well,
and how could we ever find anything new in it, and then one sits back for a
moment, and says, "My God! Do you realize what that story is telling me about
God?" It is radical! It is revolutionary! It is so radical and revolutionary that the
world hasn't been able to deal with it yet.
Our old world is rocking with war again and I am sure the reason that this Advent
season I was not able to live with the contradiction without at least lifting it up
was the fact of current events, what is going on in our world. That often happens.
One has an old story, an old tradition, and suddenly something happens to you or
something happens in the world, and one sees something that was always there
and one didn't see it at all! Suddenly I see it everywhere now. I see what the
future, if there is to be a future, I see what it has to be. It has to be a world that is
posited on the nature of God reflected in Bethlehem, in Jesus.
That is hardly the way we have lived, even though in the West Jesus has been our
window. That’s hardly the way we have lived. It's dangerous to live that way. It
can put your national security in jeopardy, of course. But, you see, in this old
© Grand Valley State University
�God in the Mirror of Christmas: A Child
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
world of ours, after 9-11, it has become apparent to us what has long been true,
and that is that there is no ultimate security through power or might or force of
arms.
It would be political suicide for our national leaders without talking about
securing this nation, but this nation is not secure, and given the technology of our
world today, given where we are in our world today, it will never be secure again.
It will never be secure in a world where there are those who are dispirited and
despairing and hopeless and helpless and alienated and angry and full of rage –
never be secure again. And so, what we really have to do is find out another way
to be in this world, because power isn't going to do it. It just might be that, while
we're number one, it might be the smartest, most savvy thing in the world for us
to begin to create a new one world reality. You see, right now, the way it has been,
might, force, power has ruled, and the international game is a vast chess game,
and those analysts of international affairs plot out those chess moves. We should
do this, they'll do that, and if we do this, we can checkmate at this point, because
it's a power game, it's a game about winning, or at least not losing. And it isn't
going to work anymore.
Our world is rocking with war and there is no security and down deep in our
hearts, we know, and we keep coming back to Christmas every year and we're
moved by it Our eyes moisten again, we get a lump in our throat again, our hearts
are softened again. You can feel it on the street, because down deep we know
that's true, and we try to get on with life according to the only way life can be
survivable, right?
Well, one wonders. We come back and we're touched, because that is the deepest
truth and, if that is the deepest truth, I wonder when we're going to try it Let me
tell you about a savvy move we made in that chess game. You know it, too; it's
been in the news. You know that we funded Osama bin Laden. You know that we
funded and gave arms to the Taliban, right? As long as they were fighting the
Soviet Union. And why did we do that? Simply because we didn't like the Soviet
Union? We are smart. We knew if we could get the Soviet Union to have our own
Vietnam, it would suck the life blood and resources right out of them. We'd bring
them to their knees. And, by God, we did it. There are those among our leaders
right now who were responsible for that policy, who are defending it, and I'm
sure there are some of you out there who would say that was a good move,
because the Soviet Union was brought to its knees. Didn't President Reagan call it
"the evil empire"? Ah, dear friends, as long as we're in that kind of a game, we will
be trying to save our necks, we will be trying to defend our borders, we will be
trying to perpetuate the preeminence of our position, and it's a no-win game,
ultimately.
You know the problem with the American people? We're a good people at the
pinnacle of power, and Christmas has seeped into the marrow of our bones. If we
could just use our power in any brutal and violent fashion, we could shape this
© Grand Valley State University
�God in the Mirror of Christmas: A Child
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
world up. You wouldn't have to pray. You wouldn't have to ask for God's blessing.
You wouldn't have to pray "God bless America." Just turn our resources loose
with no moral qualms, with no ethical consideration, just bomb 'em, baby. Bomb
them into submission. We have the stuff, folks. We could do it.
But, we can't do it, because we have Christmas in the marrow of our bones. We
have been touched by Jesus. We've seen God in the face of a child, and once
you've seen God in the face of a child, you just can't go on being a mean S.O.B.
anymore. That's our dilemma. A good people at the pinnacle of power who know
the ultimate truth, but haven't quite dared to live by it yet. Maybe this year.
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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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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English
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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
Advent IV
Series
God in the Mirror of Christmas
Scripture Text
Hebrews 1:1-4, Luke 2:1-7
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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KII-01_RA-0-20011223
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2001-12-23
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A Child
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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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Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on December 23, 2001 entitled "A Child", as part of the series "God in the Mirror of Christmas", on the occasion of Advent IV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Hebrews 1:1-4, Luke 2:1-7.
Advent
Divine Intention
Incarnation
Pluralism
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d51e4f2b4b153f47a488060c8f8329ee.mp3
684b504445396bca339aeb3faa2b8b4d
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/394081598d41757cb00f28d74032dacf.pdf
81d3858856c86603e4df8f927dc28a52
PDF Text
Text
This is the Time and This is the Place
Pentecost XIX
Scripture: Matthew 5:13-16; 43-48
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
October 7, 2001
Transcription of the spoken sermon
From a textbook that we are using on Wednesday evenings in our class, Samuel
P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations: Remaking of the World Order, I read
this paragraph,
Every civilization sees itself as the center of the world and writes its history
as the central drama of human history. This has been perhaps even more
true of the West than of other cultures. Such mono-civilizational
viewpoints, however, have decreasing relevance and usefulness in a multicivilizational world. Scholars of civilizations have long recognized this
truism. In 1918, Spangler denounced the myopic view of history prevailing
in the West with its neat division into ancient, medieval and modern
phases relevant only to the West. It is necessary, he said, to replace this
Ptolemaic approach to history with a Copernican one, and to substitute for
the empty figment of one linear history the drama of a number of mighty
cultures.
A few decades later, Toynbee castigated the parochialism and
impertinence of the West manifested in the egocentric illusions that the
world revolved around it, that there was an unchanging East and that
progress was inevitable. The illusions and prejudices of which these
scholars warn, however, live on, and in the late twentieth century have
blossomed forth into the widespread and parochial conceit that the
European civilization of the West is now the universal civilization of the
world.
And, at the bottom of that page which concludes chapter two, I penned, "And
then September 11,2001."
I wonder, as I am sure you do as well, whether or not the tragedy of September 11
will significantly alter our human consciousness, whether the revelation of our
vulnerability will affect the way we live, think, worship, believe. I wonder if there
is a dawning consciousness that will enable us to recognize the illusions, the
© Grand Valley State University
�This is the Time and This is the Place Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
myths with which we live, about the centrality of our own perspective and point
of view, whether or not some progress in the human story may be possible
because finally the dullness of our spirits has been penetrated.
When I read the paragraph from Samuel P. Huntington that I cited just a
moment ago, what leapt off the page at me was his suggestion that the historians
need to experience a Copernican revolution, shorthand for a total restructuring of
thought and understanding. Copernicus, you will remember, was a bishop of the
Church who, in the 16th, maybe 15* century, through some primitive calculations
determined that the earth was not the center of the universe, but rather circled
around the sun. That was revolutionary thinking, and somehow or other
Copernicus kept it under cover. But his disciple, Galileo, did further calculations
and with a primitive instrument established beyond a shadow of a doubt that,
indeed, Copernicus was right, the earth was not the center of the universe. The
earth orbited the sun, as did several other planets, and we were a middlin' star in
this universe that was visible, accessible at that time. Well, of course, the moment
that was proclaimed, it not only demoted the earth from its central place and
humanity from its center place before the face of God, but it also was contrary to
the scriptures that spoke in poetic fashion, to be sure, but of the earth as the
center.
And so, you know the story. Galileo was put on trial, his life was threatened,
except if he recant, which he did mumbling, we're told, under his breath, “but it's
still true,” put under house arrest. But, in the good time and the good grace of the
Church, of course, as is always true of the Church, the Church comes around. It
took only from the 16th century until 1991, December 28, when the Vatican said
Galileo was right. But, what struck me was Huntington's use of that Copernican
revolution as an analogy for what has to happen in our understanding of history,
and he quotes Spangler in his great work, The Decline of the West (1918),
Spangler saying that is what we need in our thinking about history. We need a
Copernican revolution. He cites Toynbee, the great scholar of civilization, talking
about our parochialism. And then Samuel Huntington concludes the chapter by
saying, "These scholars have been talking this way for a long time, but still our
illusions and our myths live on.
Well, Huntington published in 1996, and I read the book at the end of 1999. I
even preached on The Clash of Civilizations and the healing of the nations under
the theme, "A Millennial Vision," January 23, 2000. I thought it was important,
and I thought it was important enough to bring to your attention. But I have to
admit, after September 11, it's like the whole thing comes alive in a new
dimension, and suddenly I read Spangler's statement about the need of a
Copernican revolution and I read Huntington's saying the illusions and the myths
just seem to go on in spite of the fact that there are intelligent voices saying
otherwise, and then I switch from the dullness of the historian to the even greater
dullness of the religionist.
© Grand Valley State University
�This is the Time and This is the Place Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
This morning I am not interested in dealing with that with which Huntington
deals, that is, the new historical perspective after the Cold War of the
civilizational groupings that make up our reality. I simply begin there to see how
interesting it is to take an analogy from the fields of the sciences and apply it to
history, and I want to apply it to religion, because I want to say to you this
morning that, in the light of September 11, it is absolutely imperative that those
who are observant religious people around the world come to a deeper and new
appreciation of the nature of religion, and the fact that, just as we write history
from our own point of view, so we write our religion from our own point of view,
as do the respective religions of the world, all seeing themselves in the center as
the holder of the truth.
Within the Eastern faiths it is not so serious, because they're happy to invite
another point of view because they are not exclusive. But, particularly within
Christianity and to a certain extent Islam, it is written into the very charter of
what our story tells us, that our Christian faith, for example, is true, absolutely
true, exclusively true, and the missionary mandate of the Christian Church is to
go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, and the whole structure
and biblical scheme is that, when Christ has been brought to the whole world, the
end will come. That is part and parcel of the very heart of our understanding as
Christian people.
Now in this congregation we have moved off from that exclusivism. We have
moved from exclusivism to a posture of pluralism. We have come to recognize
that the great religious traditions are traditions that, along with our tradition, are
recipients of the truth of God, the revelation of God, and the experiences of the
grace of God. We have made that move, which is no small move, and which came
with no little wrenching and at considerable cost. But we at Christ Community
Church affirm that, while Jesus is our window to God, others have other windows
which are also valid for the experience of communion with God and the
experience of the grace of God.
I find that it is rather easy to sit back and relax and pat ourselves on the back and
say, "You know, what a sophisticated and enlightened people we are. Now we can
just get on with our lives." I want to say after September 11, we have to recognize
how imperative it is that that posture that we have been invited into be witnessed
to and offered and, if need be, defended. I want us to realize this morning, in the
light of September 11, that, if it was necessary at one point for those who studied
astronomy to go through a mind-wrenching revolution, if it is necessary for those
who study history to get released from their parochialism and their myopic
vision, then, dear friends, how much more it is for the religious people of the
world to open their minds to the threat and the danger of exclusivism and
absolutism, and to recognize that our religious experience is the source of that
spiritual insight and comfort for us, but it is our story, a valid story, but not the
only story.
© Grand Valley State University
�This is the Time and This is the Place Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
You might think that September 11 would change the picture, but I have a letter
here from Pat Robertson. "Dear Richard Rhem." (They're good. If I get on his list,
everybody's on his list. The only mistake he made is Christ Community Reformed
Church. That figures.) But, it's a letter that talks about the crisis at present and
you know how Falwell and Robertson backed off from their insensitive remarks
immediately after the crisis. But I'll tell you what - they've not changed their mind
one whit. "Throughout our history our true protection has not come from armed
forces, our police, our intelligence. Our protection has been the covering hand of
a gracious God. Modern day America has repudiated that," and so on and so
forth. "Has our conduct caused a loving God to lift his hand of protection from us,
and if it has, what can His people do?" Well, of course, there are kits and books
and all kinds of things, and a contribution request.
Yesterday's Grand Rapids Press, on the same page in which there was a little
story about Bishop Spong's visit here, and a little synopsis of his calling us to
maturity and to grow up and to recognize that that cozy, parental God does not
exist, there is an advertisement for the fall conference of the Seventh Reformed
Church, and it is entitled, "The Other Side of the Good News: The Challenge of
Universalism," and Friday night you could hear a survey of contemporary
universalisms. We might come in for mention. Saturday morning early, a defense
of the doctrine of everlasting punishment. Now, how would you like to be in the
position of creating the defense for the doctrine of eternal damnation? I mention
that only because I want you to know that September 11, in many cases, hasn't
changed anything. There is still that very conservative and orthodox and
fundamentalist element within the Christian Church that is pushing exclusivism,
Jesus Christ alone for salvation, and the condemnation of all those who share
another point of view.
