1 24 2 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/370652d735191c2e3c570dbeafca3eb8.mp3 46bdc358ed9268f184911abc620cc597 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/afebbd0c3125a892e005f456dcf27fa5.pdf f8c583e9588128c29b3f8ada55cc8eb1 PDF Text Text The Insight That Makes Praise Irrepressible A Reflection on the Psalms Text: Psalm 103:13-14 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan August 9, 1987 Transcription of the spoken sermon As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. Psalm 103:13-14 With this message I will leave the Psalms for a time but, before doing so, I want to conclude with a Psalm of praise and thanks giving. If you want to classify it according to the interpretative framework of the previous messages, it is a psalm of orientation or, perhaps, new orientation, a hymn of praise, "a public song sung with abandonment in praise of God's person or the nature of God's creating and liberating actions." (Brueggemann) One could debate if the praise hymn is response to some surprise of grace or if it issues forth from the heart of one convinced of the goodness of God and the meaningfulness of life. I treat in this message Psalm 103, not to demonstrate one of the three classifications we have been tracing, but rather as one final demonstration of the beautiful way in which genuine human experience is acknowledged, brought into the presence of God and thus how human experience is really affirmed. By that I mean that, according to the best insight of Old Testament faith, it is O.K. to be human. Human is what God made us; for that we need make no apologies. To be human is to be a person on the way, a person in process; it is thus to be incomplete. To be human is to be vulnerable and to be fallible; to be human is to live in tension between the highest idealism and the lowest meanness, between high aspirations and moderate achievement, between soaring dreams and visions and frustrating roadblocks. To be human is to know the good and fail to perform it, to resolve the best and too often produce the worst. That being the truth of our humanness, there is a marvelous statement in Psalm 103 that should mean everything to us. It is an insight that makes praise irrepressible. In a psalm full of insight, it is this insight that makes it impossible to be silent. © Grand Valley State University   �Insight that Makes Praise Irrepressible Richard A. Rhem Page 2   As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. Psalm 103:13-14 Is there any greater comfort than that? He knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. He knows our frame - of course, is he not our Creator? He remembers that we are dust - of course, that is the way he made us. And, in contrast, these affirmations are not simply statements of fact; rather, I hear the Psalmist saying, "It is all right to be human." We can be who we are. A more accurate translation of our text is: For he knows our form, mindful that we are clay. That calls to our minds immediately the creation account in Genesis 2. In the profound imagery and symbolism of that creation story we read, Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Genesis 2:7 The word for man is generic in the Hebrew; it is adham from whence we derive Adam. The story, however, is not first of all about a man named Adam, but about a creature, Adham, who is formed from Adhamah, "dust", or better, "clay." One translation of Genesis 2:7 puts it this way: God formed man (Adam) from the clods in the soil (Adama). We will probably never displace "dust" from our minds, yet the meaning is that the stuff of the soil is the stuff of which the human creature is formed. Sometime we speak of a human person as an "earthling" and this would be a comparable play on words - an earthling of the earth. It would be stretching it a bit if we found here the source of that negative label we sometimes put on ourselves when we refer to ourselves or another as a "clod." Yet perhaps precisely that common put-down points up a critical insight; we do put ourselves and others down for being what we are in our clumsy and awkward moments. We feel "cloddy." However, what we must see is that the reality of our identity with the created order is not in the Bible a put-down; it is simply an open recognition, an owning of our very creatureliness - a part of a created whole which the Hebrew writer understood as being pronounced "good" as it came from the Creator's hand. To the extent that the generic name "man" came to be used as a name for a person, it reflects the ancient idea that a name literally "named," that is, it bespoke the essence of the thing named. Adam, then, if you would think of a concrete human creature, was named according to his intimate relationship to the earth. © Grand Valley State University �Insight that Makes Praise Irrepressible Richard A. Rhem Page 3   The image of the Genesis story, which is reflected in our text, is that of God as the potter who takes up the clay and fashions it into the design of His desiring. The human creature is the product, if you will, of the Divine design and initiation. God has created us; God has fashioned us to reflect His own creative purpose. If we back up to Genesis 1, we find that account of Creation speaking of God creating the human person in His own image, which truth is picked up in Psalm 8, the psalm with which this series of messages began, ... Thou hast made him little less than God, ... That idea of the image of God in which we were created speaks of