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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e32a044019e3f10e59650ff561bd9de2.pdf
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The End of the Story
From the series: Christian Faith: Interpretations of Experience
Text: Micah 4:4-5; I Corinthians 15:28; John 20:21
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Memorial Day Weekend, May 24, 1998
Transcription of the spoken sermon
On this Memorial Day weekend, which is also the last Sunday in Eastertide, I am
going to say one more time that our Christian tradition is the consequence of the
interpretation of experience. The foundational event of the Christian tradition is
Easter, the experience of being in the presence of the crucified one, Jesus. It was
the experience of those who knew that Jesus, the one they had loved and followed
and hoped would be their deliverer, had been crucified and then, strangely
enough, was with them still. Peter, Paul, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of
Jesus - all of them. The Christian tradition coming out of the womb of Judaism
was the consequence of interpreting the experience of the living Lord.
All religion is the interpretation of human experience. It is the consequence of
our trying to make sense out of our human situation in those moments when we
come to an awareness, a consciousness of the holy, of the sacred, of God. In those
moments of awareness, we seek to understand what is going on, what has been
said to us, what has broken through to us, and that ongoing interpretation of
experience, which initially is reported and repeated orally, is later written down.
The foundational event thus becomes a written record and continues to create the
possibility for the experience to happen again and again and again because we’re
dealing with the living Lord, the living Lord who gave us the Spirit.
The Christian tradition is now 2000 years old and it is the interpretation of the
experience of the presence of Jesus who we declare to be Lord of all - that the
Way of Jesus was the Way of God, that the truth of Jesus was the truth of God,
and that the life of Jesus was the life of God. So, what is the end of it all, the
purpose of the story that we have now been telling for 2000 years, the story that
has been told and retold for 2000 years and has been told to us and that we
continue to tell - what is the end of it all?
I want to say this morning on this Memorial Day weekend that the end of it all is
peace on earth, or to use that beautiful Hebrew word which is too rich to translate
with one English word - the end of it all is Shalom, the totality of reality in total
harmony between Creator and creature, Creator and creation, creature and
© Grand Valley State University
�The End of the Story
Richard A. Rhem
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creation - in the totality of that mix, perfect harmony reflecting the intention of
God. That is the purpose or the end of the Gospel.
The scriptures are focused on the here and now. Our faith is of this worldly faith.
To be sure, we have tended to project it beyond history to another time and
another place. But to read the scriptures is to be aware that it is about this world
and its transformation. It is about the mending of Creation. The Hebrew prophets
gave us visions that are marvelous. If you would go down to the Worship Center
this year, you would have seen here and there lions and lambs, because the
wonderful vision of the prophet Second Isaiah, was that the time would come
when there would be a new creation in which the lion and the lamb would lie
down together. As Woody Allen said, "When they sleep, the lion will sleep more
soundly than the lamb," nonetheless, the lion and the lamb lying down together,
symbolic of that harmony that has come over all things. Or, the picture in the
prophetic reading this morning from Micah where Mt. Zion will be exalted, will
be lifted up, and the nations will flow to Jerusalem. Out of Mt. Zion will flow the
Torah, the Law understood as the way of life. And the purpose of Israel, its
specific function, was to be the instructor of the nations, to give light to the
nations. The prophet says that, when Israel is exalted, when Mt. Zion is exalted
and when the nations come and receive instruction in Torah, then there will be
righteousness and peace, then they will beat their swords into plowshares and
their spears into pruning hooks and nation will not lift up sword against nation,
nor will they learn war anymore. The prophetic vision is about this world, about
creation, about history, about concrete human experience, and the end of the
biblical story is that there might be peace.
On Memorial Day we remember those who paid the supreme sacrifice in order
that there might be peace and freedom, and we have enjoyed so much as a nation,
but we have still in this world of ours so far to go. The prophetic vision is a
challenge to us. The experience of Jesus’ death and resurrection was Paul’s
experience. He tried to figure out the timetable and what was going to happen.
He talked about how Jesus was raised from the dead as the first fruits of those
who would be raised. Paul expected that he was at the end of the age, the new age
was about to dawn. Paul expected that this Jesus who had been raised was in the
presence of God temporarily, only to return and to restore all things. The major
victory had been won, but there was at present a mopping up operation. Then,
when Jesus finally subdued all things, then Jesus would yield up the kingdom to
God and then God would be everything to everyone. Paul expected it to happen
any moment. He was wrong about that. If you read the 15th chapter of I
Corinthians, you find that Paul was straining to understand the phenomenon of
resurrection and he would have been better off just to proclaim it rather than the
torturous way in which he went on to talk about it. He was wrong about how this
all was going to work out, and I can’t believe that for 2000 years we haven’t
simply recognized that fact. But, what we see in him, what he was trying to do
was to say that what happened in Jesus was critical for the whole destiny of the
© Grand Valley State University
�The End of the Story
Richard A. Rhem
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universe, for the world, and that eventually there would arrive the kingdom of
God or this reign of God.
I like the picture that we have in the fourth Gospel of that Easter evening when
Jesus is suddenly in the midst of the disciples who are clammed up in a locked
room, afraid for their lives, and he says, "Peace to you." They determine that it
really is their living Lord, and he says, "Peace to you. As the Father has sent me,
so send I you."