The Seventh Reformed Church, you may remember, was pastored by my dear
friend, John Richard deWitt, whose recent letter to me closed by saying, "I love
you very much." Now, that, too, is a mystery. But here we are at opposite ends,
opposite poles, and yet at Duba's table we were able, Tuesday after Tuesday, to
carry on wonderful civil dialogue, and if you think it was good before, can you
imagine what Duba's is about after September 11? Now the group has been
reconstituted because Dick is in South Carolina, Duncan is still there, who
celebrated with Nancy on Thursday his 89th birthday. Lester DeKoster is still
there, in his mid-80s, hale and hearty. But, we've added a little support on my
side. I brought Howard VanTill to the table, so we have an enlightened scientist.
And my dear friend, Bud Ridder, of many, many years. And Clarence Boomsma, a
respected and sensitive and intelligent pastor of the Christian Reformed Church
for many years. I run with these guys in their 80s, it makes me feel young. Last
Tuesday I think it was Howard who said something about revelation just doesn't
fall out of heaven so that you have a book, and my dear friend Lester said, "That's
exactly what you have. If you don't have that, you don't have anything."
© Grand Valley State University
�This is the Time and This is the Place Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
Now, Lester has a philosophically trained mind of brilliant capacity with a
debater's skills. Of course, he was not only debating, but baiting a bit. So, when
asked, "All right, I have the absolute word of God, divinely inspired in every word,
and my Muslim brother has the Koran, claiming even a higher level of inspiration
for his book, what do we have here? An impasse?" Lester said, "No, it depends on
who was the author."
"Well, who was the author of this book?" (The Bible)
"The eternal God."
"Who was the author of this book?" (The Koran)
"Satan."
Now, Lester with his lovely wife Ruth, will be listening to this sermon. They have
Christ Community preaching for breakfast on Tuesday morning, so that he can
always make some relative comment on Tuesday noon, and of course, with his
incisive thinking and his acuity, he is always right on. He knows exactly where I
have deviated from the faith.
Lester knew what he was doing. He was setting us up. If you hold that this (the
Bible) is the word of God, every word, then every other book has to be a false
book. It has to be the witness of a lie. So, Lester proceeded, "If you don't have
that, what do you have?" And I was so delighted with my friend, Bud Ridder, who
swallowed hard, pushing away every inclination and every instruction and every
bit of knowledge he had in his whole life, saying, "My authority is in myself."
Of course, that's exactly what Lester was trying to point out. When you give up
the authority of the book or, if you were a Roman Catholic, the authority of the
Church, or if you were in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the authority of the
tradition, then you are out at sea. Then you are your own authority. And you can
go across the spectrum of the Protestant or Catholic or Orthodox churches today
and you will find, when you press the issue, that there will be fudging all along
the line. But, at Duba's table, one never gets away with fudging. And so, my
friend, Bud Ridder, had to say, "I am my own authority," and I cheered. Because
that's precisely where we are. We have made the move into pluralism, dear
friends.
But, I want to take you a cut below that. Not only have we become pluralists
because well, nice folks like us, after all, should be pluralists. We're nice people.
We like to get along with other people. Who wants to say to somebody else,
"You're lost," or "You're damned," or "You're on the wrong track?" We're decent
people, civil and good neighbors. We're just plain congenial folks. Shouldn't we
be pluralists? No. It's not enough. We ought to be pluralists on the basis of our
deepest insight and that insight is this - that finally we are the creators of our own
vision and our own place to stand.
© Grand Valley State University
�This is the Time and This is the Place Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
Now, don't hear me say that you begin life with a virgin mind and a blank tablet
and you start creating this thing from scratch. Of course not. Grace Elizabeth and
Allie, who were baptized today, are immersed in a story. They are surrounded
with the love of those who tell the story. They are part of the community of faith,
a particular tradition whose window on God is that beautiful face of Jesus. They
are being shaped and, beyond that, they have a storybook in which they are being
nurtured in this community and in their homes. And beyond that, they are
growing into a world of experience, a fascinating world of expanding experience
and broadening horizons. And so, from a tradition, from a sacred story, from a
family and a community, and in the gaining of experience, finally they make up
their mind through the use of their mind, through critical rationality, which is the
particular gift and fruit of the Western tradition. That is the thing that is being
terrorized today. That is the greatest threat to us, to lose our gift and our capacity
to think with our minds and make up our minds and sift the evidence and the
experience before us with our critical rationality.
So, it is not as though everyone is on his or her own, starting out fresh and having
to come to some kind of major conclusions, no. We are shaped, we are guided, we
are nurtured. Finally, in the end, it is not this book. It is not the authority of
Mother Church. It is not 2000 years of tradition. It is not the word of some pastor
or counselor. Finally, until you can stand on your own and say, "This I believe, for
these reasons, in light of this experience," until you come to that point, you have
not crossed the Rubicon.
Crossing the Rubicon is a matter of determining the source of authority. Once
you cross the Rubicon, you are free to think. You are free to think about religion;
you are free to think about theological questions; you are free to think about
social, ethical issues. You are able to take the witness of science over against the
question of sexual orientation. You are able to carry on a conversation about the
question of abortion. You are able to discuss Planned Parenthood. You are able to
think about all of those issues that are right at the nub of our present existential
situation. You are free; you are free to think. You can gather the data. You can get
the best information possible. You could become aware of your own biases and
prejudices. You can lay it all on the table, and then you can make up your mind
and you can be committed and dedicated to a point of view which you cannot do
when you say, "Therefore, I have absolute truth. Therefore, my religious
understanding is synonymous with the truth. Therefore, my decision on social,
ethical questions is the only possibility for a thinking religious and pious person."
What I am saying to you, I am saying as clearly and simply as I can, and I want
you to know it is a very radical point of view.
Last Sunday evening, after a very busy and significant weekend, Christine Spong
called and said, "Dick, Jack and I are tired. We would like simply to come over
and sit on the bluff with you and Nancy and watch the sunset and eat leftovers."
And we did. Jack Spong had been exposed to you in large assembly and various
© Grand Valley State University
�This is the Time and This is the Place Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
small groups, he met with the Trustees, encountered many of you one-on-one,
and immediately sitting down, he said, "Dick, I want you to know that Christ
Community is a very special place. I want you to know that in all of my world
travels, in all of my involvement with the church, out of all of my experience over
the years, what you have there is rare. That community of people is rare.
Theologically, spiritually, psychologically, emotionally mature." And he said,
"You know, I'm a disincarnate bishop at this point, and I need concrete
laboratories. I see Christ Community as a place that has the possibility because of
where it has come to move into the next phase of what the religious community
must be." He even offered to come back and be with us for a month and help us,
suggested that we gather some other similar people, maybe bring in a Muslim
imam, a Buddhist monk. Let us begin to live concretely what we say we believe,
bringing our gift to the table and learning, as well, from the wisdom and the
insight of others.
My sermon title is "This is the Time and This is the Place." Jesus said, "You are
the light of the world." Light doesn't go out and wage warfare, but light is what it
is, and it illumines. He said, "You are the salt of the earth." The whole world
doesn't need to be a salt block, but the world needs the light sprinkling of salt in
order that it may bring forth all of its richness and flavor. Jesus said, "Love your
enemies. Be like God. The sun shines on the good and the evil. The rain falls on
the gardens of all people. You be like that." The word in the old, traditional
translation is "Be ye perfect, as God is perfect," but that too easily takes on a
moralistic tone. The word really in the Greek original means complete, whole,
fulfilling its purpose and its end. Be therefore mature, complete, as God is mature
and complete.
I don't know the implications of what it means to move into the next form of
existence of the Church. But, I do know that we have made a significant move. We
know why we have made it, and a thoughtful analysis and critical understanding
will demonstrate that the only authority, finally, is the conviction of our own faith
and our own vision which we share in community and support one another. I
don't know the implications of this, but I know this -I have time and I have the
energy, if you are willing to find out the next orbit. This is the time, folks, and this
is the place.
References:
Samuel P. Huntington. The Clash of Civilizations: Remaking of the World Order.
Touchstone, 1997.
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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Event
Pentecost XVIII
Scripture Text
Matthew 5:13-16, 43-48
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Samuel P. Huntington. The Clash of Civilizations: Remaking of the World Order. Touchstone, 1997.
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KII-01_RA-0-20011007
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2001-10-07
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This Is the Time and This Is the Place
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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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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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A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on October 7, 2001 entitled "This Is the Time and This Is the Place", on the occasion of Pentecost XVIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Matthew 5:13-16, 43-48.
Exclusivism
Nature of Religion
Pentecost
Pluralism
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PDF Text
Text
The Religious Question
Pentecost X
Micah 6:6-8; Luke 10:25-37
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
August 5, 2001
Transcription of the spoken sermon
The religious question continues to fascinate me and to absorb my time and
energy. Some of you, perhaps, have not had the misfortune I have had, and that is
to have to go through a total revolution of one's understanding of what the
religious question is all about. For me, religion had been packaged very neatly in
a confessional statement, in a creedal form, in a community whose identity was
created by a very definite set of beliefs and mores and ethical insights. The whole
nature of religion in my growing up and maturing and even in my early ministry
was so far from that which I understand it now to be. Some years ago someone
said, “You know, as old as he is, you'd think he would have gotten some answers
by now." But, for me, the pilgrimage was not from questions to answers, but
rather, from answers to questions. And so, I want to think with you this morning
and throughout this month of August a little bit about religion, the nature of it,
the function of it, and the origin of it – and this morning, the religious question,
the whole matter of this phenomenon in which we are fellow passengers and
journey mates, the religious adventure, the religious life, the religious
community.
A lawyer came to Jesus one day and said, "Good Master, what must I do to inherit
eternal life?" In the paragraph from the prophet Micah, we have the question
raised, "With what shall I come before the Lord then, with what shall I bow down
before the most high?" That sounds like a serious question. The lawyer's question
may well have been an intellectual game, an attempt to trip up Jesus and expose
him as something less than a significant rabbi. But, there was a night in Philippi
when the earth shook and the jail was opened, and the prisoners set free, when
the jailer cried out to Paul, "What must I do to be saved?" And there was a rich
young man recorded in Mark's gospel – in fact, the text perhaps I should better
have chosen than the one from Luke – in which the same question as the
lawyer's is raised, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" And Jesus suggested
the Commandments, to which the young man said, "I have kept these from my
youth up." And then Jesus said, "Sell all you have and give to the poor," and he
went away grieved because he had great possessions. That, obviously, was a
serious question.
© Grand Valley State University
�The Religious Question
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
There are those questions, and religion, as a matter of fact, is a human response
to those kinds of questions. For me, earlier on, it was a question of how one might
live and die and find union with God in another time and place, in another sphere
or dimension of reality. But, more and more for me, religion becomes the
question of how to live here and now and what is the meaning of life. What is the
meaning of human existence? We are the only animals, as far as we know, that
have the gift of self-consciousness and awareness that causes us to wrestle with
questions like that, for we become bonded to another and then we lose the other
and there is grief and pain and separation and we wonder - what is life and what
is death? And as we look about us, the record of human history is a record of very
great suffering and tragedy, and we experience that in our own individual lives
and the lives of those we love. There is pain and there is loss. There is confusion.
There is so much ambiguity in our human situation. It is difficult to sort it all out.
Finally, life is a question. Or, life presents us with a question. Maybe the ultimate
philosophical question would be, "Why is there something rather than nothing?"
It was very easy for me at one time to answer those questions because there was a
revelation that came directly from God, a revelation that found expression
through the prophets, culminated in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ recorded in the scriptures, which were inspired by God and therefore
inerrant and infallible and, consequently, religion was a matter of having the
answers in a book to the mysteries of life.
But, life has a way of overturning those certainties and of putting the lie to much
that seems so taken for granted. Human experience is very messy. It cannot be
crammed into a system with all of the loose ends tied up. And the longer one
lives, the more one lives with openness and reflection and thoughtfulness and
attention and awareness, the more one recognizes that ultimately there are
questions before which we live, and more and more I come to see religion as that
attempt on the part of humankind to deal with those ultimate questions. For, as a
matter of fact, what is your life, as James wrote. What must you do to inherit
eternal life? What must you do to be saved? What does it even mean to be saved?
What's it all about, this human existence we live day by day? That is the religious
quest.