our relationship to God, that which connects us to Him and sets us apart from the rest of the created order. But that is not our concern in this message. Here I would emphasize our earthiness, our connectedness to the created order. And what I want to emphasize is that that is not noted in a negative tone, but in a factual statement of the way it is because that is the way God willed it to be. God knows our form. He remembers that we are clay. This statement follows a statement of God's compassion for His people. The image used is that of a parent; As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear him. Thus the point the Psalmist is making is that God is compassionate. Four times in this psalm he refers to God's steadfast love, the beautiful Hebrew word hesed we noted last week in the text from Lamentations 3. God can be trusted to be merciful and compassionate just as a good parent naturally feels compassion and mercy for a child. We do not have to apologize for who we are or what we are. The Psalmist points out that we are what we are because God created us to be what we are. That is an insight that makes praise irrepressible. The solid sense of being accepted as we are, being valued for the persons we are, being affirmed in our very humanness is the basis for our own self esteem and self worth. We are God's creation; we are a reflection of the Divine intention. Now, I can hear an objection: "Ah, yes, but we have sinned; we have defaced the image of God; we have forfeited our status as children; certainly you claim too much, you must be soft pedaling the guilt we have brought on ourselves." Let me respond to that. © Grand Valley State University �Insight that Makes Praise Irrepressible Richard A. Rhem Page 4   First of all, we have been far too obsessed with the idea of sin in the Church. That is a bold statement and no doubt sounds strange coming from the Christian pulpit, but stay with me for a moment. I will come to the reality of human sin eventually and there is no need to downplay that in order to lift up the human person. But my point here is that too often in the Church being human has been understood almost as being identical with being sinner. Now from our text I sense that the psalmist is reflecting the feeling that God is easier on being human than many of us human beings are - especially we who make up the Church. What does it mean to be human? To be human is to be created, not creator; it is to be creature, not God. That must be obvious. Yet we do forget it and perhaps it is precisely the power of our sin that we forget we are human and are rather driven by a god-complex. Nonetheless, we are human and, therefore, we are creatures of history. We live in the stream of history; we live one day at a time, moment by moment, with no possibility of jumping out of the stream and surveying it from a perspective beyond it. How we would love to know what lies around the corner. How we would love to know the unfolding drama of history and of our own lives before time, but that is precisely it – to be human is to have no "before time;" it is to have time, the present. To be sure, there is a past and we learn from it if we are wise. There is a future and we prepare for it if we are wise. But the past is written; the future is not yet; we are writing the present - now is the only moment we ever have. Our lives are lived in moments of decision - critical choices we must make time and again - choices of lesser import daily and we must do it with only limited knowledge, limited insight, some measure of wisdom - more or less -and some store of experience. We are fragile, vulnerable creatures. From time to time we hear of someone whose fragile existence hangs on by a thread. An accident brings one to the very brink of death and a life support system keeps life until the body functions once again. A stroke, an aneurism, a coronary. The psalmist of Psalm 139 wrote, "We are fearfully and wonderfully made," and we are! The human body is a marvel to fill us with awe. And it is fragile – a breath, a heartbeat away from being over. Too much thought of life's vulnerability could drive one out of one's mind. We are part of a community and world where free choice and responsible decisions are everyone's. Therefore, we cannot really determine our own destiny as though all critical factors were for our deciding. Beyond our personal decision are the choices and decisions of the whole community, the nation, indeed, the nations. What happens if the fanatical fundamentalism of the Shiite Moslems brings the world into conflagration? © Grand Valley State University �Insight that Makes Praise Irrepressible Richard A. Rhem Page 5   Being part of the whole is God's intention for us – living in community – but that also means we are at the mercy of decisions and choices beyond our own in so many crucial areas that determine our wellbeing. We are mortal; we will all die. I could go on citing the characteristics of our human existence, but let's cite just this one final reality – our mortality. That puts the limit on our dreams, our visions, our designing, our building and acquiring. We are limited by that terminus point which no one knows and no one can predict. Indeed, we do live under the shadow of death. There is so much more one could say, but this is enough to make the point I am trying to make. We are fragile, vulnerable creatures. We are a marvel; we ought to stand in awe of our humanness; yet it is also a threatened existence that is ours. I have a book