I suppose the first thing that strikes me, as I think about it, is how I see the
religious quest as so very normal and so very natural. I didn't always think so. At
one time, I thought that the religious ones were a slim minority and that the
foundations of even that which remained were eroding. And now, I realize that
the only things that change are the forms of that religious expression, the
institutional forms.
I remember when I was in Europe in the 60s, the tumultuous 60s, there was a
phrase, “Will the Church be alive in '85?” Well, the year is 2001 and the Church is
still alive. And yet, if you look at the big picture, what is happening to the
institutional forms of religion? I have come to see one really doesn't have to
© Grand Valley State University
�The Religious Question
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
worry about that. I used to worry about it. I wondered if there would be a church
in which I could continue to feed my habit. And now I know, whatever form it
may be, to be human is to be engaged in that religious quest. Oh, I know one like
me is a warped individual because I live it and eat it and sleep it. It is my
profession. It is what I do, thinking about these things. And I know the rest of you
have to make a living, and you really don't have the luxury I do of thinking and
thinking and thinking some more. But as a matter of fact that is a luxury, because
it does stop one in one's tracks, for one becomes aware of how life can just pass
through our hands like sands through our fingertips, and how much we can live
without stopping consciously to evaluate what we are doing and where we are
going and why we are caught up in the frantic pace which marks so much of our
days.
I see it symbolically, for example, in television. Let me just point to the Today
Show. Nancy always wants to see what the weather is going to be. But, you know,
the poor weather forecaster hardly has time to give you the weather forecast. It is
shoved in between all of the life-changing messages that come from all of the
corporate sponsors. And so, finally, one is exposed to about ten minutes of
commercials in order to get about 90 seconds of what the weather will be, and
then it's wrong. But, the point is this - more and more of life is in your face, and
less and less are we called apart simply to be and to contemplate and reflect on
the meaning of it all. Such reflection and contemplation is really what religion is
all about, and it is a normal and a natural and an inevitable human activity.
However it may find expression, however it may work itself out in our lives, there
is that religious dimension. I think we're made that way. I think we're created
with a hole in our soul that longs to be filled with the sacred, the holy, with a
sense of meaning and purpose, with understanding.
So, religion isn't going to go out of business. We are going to be religious to the
extent that we are human and the only question is what form or shape will that
religious quest take.
I learned that that quest takes place in all of the great major faith traditions. For
me, that was also revolutionary. It is not revolutionary for me to say that here in
this place, because we have dealt with it often enough. So, it becomes almost
commonplace for us. But, if you were raised and trained like I was, you know that
it is not commonplace at all. And if you were in most places of worship this
morning, you would know that it wouldn't be commonplace at all. But to come to
understand religion for what it is, that deep quest of the human spirit for
meaning and for understanding, moves one to a place where one can move from
exclusivism – as though we have the last and final word and the absolute truth –
to a place of pluralism where we recognize that all those major faith traditions are
doing exactly the same thing that we are doing. In all of those particular forms of
religious expression, in all of those great traditions, there are these same
questions that are moving it, motivating it, energizing the quest.
© Grand Valley State University
�The Religious Question
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
The practice of religion, in all of its variety and forms, is finally an attempt to
understand who we are, what does it mean, what do I do to inherit eternal life,
what must I do to be saved, or to be human or whole, or at least on the way
toward wholeness. We have come to understand here that all of those particular
religions are human, creative, imaginative constructs. We build our religions. We
create our religions. As someone has written, all of our present religions are the
ossified remains of past ecstatic or prophetic visions: Moses at the burning bush,
or Mohammed, or Jesus, or the Buddha and the experience of enlightenment.
And from those momentary epiphanies or moments of revelation, that luminosity
that opens up heaven and suddenly gives some sense and expression, there is a
resonance which creates a community which then is bound together around that
particular vision. Religion is a human endeavor. It is a creative, imaginative,
human construct. So, all of this foolishness about my religion is better than yours,
or my God is better than yours, or my religion is true and all of the rest are false is
simply quite ridiculous.
Every once in a while in my Tuesday noon luncheons at Duba's, my good friend,
Duncan Littlefair, will look across the table at me and say, “How could you have
stayed there so long?” And I say, “I wonder the same thing.” When once one sees
the nature of the religious quest, and sees the respective religions as so many
human attempts to engage in that quest, then it must be arrogance to say that I
have it and you don't.
I remember moments, don't you, moments in the past when it did flit through my
head that that was hardly a reasonable assumption. And yet, how we in our
respective religions are trained to look inward, are encouraged to build those
walls and to affirm and assert the absoluteness of our positions.
You know, when a pastor does what I do to you, you are going to go out there and
get slaughtered out in main street because every other church in town is telling
their people this is it. This is true. You have it, everything else is wrong. Stand for
it. Fight for it. Witness to it. And you're going to go out there and say, "Well, on
the one hand, and on the other, and in the meantime..." You don't have a chance.
A nice, civil, humane discussion like this disallows you to get out there and win
the battle of the religious wars. But once we see that our religion, as well as all the
others, is a human response to the Divine, we realize that, even if a revelation has
come from beyond, it can only find expression in human language, human
thought forms. It can only take shape in human community. There is no other
way. And once you see that you're drained of your absolutism. You must be done
with your exclusivism, and arrogance is simply impossible.
So, religion is a very normal, natural part of being human and the respective
religions of the world are so many creative and imaginative constructs that seek
to respond to that religious question. Someone suggested the image of a
landscape that has many wells dug and some wells are just very simple and some
© Grand Valley State University
�The Religious Question
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
are very elaborate, but all of the wells tap in to that great underground river of
life. And so it is with the religions.
Now, you may say, "Well, if all religions are the same..." (I didn't say that. I said
all religions are attempting to do the same thing.)"... are true, then they are
probably all false, and so why would anyone commit oneself to that which is not
absolute and final?"
Because it is only in that total commitment of oneself to the practice and the
observance of one's own faith story that one will come to that spiritual peace,
insight, and healing which is salvation. You can't run on many roads at once. You
can't ride all horses at the same time. And we've all been given a story anyway.
Our story is a beautiful, magnificent story. We stand as recipients of a grand
tradition. Our Judeo-Christian heritage reflected in the scriptures, having shaped
Western civilization - what a grand tradition that is. And it is our story. It is an
unusual person who can move over into another story and there experience the
holy and the sacred. Some rare individuals have been able to do that, but not
many of us. Most of us have been given a story and it is our story and it
denigrates not in the least to say that it is our story, our authentic story, although
it's not the only story. It is not the only well in the landscape. But, for us, it is the
source of the water of life and that, not simply as an intellectual articulation of
what is true, but rather, the experience in community of that which is reflective of
the vision of our faith story.
With what shall I bow down before the most high? Shall I bring ten
thousand offerings? Shall I bring the fruit of my body for the sin of my
soul? What shall I do?
And the prophet, speaking the word of God, says,
"I told you what you should do. Do justice. Love mercy. And walk humbly
with your God."
God is experienced, not in some mystical flight, some esoteric vision in splendid
isolation, but God is experienced in our story in the doing of justice and in the
loving of mercy and in the humility before the Mystery that is God.
What shall I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus said, "What is the summary of the
law, but to love God and to love one’s neighbor as oneself?" Love.
When the lawyer wanted to push Jesus a little further, he said, "Who is my
neighbor?" bringing it down to earth, so to speak. And then, very interestingly,
what did Jesus say? "Your neighbor is the one you encounter in need. Your
neighbor is not the one who lives in proximity to you or the one who shares
community with you. Your neighbor is the one who crosses your path who is in
need." And so, he tells the familiar, beautiful story of the Samaritan who reached
© Grand Valley State University
�The Religious Question
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
out to one who was of another kind, in his need, showing mercy and love and
care.
What must I do to be saved? I used to know a whole bunch of scripture verses
which I could tell you about what you have to believe, what words you should use,
how to be saved. I found a little tract the other day again. Someone placed a tract
in a very convenient place in the Men's Room, kind of like having a captive
audience. Once again, it was very simple, just one, two, three, and bingo,
salvation.
Nonsense. Salvation is in human encounter marked by justice, mercy and love.
And the irony is that when Jesus would talk about gaining eternal life, or we
could say encounter with God or experiencing the holy, Jesus didn't talk about
anything this way at all. That’s the marvel of it. That’s the irony of it. God is
experienced in the acts of justice and mercy and kindness and love to a concrete
individual, human being. God is experienced in the horizontal relationships of
life. God is experienced in human community. Compassion is the final test of
every theology and of every religious expression. If religion is making us kind and
true and loving and compassionate, it's good and it's true. If it leads to
separation, hostility, judgment and damnation, it is false, according to Jesus.
Now, that's our story.
So, what must you do to be saved, to inherit eternal life, to fulfill your human
being? What do you make of it all? And how are you doing? It is not really such a
mystery. Good religion warms the heart, opens the mind, and enables us to
embrace our neighbor. The religious question is quite a bit simpler and more
difficult than I ever dreamed.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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 X
Scripture Text
Micah 6:6-8, Luke 10:25-37
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-0-20010805
Date
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2001-08-05
Title
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The Religious Question
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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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
The topic of the resource
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
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on August 5, 2001 entitled "The Religious Question", on the occasion of Pentecost X, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Micah 6:6-8, Luke 10:25-37.
Nature of Religionm Spiritual Quest
Pluralism
-
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PDF Text
Text
An Emerging Vision: What Matters?
From the series: The Heart of the Matter
Text: Psalm 78:6-7; Jeremiah 29:11; James 4:14
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Pentecost XVIII, October 8, 2000
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Psalm 78, from which I just read, continues as a recitation of the history of Israel
because the Psalmist did as he instructed people to do, that is, to tell the stories,
to tell the stories in order that the children might know them, even the generation
yet unborn, and come into the same experience of the grace of God.
I'm going to tell you a story this morning. It is a story that some of you have lived
and others of you know, and for some of you, it may be new. But it is not so bad
when you are trying to figure out the future to look at the way you have come. The
story centers around that wonderful text in Jeremiah 29, the 11th verse. Israel is in
exile. There are those voices that are saying, "Don't settle down. Get ready to get
out of here. You can never be blessed here." And then the voice of Jeremiah is
heard in a letter, and Jeremiah says, "Settle down. Seek the welfare of this place."
And then this wonderful promise, "I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord,
plans of good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope."
It is a wonderful image - to give you a future and a hope. There are times when
we all need images to sustain us, to inspire us, and to keep us going, and the 11th
verse of Jeremiah 29 was that for me in a very personal way at a time that was
very dark in my own life and I had to cling to that promise, a future and a hope.
How would you have written to your parents that your ministry was probably
over if on the day of your ordination you got a letter from your father who said
that while you were in the womb you were prayed over and dedicated to God?
And having been thus warped from the womb and entering obediently into the
paths of service, now to find myself in a situation where, through the breakup of
my family, I figured that there would be no more ministry for me, because we are
talking about the dark ages back in 1970, and I had to sit down in Europe and
write a letter to Mom and Dad and tell them the bad news. But, I appended to
that letter of doom Jeremiah 29:11, a future and a hope. And, by the grace of God,
the congregation here assembled at that time extended to me an invitation to
return here and to become their pastor once again. I never really thought about it
so much as I have just reflecting on all of this for this message. I have been
© Grand Valley State University
�An Emerging Vision: What Matters?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
accused of being a "Johnny-one-note" with the theology of grace, and I'm guilty.
That remark resembles me. But, there was grace here before I came back. There
was a people here full of grace who made a very bold move in extending to me the
opportunity to be their pastor when the next item on my agenda was a divorce,
having three little children to care for and one chapter of my dissertation written.
Now, that's a risky business and this congregation was full of grace, and it was
that grace and that experience of grace that made Jeremiah 29 come true in our
lives together.
The 70s were heady days. The experience that was mine became a paradigm for
the experience of many people who were broken and bleeding and bruised and
hurting, who had been excluded in one way or another from the Church. We
became a model of gracious acceptance, and that theology of grace that was
resident in the people before I came became the hallmark of this community, and
the growth went off the charts, so that we had to go from one service to two and
from two services to three, and then eventually we had to build this sanctuary, for
when I came back, we were in the original little church that is now the Parlour. It
was June of 1978 when we held a service starting there and we processed out of
that sanctuary around the sidewalk and into this sanctuary. The longest running
television program on the networks at that time was CBS' "Look Up and Live,"
which was on every Sunday morning. The CBS cameras were here to catch us
leaving there and coming in here, and they broadcast our first service in this
sanctuary.
Well, those were pretty heady days. The growth was exciting and the grace was
resplendent. About that time I began to worry about that growth. I don't know if I
ever articulated this publicly or not, but I began to worry about becoming an
entrepreneur of religion. We were becoming a mega-church before the era of the
mega-church, and I could see how easy it would be to get caught up in that and to
be determined and shaped and formed by that exploding growth rather than
shaping that growth in a way that was consistent with my understanding of the
word of God and the Christian tradition. I actually spoke that to some of the
leaders and they were very, very understanding of what I was talking about. So, in
1980, we came out with our second Identity Statement. Perhaps you will
remember that last week I held up this little brochure, "Dreaming the Future."
There still are a few of them in the boxes around the church. In this brochure,
there are Identity Statements from 1971, full of grace, 1980, and 1993, and the
one from 1980 is very interesting, in light of what I have just been saying, because
it was in 1980 that we began to ask the question, not how do we continue to grow
and succeed, but after all, what is God calling us as a church to be? In that
statement which is a rather long statement, these points occur,
We would be a place for the intersection of the word of God and the world,
of the Christian tradition and contemporary culture. We would be a place
where the Christian tradition is translated into the idiom of contemporary
culture, giving it a voice to speak meaningfully in the pluralistic society of
© Grand Valley State University
�An Emerging Vision: What Matters?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
our day. We would be a place where controversial issues, ethical, social,
political, find a forum for discussion, enabling persons to understand the
issues and to live out a faithful response as a people of God.
You can begin to get a sense of what was going on at that time, a growing
awareness of the world about us and a growing intention to address that world
from the perspective of the Christian tradition. And then there is this significant
statement –
We determine to be true to that which we believe God is calling us to be,
whether that means harmony with the religio-cultural flow or not. We will
adjust our program and mission with the dynamic movement of history,
not in order necessarily to be successful in institutional terms, but in order
to be faithful to what God is calling us to be, and to be effective in
mediating the grace of God to the world. We will be what we determine
God is calling us to be, not in order to be successful, but in order to be
true.
It was a watershed moment for us as the decade of the 80s dawned and we had all
of this exciting growth behind us. It was a watershed moment in which we said
success is not an end in itself. We determine to have integrity. We determine to
be true to what we feel God is calling us to be.
It was during the decade of the 80s after this statement was published here that I
was invited eventually to be Professor of Preaching at the Seminary. It was in
1985 that a Reformed journal was founded for the purpose of stimulating
theological discussion in the Church, and I was invited to be on the Board of
Editors of that journal, and I began to write articles and those articles reflected
the things that we had been talking about here, the things I'd been preaching
about, the things I'd been teaching on Wednesday nights. It was like a harvesting
of all of that. It was a bringing together and coming to clarity of all of the ferment
that had been a part of the scene here now for some 14-15 years, and those
articles brought me to clarity and bringing me to clarity, that clarity began more
and more to be expressed in the pulpit here.
It was in 1988 that I wrote the now famous article on "The Habit of God's Heart"
in which I suggested that maybe the extent of God's grace was as broad as the
human family. Even though that article seriously called into question Hell, all
Hell broke loose, and the Church decided that no Professor of Preaching with that
kind of wobbly theology ought to be nurturing new preachers, and so I came back
here. But, I came back here saying we must be not less radical, but more radical,
because I had begun to sense that that is where the rub was. Martin Luther in a
marvelous statement says you can confess Christ all over the board, but if you
don't confess Christ at the point where the issue is burning, you betray Christ,
and so we began to deal with the issues more forthrightly than ever before and in
1993, we published what is now on the back of your liturgy, printed on everything
we do, and that was another movement forward for us.
© Grand Valley State University
�An Emerging Vision: What Matters?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
That text, Jeremiah 29:11, was my inaugural text March 14,1971, for it had been
not only my own existential anchor, but it was that vision with which we began
and now, in 1993, we wrote the statement that is still our statement, and we
moved to be specific about the grace of God in terms of those who were
embraced. We added one category, that of sexual orientation, because that is
where the fire was raging, and we wanted to be clear and explicit that there was
nothing in the sexual orientation of a person that had anything to do with
exclusion from the grace of God.
There was one other point in this last statement - we had come to see that if the
grace of God is as broad as all of that, then there must be revelatory and salvific
significance in the religious traditions of others, and so we said it explicitly that
the light of God is found in other traditions. To say it another way, we denied the
exclusivity of salvation through Jesus Christ alone. In so doing, we have found
ourselves standing alone, an independent congregation.
As I look back over that unfolding, that developing story, I see how an energizing
vision becomes the emerging vision of a people on the way. To me, it is an
exciting business. It fascinates me how important it is to ask "Who are we?" To
have a sense of identity and a sense of purpose, to live with awareness and to live
with intentionality, for a people who does so will continue on a journey and will
get to a point where we are today where we have the opportunity to re-imagine
what the Church is all about.
I have been using that language for some time, but this is the time now to do it, to
think entirely new thoughts about the very structure and the nature of the
Church, for the Church is an ancient and venerable institution and its structures
and its ways taken for granted, never even thought about anymore, and we are at
a point at which, well, to use my old phrase, we can throw all the pieces up in the
air and let them come down once again. For, maybe the congregation gathered in
worship today and in the future is just one facet of this Center of Religion and
Life. Maybe we will look back in ten years and we will say there was a watershed
in the year 2000 when we chose an academic person to come in and run this
church rather than another ordained clergy person. Maybe it will indicate that
our move is to a Center where there is awareness and intentionality through
reflection and serious, hard wrestling with the truth, which frees up worship
which is celebrative, in which the passages of life can be celebrated, the passages
of birth and confirmation and marriage and death - a Center wrestling with
reality, reflecting on the truth which filters down into a marvelous Worship
Center where our grandchildren are told of the love of Jesus in a way that will
enable them to wonder and to grow and to come into their own experience of
reality without all that painful dismantling that so many of us have to go through,
a Center academically tilted, perhaps, because if you are not aware, if you don't
understand, if you don't know, then how can you worship right? How can you
nurture? And that correct thinking must ultimately lead to correct action and
compassion.
© Grand Valley State University
�An Emerging Vision: What Matters?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
If you walk in these halls some day during the week, you may bump into some
elderly person obviously needing help and, being helped with tenderness, being
accorded respect and dignity, for our Adult Day Care ministry is underway. And
so, whether it is a newborn upon whom we place the waters of baptism, or
whether it is the last rites for one who is moving from life through death to life
eternal, whether it is a child in the Worship Center hearing the stories so that
they may ultimately put their hope in God, or whether we're caring for one
another, the marginalized, the most vulnerable members of society, as a matter of
fact, there will be a community aware, intentional, ever re-inventing itself, reimagining itself, becoming what it must become because of what it sees and
understands.
James says, "What of your life? What is your life?" This will be a place where you
can come and, in all of its various facets, be faced with that question, "What is
your life?" God knows when you get to this advanced point, you recognize that
James is right. It is a brief moment; it is a vapor, but the thing that is important is
the nurturing of the young so that the future generations will come with us, not to
imitate our forms and structures, but having been grounded in the truth, set free
to find their own way.
I was in the airport in Rome a couple of weeks ago and going back and forth from
pilgrims to gates to passport control and walking through that vast hall, and there
was a moment in which it was like all the action froze, just for a moment, and I
saw people everywhere dashing for a gate, furiously fumbling for their cell
phones, lugging their luggage, and I looked on their faces and I wanted to say,
when the action stopped for me just in that moment, "Do you all know who you
are? Do you know where you are going? What is your life?" What really matters is
awareness, intentionality, issuing in worship irrepressible and nurture that sets
free and grounds and gives wings, and compassion that never quits
© Grand Valley State University
�
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
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Event
Pentecost XVIII
Series
The Heart of the Matter
Scripture Text
Psalm 78:6-7, Jeremiah 29:11, James 4:14
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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2000-10-08
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An Emerging Vision: What Matters?
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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>
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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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A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on October 8, 2000 entitled "An Emerging Vision: What Matters?", as part of the series "The Heart of the Matter", on the occasion of Pentecost XVIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Psalm 78:6-7, Jeremiah 29:11, James 4:14.
Inclusive
Pluralism
Theology of Grace
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/9073add7a8137211f80237522884aa26.mp3
57aed479e1ff50d7aad2361b2159fd34
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/55610773190b4889fd30ac3be3a70103.pdf
7e3ba49d87605e6082114930d46cdc15
PDF Text
Text
Religion Made On Earth
From the series: Religion: Significant Critique and Fresh Expression
Text: Isaiah 44:18; Acts 17:27-28
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
July 23, 2000
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Today and for a few weeks to follow I want to speak to you about religion in order
that we might understand more clearly that in which we are engaged as a
worshiping community. I want us to consider the nature of this phenomenon of
religion which for us is still important and informs us not only in our worship,
but also in our way of life. For many people, perhaps, religion is less important,
and they have fallen away. And yet, back over the eons of time religion has been
endemic to the human situation. As long as there have been those whom we
would denominate human, we find traces of religion.
The practice of religion is really the attempt of the creature to come into
relationship with the Ultimate Reality. Call that Ultimate Reality what you will—
God, the mystery, the sacred, the holy. Think of it in terms that are personal or
think of it in terms of some life force, whatever that may be, and that Ultimate
Mystery has been thought of in all those ways. As a matter of fact, human beings
try to figure out what in the world is going on, who we are, where we have come
from, and what will be the issue of our being here.
Is there any meaning to the practice of religion? Is there any purpose? Is that
meaning or purpose intrinsic in the process of itself, or is meaning something we
bring to the process and create in the midst of it? All of those options are open.
But I believe to be human is to be religious, because to be human is to live in the
presence of a Mystery.
We didn’t create ourselves. We are here by a grace or a fate, and we live and move
and have our being. We live before a Mystery that is beyond us, that cannot be
fully grasped but has been experienced— according to the testimony of people
down through the ages who have encountered it in some concrete way. That
Ultimate Reality breaks through, or bubbles up.
In any case, to be human is to come at some point to recognize that life has an
ultimate ground and source and to wonder about it. The religions of the world are
human phenomena that are the consequences of someone’s experience, the
© Grand Valley State University
�Religion Made On Earth
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
results of which gathered a community or cult that developed a way of worship,
liturgy, prayers, hymns, sacraments, and rituals of various kinds. The
community, the cult, called those who followed that way to a way of life, an ethics,
a morality.
Religion is a human phenomenon, and what I want to say this morning in this
first message is very simple, but if you really hear me, it’s very radical. You won’t
hear it often in church, but I believe that it is simple and it is true: religion is
made on earth; it is a human construct. Religion didn’t fall ready-made from
heaven. There is no absolute religion with God’s stamp on it as over against all of
the other religions practiced by the diversity of humankind. All religion is made
on earth and is a human construct.
If you could buy that, I wouldn’t have to preach anymore. We would recognize
together that what we have is a story, a way of devotion and a way of life which is
the consequence of long history. It is the consequence of some who had an
encounter with that Mystery, told their story and created what has become for us
the Christian tradition, flowing out of the Jewish tradition, and of course, the
biblical tradition.
One might ask, “Well, isn’t it true?”
Is a sunset true? Is a poem true? Of course, it’s true. It is true in the sense that it
puts us in communion with God. It satisfies the hunger of our heart. It elicits
from us what is noble and best. It gives us a reason for being. It gives us a hope. It
enables us to go on to tomorrow. Of course, it’s true. But religion is not true in the
sense that a chemical formula is true, not in the sense that the hard stuff of the
natural sciences is true. It is not empirical and verifiable. Religion is a judgment
call. Religion is a choice. Religion is a response to a story. It is engagement in
worship and community; it is the following of a way of life. Religion can be good
or less good, but not true or false in a sense in which we deal with true and false
in a world marked by the scientific method, empirical investigation. No, religion
is a human construct and all of them alike are made on earth.
Now if you can receive that, you will have learned a very radical and very
important truth this morning. Oh, I suppose you know it and have known it for a
long time, or you probably wouldn’t be hanging around here. But nonetheless, I
want to underscore it as we begin a series of contemplating the nature and the
function and the practice of religion.
In the dawning of human consciousness there were those ultimate questions, the
questions which arise because we are human, self-conscious and conscious of the
other. The great religious traditions of the world are the consequence of
communities gathering around a visionary experience, a founding story.
© 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University
�Religion Made On Earth
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
The problem was, and still is, that there is also something intrinsic in our human
nature that wants to take that which is valuable and good and helpful and
absolutize it. We want to make it the exclusive way, the exclusive truth. We want
to assert dogmatically that the visionary experience we have had, our insight, our
intuitive grasp of things is the only way, is the only possible understanding, is the
only door to eternal life.