on my shelf entitled, The Worry and Wonder of Being Human. Indeed! If all the above is true, then we fragile creatures of dust (or clay) are bound to live with some anxiety. We are constantly moving into uncharted waters exposed to a thousand threats having limited knowledge and yet having to make choices for good or ill. And we will make mistakes, wrong choices. And being anxious, we will become defensive and self-protective. And being free and independent (relatively), we will be pushed by self concern and concern for those closest to us. And such self-centered motivation gone awry has written the horror story of human history, but we could not be the creatures we are without that drive for independence and a certain aggressiveness. We feel that tension in the family. We try to socialize our children, teach them the limits of acceptable behavior. Yet we do not want to break their will or crush their spirit and sometimes when our own children plunge and lunge at life we may get nervous and yet, at the same time, feel a little pride at their daring. A great danger of our educational system is that we socialize too successfully and cut the creative nerve of the child. It is only a further development of that when in totalitarian countries the system would undercut all free and independent thinking and produce row after row of socially controlled robots. Now hear the text again. As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear him. He knows our form, He remembers we are clay. Was not the psalmist saying that it is precisely in our fragile and vulnerable human existence that we are looked upon with compassion by God Who made us and made us just the way we are? It is on that basis that I began with the assertion that it is O.K. to be human. It is O.K. to be limited, vulnerable, fragile and susceptible to err. © Grand Valley State University �Insight that Makes Praise Irrepressible Richard A. Rhem Page 6   But, my objector persists: "Are we not sinners? Have we not rebelled against God's purpose and do we not set ourselves up against God and our neighbor?" Of course. Let me say again, to make my point I do not need or intend to whitewash the sin of the human person. I could go on now to paint the canvas of the human portrait black and shadowy gray: selfishness, meanness, pettiness, cruelty, violent madness. The picture does not have to be overdrawn to convince us of something in the human creature that is twisted, warped, distorted, and we know it well because there is no sin "out there" that I cannot find "in here," in the secret depths of my own heart. But again, to be honest with all of that is not simply to write off the human creature. In his Christian Faith, Berkhof suggests that the Genesis story of human creation ought to be heard not so much as a story of a perfect state followed by a fallen state, but of a human creature always caught between the tug of the lower and the call of the higher. But even that is not the point. The point is made so beautifully in the Psalms. The God Who, father like, has compassion on us and knows us is the God Who has also provided for us forgiveness. Sometimes I think we have never really heard the declaration of forgiveness. Sometimes I hear it spoken here and still condemn myself. Could the Scripture be any clearer? As far as the East is from the West - as high as the heaven is above the earth, so great is His mercy, His steadfast love; He does not deal with us according to our sins. How shamefully we have muffled that message in the Church. How assiduously we have marched over the earth preaching sin in order then to present sin's solution. How much wiser we would have been if only we had preached the solution already in effect and then invited persons to come home to the Father's house because there is no longer any reason to stay away. The Gospel of Jesus Christ which is only the full realization of the grace of which the psalmist sang is the announcement of the radical, unconditional, allencompassing, universal love of the eternal God Who made us and loves us just as we are - human, all too human! That is the biblical message; that is the passionate center of the one story of the Bible. It is a story of a Creator, full of grace, Who fully understands us and unconditionally loves us. God created us human with all the struggle that that entails and God will not let us go 'til we take on the shape of the one who lived a © Grand Valley State University �Insight that Makes Praise Irrepressible Richard A. Rhem Page 7   fully human existence as the faithful human covenant partner of the covenantkeeping God. No wonder the psalmist burst forth in praise as he reviewed what God does for His children - forgives, heals, redeems, crowns, satisfies and renews. Bless the Lord, O my soul! © Grand Valley State University � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Event Pentecost X Scripture Text Psalm 103:13-14 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19870809 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1987-08-09 Title A name given to the resource The Insight That Makes Praise Irrepressible Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 August 9, 1987 entitled "The Insight That Makes Praise Irrepressible", on the occasion of Pentecost X, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Psalm 103:13-14. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Creator God Divine Intention Forgiveness Human Nature Praise Psalms https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d6a587d0f31db12f796fc41643037582.mp3 4efcde8a6e790317357897109087d237 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ed205de2dc3b21693d6836b6cf101880.pdf 553952d0be11551691dcd748635efd53 PDF Text Text God is Easy to Live With Text: Psalm 103: 13-14 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan August 31, 1986 Transcription of the spoken sermon As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on all who fear him. For he knows how we are made, he knows full well that we are dust. Psalm 103: 13-14 The Psalmist begins this Psalm with a call to his own being to bless the Lord. The Psalm ends with the same call, now inviting the whole created order and all created beings to join in the praise of God. The body of the Psalm witnesses to who God is by pointing to all God does, thus giving the cause for gratitude which issues in the praise of God. Psalm 103 is an expression of pure praise. Nothing is requested; no plea or complaint is expressed. It is simply a paean of praise to the good and gracious God, a God Who is easy to live with. The psalm flows; it is a spontaneous eruption of joy at the contemplation of the wonder of God's goodness, compassion and grace. It is the amazement at the realization of Who God is and what He has done and continues to do. Praise is spontaneous. It arises in our hearts; it erupts on our lips; it breaks forth, irrepressible. The Psalmist calls himself to consciousness of God's mercy; praise is the result. Praise cannot be coerced; forced, it is not praise. But we learn from the Psalmist that it is in the contemplation of God in His saving acts toward us, His mercy and goodness to us, that we put ourselves into the posture of praise. Let us listen as the Psalmist describes the God Whom he calls upon his soul to bless. We bless God because of Who He has shown Himself to be. Old Testament faith was not speculative and abstract. Rather, the God Whom Israel praises was the God Who revealed Himself in human experience. He was the God Who revealed Himself to Moses. That brings to expression the whole history of redemption in which Israel was called and claimed by God to be © Grand Valley State University   �God is Easy to Live With Richard A. Rhem Page 2   His people. Israel had a sense of being God's chosen people. In the Exodus event, God freed their Fathers from Egypt's bondage. He was the God Who led them through the wilderness and brought them into the promised land. In His revelation of Himself to Moses, He made Himself known as merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Mercy, grace, steadfast love - what a list of attributes that makes. He was the God of salvation; He set His people free from the galling slavery that de-humanized and oppressed. He provided for them, nurtured them and established them in their own land. Israel's history was a history of salvation of the Mighty God Who delivered them. In Exodus, as Israel gathered at Mount Sinai and prepared to receive the Law, these were Moses’ words to them: You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now, therefore, if you will obey my vice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all peoples…. Exodus 19: 4-5 That beautiful image expresses well Israel's sense of being called and claimed by God. But not only in their corporate history, but also in their personal, human experience, the Old Testament people had a sense of God's grace and mercy. Just listen to the five verbs of verses 3-5. God pardons, heals, redeems, crowns, satisfies. Consequently, His people live as renewed persons, kept in the steadfast love of God. Expanding on the first blessing mentioned - God's pardoning grace - the Psalmist gives us one of the most vivid figures of speech found anywhere to describe what God does with our wrongs. Here is the marvelous surprise: God does not deal with us as we might expect to be dealt with. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor requites us according to our iniquities. How often we get things out of focus. We grumble and complain. We are prone to look on the dark side, feeling we have gotten a bum deal. We luxuriate in self-pity and whimper while we nurse our wounds and rationalize our poor showing. But the reality is far different! God does not deal with us as we deserve. C.S. Lewis, in The Great Divorce, tells of a busload of folk from the grey, misty flats of purgatory who take a bus excursion to the borders of heaven to see if they might desire permanent residence there. One of the "tourists" meets a man known to him on earth who was tried and executed for committing a murder. The man is now a citizen of heaven. The visitor is amazed to find the murderer there. He cries out, "What I'd like to understand is what you're here for, as pleased as © Grand Valley State University �God is Easy to Live With Richard A. Rhem Page 3   Punch, you a murderer, while I've been walking the streets down there and living in a place like a pigsty all these years." The citizen of heaven tries to explain that he had been forgiven the crime and that both he, the murderer, and the man he murdered had been reconciled at the judgment seat of God. But the "spirit" from purgatory would have none of it. It was unjust, unfair! He keeps protesting that it is not right, and all he demands is his rights. "I've got to have my rights, same as you, see!" "Oh, no," the citizen of heaven assures him, "It's not as bad as that. I haven't got my rights, or I should not be here. You will not get yours, either. You will get