Monotheism, the idea of one God, was a step forward. To say God by definition is
to say that Ultimate Mystery, that ultimate source of things. Finally there could
be God and none other. There’s no problem with that. That was an insightful
move. The problem is when, as a monotheist who affirms with some
understanding that God can only be one, I claim that one is the God of my
particular religious vision, rather than recognizing that my image is a groping
after the Ultimate Mystery that lies beyond every concrete God image. In Babylon
the Jews were in exile and they were losing their grip, and so the prophet, trying
to get them to hang on to their God of Israel, writes this taunting, mocking piece
in Isaiah 44. It is full of satire.
“Look how stupid is this idol worship of the Babylonians. Craftsman takes a tree,
cuts it in half, with half the tree he builds a fire, warms himself. He cooks his
meal. And from the other half he shapes an image. And then he bows down and
worships the image. How stupid can you be?” says the prophet.
Not a very nice attitude. Did you catch that? How stupid can you be? The same
tree: part of it for a campfire to cook over and to warm him, and the other part of
it for an idol, a block of wood shaped and formed, bowed down before. How
stupid!
Oh, really? If the prophet had been honest and fair, he would have known. I
suspect he did know some of the liturgy of the Babylonian cult. They weren’t
stupid. They were fully aware that a block of wood shaped into an image was a
mediator of the mystery. There are prayers in the Babylonian liturgy that plead
for the God of heaven to come down and indwell this image so that God might
have a concrete existence in the midst of the people.
Hmm. Sounds like the word became flesh and dwelt among us. Maybe they knew
what John knew when he said, “No one has ever seen God, but the only Son has
made God clear, or revealed God.”
The prophet was using satire and ridicule because he had this little rag tag band
of exiles, and he was trying to hold them together for Yahweh God.
It was harmless. That only becomes dangerous when a group manifests that kind
of attitude and spirit and then gets power. If you have power to enforce your
monotheism and your exclusive claim, you can become a very dangerous person.
Someone once wrote that history is bound to be bloody when it’s made by people
© 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University
�Religion Made On Earth
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
who barely understand themselves, yet declare that they understand God
perfectly. Then they meet other people who think the same, only differently. And
then you have the violence and the hostility and the bitterness that fuels so much
of the unrest in the human family. This has always been the case and remains so
in our day.
Religion is a human construct. That doesn’t mean that it is not the mediator of
revelation and saving grace. We believe that Moses was encountered by the living
God, but the only way that could come to be a religious movement was through
human language, human articulation, human formulation, human cult, liturgy,
prayer, ritual, commandments, and a way of life. Every religion has those aspects.
Every religion has a story, an experience, an encounter, a vision which issues in a
mode of worship and in a way of life.
But you see, if I would claim that my Christian faith or my Jewish-Christian,
biblical tradition is true and true alone and the only truth, I would also be saying
that Mohammed was just blowing smoke, that what happened to Moses couldn’t
happen to anyone else, that the Buddha in his moment of enlightenment was not
dealing with any ultimate truth breakthrough, that all of the founding stories of
the great religious traditions were false, and mine is true.
Well, we have dealt with that often enough here, but I am still struck with its
ignorance and its arrogance. Every religion is made on earth. It doesn’t fall out of
heaven. If it is a good religion, it puts earthlings in touch with heaven. If it’s a
good religion, it mediates between humans and that Mystery whom no one has
ever seen, nor can we know, apart from a gracious unveiling here and there, now
and again. But religion is a human business.
Religions are not all the same. Some are better than others in terms of the grace
they mediate, in terms of the fruit that follows from the observance, and that can
be discussed. As a matter of fact, what cannot be denied is that all of us humans
who are religious are engaged in a structure of story, worship, and life which is a
human construct.
So then, how do you judge religion?
Well, let me suggest a few things.
Good religion opens the mind. It’s easy enough to say, but also indicative of the
fact that there has been an awful lot of bad religion, because most religion has not
been about opening the mind, but about closing it. It has been about the
statement of an absolute deposit of faith beyond which one ought not to think. In
other words, it has been about the creation of a box within which one can think
all one wants to as long as one doesn’t get out of the box.
© 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University
�Religion Made On Earth
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
But good religion will open the mind. Good religion will open us to the reality of
this world. It will give us access to all of the sciences and the explosion of
knowledge which is so amazing in our day—amazing breakthroughs in biology,
for example, that deal with the human being; the Genome project, the DNA
mapping, that kind of thing. We don’t need to be threatened by that. A good
religion will say to us, “Go for it! Understand it. Be fascinated by it, and profit
from it.” Good religion opens the mind.
Good religion will help us to understand our own religion, and to understand the
historical conditions of every religion. We’ll begin to see how other religions
arose, how they developed, and why they are what they are. Without a kind of
absolutism that says mine is true and all the rest are false, I’ll come to Isaiah 44
and say, “Prophet, I understand what you were doing in that context, but I don’t
like your attitude. And you were not fair to Babylonian religion.”
It will enable me to say to Paul, who comes to Athens and sees all the temples and
all the statues and becomes frustrated and disturbed, that the Athenians were
simply seeking the same ultimate Mystery he encountered. He was disturbed
because he had this amazing vision. He was gripped by a vision. He believed that
all of this imagery and all of these gods and goddesses represented in the city of
Athens simply didn’t measure up to that which had gripped him and grasped
him. He wanted to tell the whole world about the God of Israel who had become
incarnate, not in a block of wood, but in a human face.
And it is natural, good and right that he should have shared his vision, as long as
he didn’t do as the prophet did and denigrate those who were groping after the
Mystery. After all, that is what human religion is—groping after the Mystery.
Good religion will help us to understand that.
Good religion will give us a sense of why things are the way they are. For
example, in our house right now, the aroma is marvelous. There’s a pork loin
roasting. The clan is coming over. But we didn’t invite our Jewish friends.
Because of the dietary laws, I wouldn’t invite my Jewish friends over for a pork
loin. Now why did the Jews have a restriction against pork, or any of the dietary
laws? They had a hygienic basis. I suppose they thought pigs were full of
trichinosis, and they probably were, and it wasn’t healthy. It became a religious
thing, but it had a very practical base. Now you tell a pig farmer today that his
pork is not the “other white meat” and he will be offended, because those pigs live
in palaces now.
Well, then, the dietary law is not necessary anymore, is it? Not really. But is it
okay still not to eat pork? Of course, it’s okay. But you’re not dealing with
something that is part of the ultimate structure of reality. It is a choice. A Jewish
person might say, “I belong to a Jewish community and we have dietary laws, so
that when I eat, I am reminded of God. When I eat, the very way I eat, the things I
© 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University
�Religion Made On Earth
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
eat, the things I don’t eat remind me that I am a child of God, the God of Israel is
my God.” And that’s good.
Or maybe there is something we can identify with a little more: the Sabbath, the
Jewish Sabbath. What a wonderful institution! I commend it to you. I commend
it to myself, for whom every weekend is shot to heaven. But I heard on the news
last night that at Camp David yesterday the conversation between Barak and
Arafat was casual. Why? Because it was the Sabbath. Now who knows what they
really did in the bushes, but for the face of the world, the Sabbath was observed.
Is that good? Sure, it is good. Does it reflect something in the ultimate structure
of things? No. The problem is, if everybody was as observant as the Jew and an
American Christian who is trying to get an Arab and a Jew together, you’d have
the Arab Sabbath on Friday and the Christian Sabbath on Sunday. So you’d have
Friday, Saturday and Sunday just written right off and you couldn’t get anything
done. On the other hand, if three days were spent by our world leaders in the
contemplation of Creation and God, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
might be more profitable. But is it something that is in the ultimate structure of
things? No. Is it a fruitful, helpful choice? Absolutely. It is good for all of us to
observe Sabbath, not because that is the way reality is, but because that reality
constructed by us is a very good way to be.
Good religion will help me to understand those things, so that I know that a lot of
the things I do are arbitrary. They are judgment calls on my part, and the thing I
have to be satisfied with is whether or not it is a means by which I am in
communion with, I am in touch with, that Ultimate Mystery. Is it a way that is
fruitful in my life? If it is good for me, does it have to be good for you? If
something else is good for you, do I have to deny that the something else can be a
means of grace for you? No, not at all, because religion is made on earth and it is
a human construct.
The point is that religion be faithful and fruitful in mediating to us that Ultimate
Mystery that embraces us and undergirds us and overshadows us and gives us life
as a gift and hope for the future.
And then, good religion will lead to compassion. I am reading Karen Armstrong’s
Battle for God. Incidentally, I talked to her in London last week and she is going
to come here in October of 2001. She stresses again, as she stressed in her
History of God, how all the great religious traditions call for compassion. Good
religion will warm the heart. It will open the mind and it will warm the heart, and
it will result in a compassionate people. A lot of good religion has a pretty bad
track record, and we still haven’t been able to master that one.
Did you see the ABC Evening News at 6:30 last night? I perked up my ears when
they said there was a religious problem somewhere in the country. Well, it
happened to be in a suburb of Chicago, Palos Heights. On the news screen was
© 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University
�Religion Made On Earth
Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
the story of a Muslim community that has outgrown their facility and they were
going to buy a church building which was for sale in Palos Heights. Then the
Palos Heights Reformed Church appeared on the screen. (I spoke there a few
years ago, but they haven’t asked me back lately.) The Muslim congregation was
going to buy that building until there was an uproar in this suburb of Chicago
that is filled with many, many Christian people. And so the City Council offered
the Muslim community $200,000 to just walk away, and they were going to do it
until, bless his heart, the mayor said to his council, “Number 1, you say you’re
going to use that for a recreational facility. A year ago you turned it down because
it wasn’t large enough. Number 2, we don’t have $200,000 just to pay out. And
number 3, the reason you’re doing it is wrong.”
That’s right down the lake, folks. It’s not just a religious thing, it’s a human thing.
It’s the fear of the other; it’s the threat of that which is different. Good religion
will break through to us where we say it cannot be. The world cannot continue in
all of the intricacy of the human community to live with that kind of paranoia,
that kind of divisiveness, that kind of fear of diversity. Good religion will result in
compassion, or it’s not worth anything it claims to be.
Good religion will elevate the aesthetic tastes, because there was a day when the
Church was the womb of the arts, of magnificent architecture, the beautiful
paintings, the lovely music that moves the soul—all of that comes out of the
spiritual center that is elevated by the encounter with God. I look around today
and see such a terrible loss of the aesthetic sense and the deterioration of religion.
Friends, to be ultimately committed to one’s faith and vision does not necessitate
the claim that it fell out of heaven. To be totally committed and deeply nurtured
in one’s faith vision does not necessitate the denial that it is a human construct
flowing out of the human experience of God, winning its way through liturgy,
prayers, and an effective way of being human. But to acknowledge that religion is
made on earth is to be able to join hands and hearts and arms with all God’s
children, for good religion will understand itself and feel compassion for the
other.
© 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University
�
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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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
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 VII
Series
Religion: Significant Critique and Fresh Expression
Scripture Text
Isaiah 44:18, Acts 17:27-28
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-20000723
Date
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2000-07-23
Title
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Religion Made On Earth
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
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on July 23, 2000 entitled "Religion Made On Earth", as part of the series "Religion: Significant Critique and Fresh Expression", on the occasion of Pentecost VII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 44:18, Acts 17:27-28.
Compassion
Pluralism
Religion as a Human Construct
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2c59a0b4727f8bc9c1ce05e1758ba70b.mp3
173bf16a40d643079bfe451f72b9757e
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f744b45b0ad751d188742164216018fd.pdf
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PDF Text
Text
The Clash of Civilizations and the Healing of the Nations
From the series: A Millennial Vision
Text: Genesis 2:9; Revelation 22:2
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
January 23, 2000
Transcription of the spoken sermon
At this beginning of the year and the century and the millennium, I have been
sharing with you A Millennial Vision, a vision of a world at peace, a peace that is
created by the understanding and mutual respect of the respective, great religious
traditions of the world. It was over a decade ago that I began to probe this issue;
for me, it was quite a transformation to move from a rather honest exclusivism
that the Christian faith was the only way to salvation, the only truth of God - to a
pluralist position that recognized that other great religious traditions were both
revelatory and that they did put people in touch with God, and also salvific in that
they were the mediators of the grace of God. As I began to probe the issues of that
pluralist position, I was very much aware of all of the questions that I would have
raised to myself in my earlier years and I moved rather gingerly at first, although
I was more and more deeply convinced that the great religious traditions did
mediate that light and salvation, as well as my own Christian faith. But, I felt it
necessary to justify and to explain myself because it was quite a move for me and
for the congregation, as well. I, in the course of that decade or so, mentioned
many times that my greatest concern was the fact that there could be no peace
without that kind of understanding, quoting the great Catholic theologian, Hans
Kiing, who said there will be no peace among the nations until there is peace
among the religions. He went on to say there will be no peace among the religions
until there is peace among the churches, but I can't wait that long. I think Kiing's
point was well taken and I did believe that and I think we have come together to
see that more and more. But, I never saw it as profoundly and was never
convinced of it so strongly as I am today.