something far better." Thank God we do not get our rights. Thank God justice is not done. Thank God His grace is greater than all our sin. Will Campbell learned the heart of the Gospel the hard way one day. It was during the days of great tension and ugliness of the Civil Rights Movement in the South. A young seminarian and a black man were gunned down in cold blood by a Southern sheriff. Will and his brother were with a friend who would have nothing to do with the Gospel, when they heard the news. The friend put Will, himself a minister of the Gospel, on the spot. In effect, he said, "What will your God do about such an outrage? Can that sheriff be forgiven?" Will, his own heart broken and full of anguish, knew this was the acid test. Did he believe the Gospel? He answered, "Yes." So, the murdered and the murderer are alike loved by God? Yes. Then, what is this Gospel of yours? We are all bastards and God loves us anyway? "Yes," Will replied. That is the scandalous Gospel we believe. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor requite us according to our iniquities. This is the testimony of the whole of Scripture. He blots out our sins as a thick cloud. He casts them behind His back. He buries our sins in the depths of the sea. He remembers them against us no more. We remember our sins. We remember the sins of our neighbors. We nurse them, fume and fuss about them, burden ourselves with them, wallow in them. © Grand Valley State University �God is Easy to Live With Richard A. Rhem Page 4   But, God puts them away - forever. No wonder the Psalmist said, Bless the Lord, O my soul! How does He deal with us? With compassion! Like a parent deals with a child. But no earthly parent begins to realize the magnitude of God's compassion. The best of human parenting is only a faint reflection of the parental love of God. It gives us an image we can grasp and begin to understand. But God's Fatherly compassion surpasses our best insight and understanding. The Psalmist calls us to bless the Lord because of the way He loves us – human as we are. He knows how we were made. He knows full well that we are dust. Here is not only a beautiful statement about God, but here, too, is the charter of our humanness. In the Scriptures we find surprisingly that it is all right to be human. Does not this statement reflect the Psalmist's understanding that God loves us and accepts us in our very humanness? The Bible celebrates that humanness. In the eighth Psalm we read of both our smallness when compared with the cosmos and our greatness in that we were created a little less than God. In this Psalm we sense that the Psalmist believed that God fully understands us in our humanness. We are not God. We are not angels. We are human. To be human is to be finite, limited. To be human is to have to choose, to decide, to act on limited knowledge and insight. To be human is to struggle to find the balance between freedom and responsibility. To be human is to be part of the created order of the earth and to feel the tug of that which connects us to the earth and to be created in the image of God, made for and called to fellowship with God. To be human is to be a person in process, a pilgrim, a struggler. We have not allowed ourselves to be very comfortable in the Church being human. We do get down on ourselves. We condemn ourselves and we are harder on ourselves than anyone else and we are harder on ourselves than God is. Somehow we've gotten the message that it is not all right to be human. We just do not measure up. In the Church - in religion in general - there is a large measure of moralism. There is a strong stress on the "ought." There is the threat and warning about our shortcomings, the constant call to do more, to do better. There is that constant © Grand Valley State University �God is Easy to Live With Richard A. Rhem Page 5   pressure to perform and there is the equally constant sense of falling short. The "message" seems to be that it is not "OK" to be human. Dr. J. Harold Ellens gave a paper to a Christian Psychological Association some years ago in which he addressed the relationship of worship and emotional health. The whole paper is full of insight and greatly impressed me when first I read it. On our present focus, Ellens writes: Worship is the celebration of a feat accomplished and being realized. That fact is the historical datum certifying that God was uniquely in Jesus of Nazareth "reconciling the world unto Himself." The celebration of worship is the act and experience of taking profound and grateful account of God's demonstrated nature and behaviour: He is for us, not against us. Humans natively envision God as a threat. …It may well be that man's native view of God as a threat derives from the natural state of anxiety which seems to be coincident with self-consciousness. …Worship as the celebration of God's grace addresses itself essentially to human anxiety regarding God, self, and one's world of relationships. This follows directly from the fact that the Christian "good news" is the announcement of man's freedom from those threats - freedom to be and become oneself. The purpose of worship, then, is the achievement of emotional health and spiritual wholeness in the form of relief from destructive anxiety by means of the celebration of God's grace. Ellens stresses the fact that worship either incites and embodies experiences of forgiveness, acceptance and a desirable destiny, or enforces guilt, shame and bondage. Worship either frees or sickens. Speaking directly to the point I am making in this message, Ellens writes: The process of worship must provide a comfortable and safe arena for humans to deal with their real inadequacy to the responsibilities of life and the challenges of godliness, as well as their sense of inadequacy as humans. The two are usually quite different and the difference is often the dimension of man's dishonesty, self-deception and pathology including psychic conflict. Worship must provide opportunity and necessity for humans to face their real humanness without employing the typical pathological techniques of self-deception, deception of the community, or mechanisms of escape. Typical worship encourages rather than prevents such pathologies. However, when worship fails to lead people out of them, it cannot be healing. Where deception of self or the community is necessary or possible, freedom in God's grace is impossible. That is the setting for emotional illness, not health. Ellens continues: © Grand Valley State University �God is Easy to Live With Richard A. Rhem Page 6   Worship must provide such humans with the strength and safety to face the crushing reality of our personal and communal potential for envisioning sainthood, on the one hand, and our inability to produce sainthood on the other. It is not a new insight that man is at war with his self. It would be a new experience if worship consistently resolved that conflict in the peace of grace. ... To achieve a healing emotional response, liturgy must provide for honest, relief-affording resolution of the anxiety and ego-insult inevitable to our internal conflicts. This requires aiding persons, through worship, to realize and act out the fact that it is acceptable to be human and sinful. Worship must aid persons and the community to realize on the emotional level that that acceptability is precisely what divine grace and Christian graciousness means. There is much more that could be said on this point, but this is enough to indicate how in worship we should experience the Psalmist's insight that God knows how we are made, knows we are "dust" or "clay" – people in conflict, full of anxiety, loaded with guilt and a sense of inadequacy, needing the good news of an unconditional love and total acceptance of the God Who knows it all better than we do and has already handled our dilemma in the gift of Jesus and the grace which there came to expression. He meets our guilt with forgiving grace, our inadequacy with the total adequacy of Jesus, our weakness with the strength He provides, and calls us simply to trust Him that it is so and to rest in the abyss of His love. To catch a glimpse of such a God and such a redemption is simply to praise, spontaneously, irrepressibly. The Psalmist calls his soul to reflect on this good and gracious God and then he knows praise will flow. Praise cannot be coerced. C.S. Lewis was at first put off by all the calls, "Praise God," when first he became a Christian, until he came to realize that praise was simply the overflow of the enjoyment of the object of praise – in this case, the enjoyment of God. When we read a great novel or experience a great concert or see a beautiful sunset, we want to tell somebody about it. The fun of a good joke is sharing it. So is the praise of God. Lewis says praise is "inner health made audible." I'm sure he is right. Show me a person full of praise and I will show you a person healthy and happy. Some of us are praisers. Some of us are simply "chronic grumps." Again, praise cannot be coerced; either it is "felt" and thus will be expressed, or we remain numb and dumb. But we need not be fatalists, simply resigning ourselves to being "grumps," going through life groveling in the mire when we could soar with eagles. We can talk to ourselves; we can take ourselves in hand as did the Psalmist. We can become conscious of © Grand Valley State University �God is Easy to Live With Richard A. Rhem Page 7   the chronic posture of our souls and we can become self-conscious, reflecting on patterns that may be deeply ingrained. Rather than viewing a magnificent sunset and grumbling, "Well, another day shot," we can bask in a few moments of beauty. We can sense the cool, crispness of the autumn morning and remember this is our Father's world. We can feel the smooth softness of a newborn's cheek and revel in the wonder of a child. We can call upon ourselves to become conscious of the very gift of life and the resources for facing even the most difficult circumstances. We cannot contemplate the God Who "pardons, heals, redeems, crowns and satisfies" and not sense within the upsurge of emotion that finds expression in praise. Then with all creation and all the angels of heaven we can bless the Lord and experience the wellbeing of His grace and goodness, the God Who is easy to live with. Amen. © Grand Valley State University � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Event Pentecost XV Scripture Text Psalm 103:13-14 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19860831 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1986-08-31 Title A name given to the resource God is Easy to Live With Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 August 31, 1986 entitled "God is Easy to Live With", on the occasion of Pentecost XV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Psalm 103:13-14. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Covenant Forgiveness God of Grace Human Nature Nature of God Praise Psalms Unconditional Grace Worship