There was a book in the books that I was reading that was referred to now and
again in footnotes, a name continuing to pop up, and that's always a sign that
someone has gotten someone's attention, and so I went out and got the book. It's
called The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, by Samuel P.
Huntington who is at Harvard University, one of the recognized leaders in the
country in the understanding of international policy and foreign affairs, and he
writes this book about the clash of civilizations in order to indicate his
understanding of where we are in the human global community today. It is his
© Grand Valley State University
�The Clash of Civilizations, The Healing of Nations
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
contention that the world is not ever going to become one world, one universal
world empire, preferably dominated by the West, bringing the whole world into
our own image, but rather, the world is made up of a group of civilizations. Those
groups of civilizations include the West (America and Europe), China, Southeast
Asia, Islam, Africa, and interestingly, Christianity, which is the religious root of
the West over against Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodoxy, Eastern Christianity, so
that Christianity actually founds two different civilizational cultures.
Huntington's claim is that where we have come is to a point of groups,
civilizations, societies, cultures that must learn to co-exist with each other if there
would be peace in the world.
If you think about it for a moment, just over the last 50 years, for example, some
of us at least can remember the euphoria of the end of the Second World War,
and then the crisis of the Cold War, and during the Cold War decades the world
was divided into two, two great super powers, and the rest of the peoples in
nations and tribes and societies and cultures simply had to line up on one side or
the other. It was a political division; it was a power play; it was a world at an
impasse; it was a two-world system. Do you remember the euphoria in the late
80's, 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down? Do you remember when we in the
West "won," and when, for example, the State Department analyst published a
very provocative essay about ten years ago that suggested the end of history, that
liberal Western democracy and liberal capitalism had won the day, had been
proven right, that history was over in the sense that we had reached the universal
and that the world would all come into tow in that kind of framework? Well, there
was some objection at the time, but we did bask in the glory of that triumph after
all of those Cold War years and all of those crises that we had been through with a
standoff of terror with nuclear arms pointed at each other.
And then what happened? Well, it all came apart, didn't it? Today, as we speak,
Russian troops are engaged in that very awful conflict in Chechnya which is, if
you go down deep enough, an Orthodox civilization against a Muslim civilization.
And, of course, the falling apart of Yugoslavia - Croatia, Western Catholic, coming
to its own independence, Serbia, Eastern Orthodox, both of them practicing some
ethnic cleansing on the Muslim people, and most recently the horror of Kosovo.
So, we who are enlightened, liberal, gracious Western people say, "What's going
on? Won't the world ever learn?" Things fall apart. Fragmentation. Just when the
world was being spanned with McDonald's golden arches and Hollywood's
productions and American technology and American investment. Just when we
were creating one world, things come apart.
Samuel Huntington says of course it is never going to be one world. That
demands global empire. It is impossible and we don't have the power to do it,
anyway. Of course, it's not two worlds ideologically threatening each other. And
nations - what are nations? Lines drawn on maps by powers at the time. Nations
don't reflect deep reality. No, rather, the world is divided into a series of
civilizations that are united at the deepest level of identity in their religion. I find
© Grand Valley State University
�The Clash of Civilizations, The Healing of Nations
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
it fascinating that this probably is the best work since the Cold War in terms of
the global situation, and it is by a Harvard scholar who points to the
fundamental, critical nature of religion as that which informs the respective
civilizational groupings.
Four out of the five major traditions are the foundation, the glue and the
emotional center of these respective civilizational groupings. You can ask Dr.
Boyd Wilson afterwards why Buddhism isn't, but Huntington says it's because,
born in India, it got exported and transformed somewhat in Japan and Vietnam
and China. The point is this - that what is being recognized today is that religion,
religious faith and commitment, is absolutely fundamental to a civilizational
grouping, whether it be the West or the Orthodox East or Islam or the Confucian
states in the Far East. These civilizational groupings have a rootage in a religious
identity, or I could say their religious understanding is the source of their
identity. It goes back hundreds and thousands of years.
I recently read again a story of Athanasius and Arius in the third century. Alius
was a priest in the Christian Church in Alexandria and he believed that Jesus was
human, certainly God's mediator and representative, but human. And Athanasius
said Jesus was God. The book, incidentally, is When Jesus Became God, written
by Richard Rubenstein, a Jew. Very interesting. For two centuries that battle on
the nature of Jesus Christ raged. Mobs in the streets, churches burned, people
killed – it was a tremendous conflict between Athanasius and Arius, and Western
Christianity centered in Rome was always more inclined to Athanasius and Jesus
as God. The Eastern sector was always more inclined to Arius and the humanity
of Jesus. Finally it was nailed together at Chalcedon at 451, true God, true man,
but in the 11th century, East and West came apart. They mutually
excommunicated each other. And today you have Western Christianity as the soil
of the West and you have Eastern Orthodoxy as the soil of the East. Russia is the
great core state whose religion is Orthodox, and when the Balkans began to
explode, it was Croatia that is Western Christian and Bosnia that was Orthodox.
Those splits going back through the centuries continue to manifest themselves
and in our own experience, people, we have seen the horror and the slaughter of
those ancient feuds and rivalries and competitions that continue to manifest
themselves in this enlightened, advanced age of which we are a part.
The point is this - we live in a world that has become a global community, but not
one world, but rather, groupings of peoples, civilizational groups informed and
identified by a religious commitment, ethnic lines, cultural characteristics. We in
the West who have come to such power and such prosperity would like to think
that we can throw our weight around, and we have, and that we can have it our
way. Interestingly, Huntington points out with data that is irrefutable that we are
on the threshold of decline. Nothing is inevitable, but his plea is for a renewal of
that uniqueness of Western values and visions. He points out that at this moment
of our power and glory that is precisely when societies are on the threshold of
decline. The society that believes that it has come to the end of history, to the
© Grand Valley State University
�The Clash of Civilizations, The Healing of Nations
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
universal, is a society that is at the point of decline because there are others
waiting for their place in the sun. He speaks about the tremendous power,
growing power in self-consciousness and assertiveness in China, for example.
And the resurgence of Islam scattered around the world, with a growing selfconsciousness and a growing assertion of itself. It is a cultural, civilizational,
religious grouping of people and those ties and those commitments are far deeper
than a national allegiance or any other political alignment that can be concocted
by leaders of nations.
So, that's where we are in our world today: respective civilizational groups. And
what are we to do? Huntington would suggest that we have to learn, for one
thing, that we ought not to go in and throw our weight around in the midst of
another civilizational grouping, and we have to accept that there are those
civilizational groupings with deep commitments that will simply not be cowed
into submission. Oh, they can be beaten up for a while, but they'll not be
uprooted, and that we ought to, obviously, learn co-existence through mediation.
And that we should find the commonalities that are human, common to all
people because they are human. The civilizations and societies are particular and
they are relative, but there are some basic, fundamental human qualities that
need to be discovered and cultivated in order that the world might live at peace.
He calls upon us, as I said a moment ago, to find again our own uniqueness, a
strong word against multiculturalism that tries to make America the world.
We are not the world. We are the West. The rule of law. Human rights. Personal
liberty, and parliamentary democracy. A few fundamental pillars that make us
who we are find their rootage in our Judeo-Christian tradition. Renew that.
Believe in that. But recognize that we are one such group in the various
civilizational configurations around the globe. Learn to co-exist.
That word is politically pertinent. Considering the Iowa Caucases tomorrow, then
New Hampshire, South Carolina. Would that the current Presidential candidates
would discuss The Clash of Civilizations by Samuel Huntington. If they did, they
would be unelectable because the things that need to be said and done in this
country at this time would give the death knell to anybody's candidacy. That
should disturb us.
If that is a word to the political establishment, isn't there a parallel word to the
Church? If it is false that there is one world to be universally made after our
image, if it is immoral to do so, if it is dangerous to try to do so, it seems to me the
same would be true in terms of our faith commitment; that there, too, we ought
to learn, as I think we have been learning, to co-exist with the great religious
traditions. Proselytizing ought to be out of bounds. World evangelization ought to
be a goal yielded up as unworthy of the Christ whom we follow. It seems to me
that in the church what we need to do again is cultivate our own tradition,
preserve our own tradition, seek renewal for our own tradition and learn to
understand, from which will come respect and mutual enhancement of the
© Grand Valley State University
�The Clash of Civilizations, The Healing of Nations
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
religious traditions of the world. Not only pluralism passively, but I would call
you to pluralism actively as the only appropriate response to the multiplicity and
complexity of the world in our day, a world that politically needs to learn coexistence, a world religiously that needs to recognize the deep rootedness of those
traditions that need to be respected and understood.
If only we would come to understand that the other cultures of the world are
saying to us, “Give us your technology, give us the wealth, send us your movies
and your hamburgers, but frankly, we like our cultural values better than yours.”
Who are we to tell the rest of the world how it ought to respond to life, what its
values and vision ought to be? Who are we to tell the rest of the world that our
truth is the only truth?
In the Garden of Eden in the Genesis creation story, the writer was obviously
saying that God's intention for creation is to be a garden, and there was a tree of
life there. In the closing vision of the seer on the Isle of Patmos, the vision was
not of a garden, but it was of a city, and it was paradise regained, that beautiful
image of the city with the river of crystal and trees on the banks with its leaves for
the healing of the nations. This is the vision, you see. This is the intention of the
Creator according to the biblical writer. This is the dream, the healing of the
nations. And how in the world will it ever be accomplished?
Well, of course, just to throw a ringer into the works, let me point you to Jesus,
the highly impractical Jesus who says when one slaps you on the right cheek, turn
the other. Who says not an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but yielding up
to the other. Who says love your enemies. There are those who take those
chapters wanting to preserve them as the word of God and infallible and
authoritative, who say of those sayings of Jesus that they are meant for personal
ethics, but not for great nations. Well, would this stuff work? Somebody would
get beaten up, I guess. But, if it were going to work, should we who are powerful
invite those who are without power to yield up their swords? Or, would it make
sense for we who are powerful to begin the process? Now, you try that in Iowa
tomorrow.
You see, Jesus is that disturbing presence in all of our rationalization. In all of our
practicality and all of our wisdom, all of our savvy and all of our cleverness, we
keep running up against Jesus. Would not Jesus say at least learn to live in a
multi-civilizational world of diverse religious traditions, learn to see from the
perspective of the other and understand, if you can, value your own path and seek
its renewal, and follow me in the ways of peace. That, I think, is a task for the
third millennium because in the third millennium we get angry and hostile and
we have the means to blow it all up, you see. It's not really a possible way to go
anymore. It's a matter of human survival beyond being the will of God.
© Grand Valley State University
�The Clash of Civilizations, The Healing of Nations
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
References:
Samuel P. Huntington. The Clash of Civilizations: Remaking of the World Order.
Touchstone, 1997; reprinted, 2001.
© 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
Epiphany III
Series
A Millennial Vision
Scripture Text
Genesis 2:9, Revelation 22:2
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Samuel P. Huntington.The Clash of Civilizations: Remaking of the World Order. Touchstone, 1997, 2001 edition.
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-0-20000123
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2000-01-23
Title
A name given to the resource
The Clash of Civilizations and the Healing of the Nations
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 January 23, 2000 entitled "The Clash of Civilizations and the Healing of the Nations", as part of the series "A Millennial Vision", on the occasion of Epiphany III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Genesis 2:9, Revelation 22:2.
Global Peace
Pluralism
-
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3c8f520f47563794f13ab5b753b6a045
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55819d86b65ab3b4bc066a9c34bb5d58
PDF Text
Text
Light of the World
From the series: A Millennial Vision
Text: Isaiah 49:6; Matthew 2:9
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
January 9, 2000
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Some weeks ago, as I was thinking about this morning, contemplating the
beginning of a new year, the beginning of a new century, the beginning of a new
millennium, I thought, "Dear God, I ought to have something profound to say,"
and nothing came. But, I did think long and hard about it, realizing that this is a
rather significant time.
The human calendar is a human calendar; it's a human construct. It doesn't have
anything to do with the divine plan of anything, the cosmic reality. It's simply
something that we've put together, but it's a handy item. It is a good instrument.
It enables us to get the sense that life moves and that history unfolds and that
there is development. And the calendar gives us a way to mark time, to mark the
seasons of our lives. It gives us a chance to evaluate where we have been, the
extent to which we've accomplished our dreams and our goals, and it gives us a
fresh start, an opportunity to set again those goals that we might go after and to
have a sense of that which is beckoning us. And so, while the calendar is a human
construct, nonetheless, this is a significant time. There aren't many of our
brothers and sisters in the human family who ever get to experience the turn of a
millennium, and so I thought to myself, “What are the critical insights that we
have gained, that we need to actualize, to implement? What are the important
matters before the human family, before the Christian church, before the
religions of the world, and how might we set for ourselves a vision for the third
millennium?” And because this Sunday is also the celebration of Epiphany, I
thought, “Why not think together about the light of the world?” It is the
symbolism of the star that points to the light that led the Magi to the adoration of
the Christ child in Matthew's story.
The word Epiphany comes from the Greek language meaning manifestation, and
in this congregation your children speak about Epiphany Eyes, that is, eyes that
are able to see through, to see deeply. Epiphany has to do with seeing with
insight. Epiphany Eyes are eyes that see, not was not there, but what was always
there and not seen or understood, and the Festival of Epiphany is the celebration
© Grand Valley State University
�Light of the World
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
of the fact that it is the Christian Church's witness that in the birth of Jesus light
came into the world.
Matthew tells a delightful story of those Magi who saw a star rise in the east and
followed it until it led them to Jerusalem where they consulted with Herod the
King, and he with the religious leaders, as to what this bright star might be
because such a heavenly body would often, in the eyes of the astrologers of that
time, signify the birth of some royalty, some ruler of the world. And so, Matthew
prefaces his story of the life and ministry of Jesus with this delightful story of the
Magi who follow a star that leads them, finally, to the stable where they worship
and where they praise God.
Where did Matthew get the story? Well, interestingly, if you would read the 60th
chapter of Isaiah, which would be a good Hebrew lesson for a day like this, you
would find, “Arise, shine, for your light has come and the glory of the Lord has
risen upon you. Nations shall come to your light and kings to the brightness of
your dawn. A multitude of camels shall cover you and your camels of Midian and
Ephah, and all those from Sheba shall come and they shall bring gold and
frankincense and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.” Of course, Matthew
simply dipped into his Bible and he found there a promised one who would be
thus worshiped and adored by kings who would bring gifts. And in order for
Matthew to give expression to what he believes Jesus to be, what he believes to
have happened in Jesus, out of his own biblical tradition he tells us a story. There
probably was such a bright light around that time and there probably were
conversations about what the brightness of that heavenly body should signify, but
all of it is put together beautifully by Matthew who wants to say in Jesus, the
child that was born, the light of God came into the world.
John also, in the prologue to his Gospel, mentions light coming into his world.
This was the light that enlightens everyone coming into the world. And in John's
Gospel, he even has Jesus say, “I am the light of the world.” But, even in John's
Gospel, it's obvious that John recognized that the light that is in Jesus was a light
that pointed to a greater light beyond Jesus. Right? Follow me? Even in John's
Gospel where we have such a bold declaration, “I am the light of the world,” even
there it is obvious as you read that Gospel that John is aware that that human,
historical manifestation of light was a beacon and a pointer to the true light that
transcends all. In other words, even John did not absolutize the light that was in
Jesus as a light synonymous with the Light of the world.
Wilfred Cantrell Smith, who was one of our great scholars of this century, studied
comparative religions, going back a thousand years. I find it rather interesting on
this first century of the third millennium that he went back to the first century of
the second millennium and he identified five leading exponents of five religious
traditions. In his study of their work he says it was obvious, in the case of all five,
that all five of them had experienced God. They had an intuition, they had an
insight, they knew there was this Ultimate, this deep Mystery, and then each of
© Grand Valley State University
�Light of the World
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
the five in their own way sought to express what they had experienced. The
insight or the intuition was one thing. The expression was another. And so, this
common experience of coming into the presence of that Absolute Mystery that is
the ground of all being and the source of all life, this experience came to
expression in five different traditions.
Smith, in his book, Faith and Belief, said the first experience is faith. That is the
experience of God. But, belief is the religious system that we create in order to
stammeringly and stumblingly point to that ineffable experience of the One who
was Light Inaccessible. And then Smith points out, interestingly, that each one of
the five who gave particular expression to that common experience, each one of
them was aware that when they had said what they could say, they had not said
enough. Each one of them indicated in the very nature of that which they shared
that they knew that there was more which was beyond their capacity to share.
They could intuit it, they could experience it in the sense of being overwhelmed
by a Presence, but when it came to giving expression, articulation, to put it into
words and sentences and concepts and ideas, each one of them recognized that
they were falling far short. They were not doing justice to the depth of the
experience. To translate that into Christian terms, what that means is that Jesus
for us is the light that reflects the Light, but the light that is in Jesus is not the
absolute Light that is over all and beyond all.
Epiphany is the time when we think about that Christian idea of revelation and
for revelation to be revelation, something has to be revealed, something has to be
communicated. And for something to be communicated, that communication has
to be context-specific. For example, right now I am talking to you in English.
Many of you would say, yawning, “It sounds like Greek to me,” but nonetheless, I
speak English, I speak in ideas and concepts that we have in the interchange, in
the intercourse of our lives. It's the only thing I can do. It wouldn't do me any
good to speak Latin to you. We talk about these things that are common to our
experience in a particular context because, being human, we are historical. That
means we are limited to a time and to a place and we can only communicate with
one another in the specificity, the particularity of our particular situation. Jesus
was that particular word of the infinite and eternal God who came to expression
in Jewish flesh in a child, in a Hebrew prophet, revealing that God beyond all
religious concepts. Jesus is the light of the world for us because Jesus is our way
to the experience that we have had of the Light of Lights.
I like Paul's way of saying this better than Matthew and John, frankly. Paul said
in the second letter to the Corinthians, the fourth chapter, 6th verse, “We have
seen the light of the knowledge of the glory of God.” That's the big One. “We have
seen the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” In
that historical, time-limited, race-limited, language-limited human flesh of Jesus,
in the particularity of Jesus we have seen a glimpse. Now, of course, historically,
what the Christian Church has done is to absolutize that historical manifestation
as though that was all, the end all and the be all, as though that historical
© Grand Valley State University
�Light of the World
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
manifestation was synonymous with the big One, and all you need is two different
religious traditions to absolutize their own particular story and you have the
seeds for conflict, and the possibility for violence. Nothing can fuel human
conflict better than religion because it's right at the heart of our being, it's the
thing we cherish most. The religious commitment of our lives gives us our sense
of identity and, when you rattle that somehow, you create great conflict, great
struggle. But, that's what we did. We took the particular manifestation that is
ours, full of light and grace, and we said, “That is synonymous with the whole,”
and, of course, to say that was to exclude all the rest.
Wilfred Cantrell Smith said that a thousand years ago there were Jewish, Muslim,
Christian, Hindu, Buddhist thinkers who were perfectly content with the
experience of God they had which came to expression in their particular
traditions, but they didn't realize that they were parallel traditions because they
weren't aware of one another in a human situation where there was not this
global mobility and CNN everywhere, satellites in the sky, and all of that. But, we
know different. We know. We can see the origin and the source of all of these
religious traditions. We can watch the development. We can see their claims and
understand the articulation of that experience of the Ultimate. As a millennial
vision, I would hope and pray that increasingly the Christian Church would also
recognize that its grasp, its glimpse of the Ultimate filtered through the face of
Jesus is true! But, there's more.
I did a little research last night because I remembered an experience I had that
was one of those life-changing experiences. I had been fussing around with the
breadth of the grace of God and I had been including more and more people from
the narrow little beginning where I began. And then some of us, ten years ago,
1990, traveled to Europe and we made a stop in Paris and took a trip outside of
Paris to that magnificent cathedral at Chartres. There's a guide there, an
Englishman named Malcolm, who gives fantastic lectures on that cathedral. He's
lived in the shadow of it for years. He took us around and for the first time I
realized that the great cathedrals, the stained glass of the great cathedrals, were
really the libraries of these communities. This was before the time of the printing
press; it was before the time of near universal literacy. And those stained glass
windows told the significant stories of the human story. Particularly in the
cathedral, they told the biblical story so if you came into the nave and looked to
the west you would see the story of Creation in stained glass. If you went on to the
transept, you would see the development of Israel, and perhaps in the depths of
the choir you might see the birth of Jesus, the Christmas story, and perhaps in
another transept the Crucifixion and then the Resurrection. This was a marvelous
way to inform the people of the story. They had no Bible in their hand. They could
see the story. I thought to myself as I was in the cathedral, and I told you this ten
years ago, October 14 1990, in “A Place to Stand in a World of Religions.” I told
you this story how being in that cathedral I thought to myself, “What if, what if
there were a people who only looked through the windows in the west wall of the
nave? What if there was another group huddled in the transept, in the choir, or in
© Grand Valley State University
�Light of the World
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
another transept, in another part of the nave, people who didn't move out of their
locale, who only knew there was light streaming through a particular part of the
story? The only part of the story they knew was Creation or Christmas or Easter,
or whatever it may be. Would they not think, That's it! That's the story.' But it
wouldn't be the story at all. It was a chapter of the story. It was a facet of the
story.”
And then I thought to myself, “What if they were not all Christian groups, but
what if there was a Jewish window with the community of people seeing the light
stream through and a Christian and a Muslim and a Buddhist and a Hindu? What
if all of these respective groups were gathered before their windows where the
story was told, their story? And what would be the common thing that would bind
them together? Being unconscious of one another and without knowledge of
anyone else's story, what would be the common thing? Well, it would be the light
that streams through all the windows, that illuminates all the stories.”
And it was then that I saw a paradigm of that Light of the world which is greater
than the light of the world that dawned in Jesus. The light that dawned in Jesus is
an authentic and true light of Light Inaccessible. But God is Light Inaccessible
and in the mercy of God, Light Inaccessible became light focused in a human
face. And that's my story. And it's a true story, and through that story I have
experience of that Light Inaccessible. But, so do my brothers and sisters in other
respective traditions.
I thought that was a rather good paradigm, a good model, a good symbol, a good
story I told you. In fact, it was so clear that everything went downhill from that
point, because it made so much sense, it seemed so obvious, and one way or
another I've been hammering away at that and once in a while I get weary. I get
weary about being so concerned about the things that don't concern many people.
It's tough to be "strange," to see ultimate importance in things most people yawn
about.
I must have grumbled about that a couple of months ago, mentioning that maybe
I was growing tired of it and one of my astute listeners wrote to me and said that
she had been thinking about that often of late, and then one night she saw on
public television, perhaps some of you did, as well, a documentary on Elizabeth
Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, these two war horses that led the women's
suffrage movement, and she said, “I was overcome by a deep sadness when
reminded that from the time of the convention in Seneca Falls when the whole
idea was affirmed, accepted, when it seemed as though everyone would say "Yes"
to women's suffrage, it was 72 years before the Constitution was finally amended
and the suffrage actually happened,” and my correspondent says, “Susan B.
Anthony gave virtually all of her adult life to that struggle, and Elizabeth gave
much of hers, as well. What can one say but, ‘Why? Why does the right thing take
so long?’”
© Grand Valley State University
�Light of the World
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
So I am counseled by my correspondent when I grow weary, because Susan B.
Anthony never even saw the passage of the amendment for which she had given
her life. So I am counseled when I grow weary to remember the ladies. They
stirred and stirred until they created a wave of women who filled the streets with
banners and songs and, at the end of her life, Susan said, “With such women
consecrating their lives, failure is impossible.” And then my correspondent
writes, “People are listening. The waters are churning. Minds are opening. Thank
you for making CCC an exciting place to be, something of an Imagination Station
for all ages, and when you are tired, remember the ladies.”
An Imagination Station for all ages -I love that. And it's happening, and it will
happen, friends, because people are hungry all over. They're not hungry for all of
the ecclesiastical structures and the baggage of institutional religion. But they're
hungry just like the Magi were hungry and took off on a journey following a star.
People are still and again looking to the stars, looking here and there and
everywhere for some authentic word, something that resonates to the depths of
our humanity. It will happen, this millennial vision of a world at peace. As the
Catholic theologian, Hans Küng has said, “There'll be no peace among the nations
until there is peace among the religions,” and I have a millennial vision of a time
when all of the religions will respect each other and enrich each other and teach
each other and live together, hand in hand, in the harmony that alone can reflect
the Creator's purpose. It will happen.
What happened on New Year's Eve? From the far South Sea Islands, around the
globe, in our own living rooms and kitchens, as a human family we celebrated the
turn of the millennium. Has there ever before been such an event celebrated by
the whole human family around the whole globe, celebrating all together the
movement from the second to the third millennium in such a world? Let us
rejoice in that light that has come to us in Jesus Christ that points us to Light
Inaccessible and join arms and hearts with all of those of good heart who,
likewise, have experienced the eternal and in their own way and own manner
bring praise and worship to the eternal God.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
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Event
Epiphany Sunday
Series
A Millennial Vision
Scripture Text
Isaiah 49:6, Matthew 2:9
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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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-0-20000109
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2000-01-09
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Light of the World
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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>
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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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Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on January 9, 2000 entitled "Light of the World", as part of the series "A Millennial Vision", on the occasion of Epiphany Sunday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 49:6, Matthew 2:9.
Epiphany
Global Peace
Pluralism
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c21b0345bd23e3125c7da3c36b7e0f12.pdf
f8965007327f9d9a80e4c18e87641c3d
PDF Text
Text
The Test of Trust
Text: Exodus 16:18
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Pentecost XXI, October 23, 1994
Transcription of the spoken sermon
"Those who gathered much had nothing over; and those who gathered little had
no shortage; they gathered as much as each of them needed."
Last week we saw Israel set free, a slave people delivered by the mighty hand of
God, by the mighty hand of Moses and we noted that that founding story was the
story that Israel looked back to when it understood its origins, recognizing that it
was created by the grace of God. God with mighty hand moved into that situation
of oppression and set his people free. Although that story reflected the ancient
traditions, it was written down about six hundred years later when Israel was
once again in a situation of exile, when they had lost their hope, when they were
about to give up on God and all the promises of the covenant.
So someone rehearsed the stories. Someone reminded them about how they were
born out of slavery, out of oppression, out of an impossible situation. How God
created them a people and set them free. But there are probably no people in all
of history that told their own story with more candor than has Israel. A major
image comes to mind when I think about Israel in the wilderness, the image of
complainers, and the words of God over and again, "You are a stiff-necked
people." There is one thing in Israel telling its story: it admitted that it was a
stubborn and stiff-necked people. The Jewish Rabbi, David Hartman, said in
April that God elected the most obstreperous, obstinate, stubborn and stiffnecked people in all the world, and God said "Now if I can make them human,
then I'm really God."
As you read the stories in the book of Exodus and the book of Numbers, you will
find again and again and again that this people is unhappy, they complain, and
they never learn to trust God. They are simply an impossible lot. Well, the
situation in the sixteenth chapter of Exodus is a situation where they have no
food. At least what they have they are not happy with. They had just seen God
provide water out of the rock, but that didn't seem to get through to them, so they
complained and God said, "I'll give them bread from heaven."
© Grand Valley State University
�The Test of Trust
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
Now, it is really not proper to try to explain the miracles of the Bible in natural
terms, but as a matter of fact, in the case of this manna or bread from heaven, we
know that there was a phenomenon—some kind of plant lice that excretes a
certain kind of gum or resin and it is edible and has sustained people in that area
even to the present. As far as the quail are concerned, the migratory birds would
often go across Sinai and sometimes, having come a long way, they would rest
there. So that the miracle of the feeding does have a kind of natural explanation
to it.
But the point of the story is that God provided for this people in the wilderness.
They were set free and set on a journey. The journey in the wilderness was forty
years. But forty years in the Scriptures means an extended period of time. There
was this extended period of time when they were between Egypt and the
Promised Land. It's one of the great models or paradigms of the Scripture – being
set free, journeying through the wilderness, journeying toward the Promised
Land.
In that wilderness experience, as Israel understood its own past, it saw that
experience as a time in which it was tested and the thing that God was trying to
create in the Israelite was trust. "Trust me. I will be with you. I will take care of
you. Give up your anxiety. Simply trust me." So in the story the Lord says, "I will
give them bread from heaven." And here are the instructions: They are to go out
every morning and they are to gather enough for the day. We are told that they
went out and some gathered a lot, as I probably would be inclined to do, knowing
my appetite. Others gathered a little. But the text tells us that those that gathered
a lot had nothing over, and those who gathered little had no lack. You see, that's
the finger of God in the story. There might have always been that kind of stuff in
the desert, but the lesson that Israel was to learn as it told this story, and the
lesson that the people were to learn who were hearing the story hundreds of years
later was that God is always on time with enough for the day.
Then we are told that some of them didn't believe it. They gathered some extra
and they put it in the freezer and in the morning, Behold, it was wormy. It didn't
work. The Lord also said, "On the Sabbath Day there will be no manna. Don't go
out to gather on the Sabbath. So gather a double amount the day before." Lo and
behold, they did, and the next morning it was just fine. It didn't get wormy. Now
there were a few who didn't believe that and they went out on the Sabbath
anyway. But there was nothing there. That's the story, the story of bread from
heaven, a story of how God provides for God's people, how God in the provision
[of food] seeks to teach people to trust. It is a whole manner of life.
Trusting is a way of life. Really, so much of the Biblical story is simply an
invitation to people to live with trust, because God is good, and God cares, and
God provides for those that trust in God. As you think about the story, obviously
the first question that the story raises for us is — What is enough? The Financial
Seminar which is being held in Track II in Perspectives raises a question. What is
© Grand Valley State University
�The Test of Trust
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
enough? Our worldly possessions, our savings accounts, our investments – all of
that which seems to be "worldly" is really at root a matter of deep spiritual
concern. A question comes to us. What is enough? What is enough? What is
enough in an age of affluence such as we live in? What is enough as we
contemplate the engagement of our energies and our time? What is enough as we
think about our future?
We are reminded of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, who also with beautiful
simplicity invited those who heard him to trust God. He pointed to the sparrow in
the tree and the lily of the field. He used creation as a parable to say, "Look, there
is someone who is looking after this old world, and after you and me. Live with
trust. Be done with anxiety, all of that inquisitiveness, that compulsion to
possess." In another place he told about the farmer who kept building bigger and
bigger barns only to find that his soul was required of him when he had laid up all
of his treasures. The question that comes out of this old tale of Israel's past,
“What is enough?”
John Wesley, who was a great English preacher and one who led the 18th century
revival in England, raised the question as he observed the people that he was
marshaling together into the whole renewal movement in England. He made this
observation. He said, "Whenever riches have increased, the essence of religion
has decreased in the same proportion.” “ Therefore,” said Wesley, "I do not see
how it is possible in the nature of things for any revival of religion to continue
long."
Then he said this interesting thing, "For religion must necessarily produce both
industry and frugality, and these cannot but produce riches. But as riches
increase so will pride, anger and the love of this world and all of its branches. Is
there no way to prevent this continuous decay of pure religion?" I was thinking
about Wesley's statement: thinking about the area in which we live, thinking
about Western Michigan, thinking about our own roots. "Good religion produces
industry and frugality. And industry and frugality produce riches, and riches lead
to the decay of religious commitment." Not necessarily, but all too often.
Think about Western Michigan. I think about the industry and the frugality of
our fathers and our mothers and our grandparents back two and three
generations. I think about the considerable wealth of Western Michigan, which is
the consequence of industry and frugality, which is a wonderful blessing of God.
But the question that comes to us then is: What is enough? Another statement of
John Wesley: (I like this statement.) he said, "Earn all you can. Save all you can.
Give all you can." That, it seems to me, would be an answer to his earlier
observation that when we are blessed we see it as the blessing of God, that it is
the consequence of God's good grace, and that then as good stewards we become
the instruments of doing good, of being full of mercy and compassion, of binding
up the wounds of the world. So, out of the story, let me leave you with a question
this morning. “What is enough?”
© Grand Valley State University
�The Test of Trust
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
Then, obviously, this is there too. The Israelites were to gather enough for the
day. Those of you who are familiar with the Twelve Steps know that the secret of
long successful sobriety is to live one day at a time. Jesus said in the Sermon on
the Mount, "Take no thought for the morrow." Now that can become ridiculous,
of course, if you think that it undercuts any kind of planning or projection of the
future. But the point is — Where is our focus? And have we learned to live by
trust in God, one day at a time? There were those who didn't believe it. They said,
"You know, you'd better gather this manna while it's here. It might not be here
tomorrow." And it turned moldy on them. How many of us have not been guilty
of overreaching, grasping the prize only to have it turn to dust in our hands? The
lesson of the story and what Israel was being taught by God was —today, that's
enough. Take care of today. Worry about today, and tomorrow will take care of
itself.
Then, this too, which was all part of the same kind of lesson and was a Sabbath
lesson. No gathering on the Sabbath. Sabbath was to be a break, a break in that
continual day by day struggle for survival. The Sabbath principle was woven
throughout the whole of Israel's history. It was a principle that was rooted in
creation itself. The creed of creation in the first chapter of Genesis, which was
written in the 5th or 6th century B.C.E., was the principle of God's creative
activity and then rest. God rested from all God's work, surveyed it all and said,
"It's good." And that was woven into the very fabric of the lives of God's people.
In the time of Jesus, in the time of Paul, that Sabbath principle had become
rather legalistic. They had all kinds of rules to hedge it in, such as the permissible
Sabbath day’s journey when you could carry only so much. Well, Jesus had to
protest against it. He said, “You know the Sabbath was made for humankind.
Humankind was not made for the Sabbath.”
I don’t know about you, but I grew up in that kind of Sabbath legalism. I always
tell the story about the visiting preacher who was raised Scottish Presbyterian,
which was about as formidable as being Dutch Reformed in terms of the legalism
of the Sabbath. He told about singing the hymn “Day of All the Week the Best,
Emblem of Eternal Rest,” and he thought to himself, “If heaven is like Sunday, I
don’t think I want to go there.” We can make it miserable and the sense in which
I grew up was “ugly Sundays.” But to react against that is to lose something that
is so profoundly necessary for human well being, and that is to have some point
in the week when we stop! When we stop and we rest! We give up that
compulsive need to generate, to produce, to acquire. Just to stop! To stop, even
when it’s stupid to stop, because we can conquer another milestone.
The Sabbath principle cuts right into the core of that human compulsion, that
obsession of producing. People who are workaholics like I am need to hear it over
and over again. Stop! The Sabbath was not first of all for worship. The Sabbath
was first of all simply to rest and to delight. I think that in my past the Sabbath
principle was violated by the Church itself, where it required Sabbath worship
morning and evening and all parts in between. What God wants people to do is to
© Grand Valley State University
�The Test of Trust
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
take time to smell the roses, take time to be human. Take time to let the earth
refresh itself and to rest the animals and, above all, to find a quiet place for our
souls.
The test is trust. Do I believe in God? Do I believe in the goodness of creation? Do
I trust that the good God and the good creation will be supportive of my human
existence? And will I take time to recognize that every good and perfect gift
comes from God, and learn simply to live with trust? I think that that is the
spiritual dimension of our Christian giving. That’s the real point of the issue when
we determine what of that which God has given us we will give in turn to enhance
and enable the work of God in the world. Trust. To trust God is to be relieved of a
terrible anxiety, to be freed from an awful drivenness, to be able to delight and to
enjoy and to rest in the Lord. Those that gathered much didn’t have any over, and
those that gathered little had no lack: a vision for a world where everyone has
enough, a goal to work at for the people of God, who trust God, day by day.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/50771c556f2dddcce300baceff2fdfea.mp3
d5c4de6aa96ec1e2e2eb91d53b0ffd0b
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
Reformation Sunday, Pentecost XXII
Series
The First Testament
Scripture Text
Exodus 16:18
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01_RA-0-19941023
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1994-10-23
Title
A name given to the resource
The Test of Trust
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 October 23, 1994 entitled "The Test of Trust", as part of the series "The First Testament", on the occasion of Reformation Sunday, Pentecost XXII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Exodus 16:18.
Hebrew Scriptures
History of Israel
Pluralism
Reconciliation
Reformation
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a93567604cf8180e0b68fe3c2695ed1e.mp3
ac037abc0ad3a83ad6db7409d9e354c2
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 XIX
Series
The First Testament
Scripture Text
Genesis 17:18
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01_RA-0-19941002
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1994-10-02
Title
A name given to the resource
Why No Ishmael? - Election: Exclusive or Inclusive?
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 October 2, 1994 entitled "Why No Ishmael? - Election: Exclusive or Inclusive?", as part of the series "The First Testament", on the occasion of Pentecost XIX, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Genesis 17:18.
Covenant
History of Israel
Inclusive
Pluralism