Paul was just a couple of decades down the line; he was still expecting the
heavens to open. The writer of the fourth Gospel some six decades down the line
is beginning to say maybe we need to adjust our understanding of what’s going on
in the world. But, the point in the fourth Gospel in the light of the resurrection,
the interpretation of that experience was that, as Jesus was in the world, so the
followers of Jesus were to be. "As the Father has sent me, so send I you." If Jesus
is the enfleshment of the word of God, if Jesus is the human face of God, if Jesus
is the embodiment of God in historical garb, then what Jesus says in the fourth
Gospel to us is that what I am here, you are to be here, and that is to say "Peace
be unto you," to bring about that Shalom on earth, the mending of creation. It is
the task here and now in our lives as a community of faith to be peacemakers, to
create, to embody in community that mending of relationships and that totality of
harmony in our lives and in our lives together that will be a sign of the kingdom
of God, and do what we can to promote peace in the world.
In the middle of April, Time magazine came out with the first of six special
editions that will come out over the next two years. Perhaps you’ve seen it. The
20th century, its leaders and revolutionaries. This being the first, special issue,
there was an introductory essay indicating the marks of our 20th century, which
the writer claims is one of the four or five most significant centuries ever, and
we’re living at the end of it. He mentions, for example, the 15th century with the
Renaissance, the Spanish Inquisition, Copernicus looking at the heavens, the
Gutenberg printing press, very, very significant, earth-shaking, age-determining
events. Or, the first century, of course, with Jesus’ life and death, or the 5th
century B.C. with Plato, Aristotle, the whole Greek philosophical thinking. But
the writer makes a pretty good case for the fact that our 20th century is one of
those significant times. Over the years I have called it a hinge period, a hinge
time. You know all these things, but just listen as he ticks off some of the things
that mark our century. "To name just a few random things we did in 100 years we split the atom, invented jazz and rock, launched airplanes and landed on the
moon, concocted a general theory of relativity, devised the transistor, and figured
out how to etch millions of them in tiny microchips, discovered Penicillin and
structured DNA, fought down Fascism and Communism, developed cinema and
television, built highways and wired the world, not to mention the peripherals
these produced, such as sitcoms and cable channels, 800 numbers, websites,
shopping malls, leisure time, existentialism, modernism, Oprah." And, he says,
"Against all odds we avoided blowing ourselves up."
© Grand Valley State University
�The End of the Story
Richard A. Rhem
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What a time in which to be alive. One of the most significant centuries in which to
be a participant. A fascinating time. With all of that happening, is there any
wonder that people are afraid, have lost their moorings, so that we see a double
reaction in society at large? We see on the one hand a kind of a pessimistic
relativism that throws up its hands and sees no guiding star, and on the other
hand, we see a kind of fanatical reactionism, a fundamentalism that wants to turn
the clock back and to go back and find a safe place in which to dwell, not
understanding that there is no safe place in which to dwell in the house of history
and that one can never go home, one can never go backward. It is the people of
God, it is the church of Jesus Christ that ought to be at the forefront with
confidence leading the way, breaking new ground with a beacon into the future,
wondering at the awesomeness of our life and our world and moving things
onward rather than generating fear and eliciting negative emotions from people.
The prophet Micah, in the passage to which I referred a moment ago, after
speaking about how the nations will flow to Mt. Zion to be instructed and go
home and live in peace, says, "And the nations and the people will walk in the
name of their God and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God, Yahweh our
God." In other words, in that moment when Israel was to be the teacher of the
nations, they were not bringing everybody into the Jewish faith, they were saying
to everybody, "Practice your own faith. Practice your rituals. Pray in your own
way, in your own posture, in your own good time, be who you are. But learn those
basic, fundamental principles of righteousness, justice, and compassion that are
the foundation of human society. Those principles have manifested themselves so
marvelously in western civilization and in the United States of America in our
history. Those principles of democratic liberalism, the freedom of the individual,
the possibility of pursuing one’s own way in worship and in work, the wonderful
freedom that has enabled us to accomplish tremendous goals. The kinds of things
that we have brought about, accomplished and take for granted today are not
things that will go down in history as just another interesting century - they are
the kinds of discoveries that will open up the world as never before. The growth
will be exponential, the understanding, the insights, if we don’t blow ourselves
up. And we could.
But, we will blow ourselves up if we allow the religious fundamentalisms of the
world to create fear and drive to violence. It is for the church of Jesus Christ to
recognize on this Memorial Day weekend, this end of Eastertide, that all of our
interpretation of tradition is the consequence of our concrete experience, and
that is true for us and it is true for every people everywhere. In the Time article it
notes the things that we have to worry about as we go into the next century: two
of them are tribalism and fundamentalism. It is imperative for the church of
Jesus Christ to recognize that the whole purpose and end of its story is peace, that
its whole biblical story is about Shalom, about the mending of creation, about the
ultimate kingdom of God, the reign of God in peace where dwell righteousness
and justice and compassion.
© Grand Valley State University
�The End of the Story
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
The church is called as never before to a radical discipleship. As the Father has
sent me, so send I you ... the embodiment of the divine in the human, calling for
justice, compassion, loving of the enemy, turning the other cheek, the way of nonviolence, laying down finally one’s life, if need be. That’s the radical demand of
the followers of Jesus who would be in this world as Jesus was, which is the end
and purpose of it all, finally to be a peacemaker. We know this in our heart. I
believe we want to be peacemakers, to dwell in peace. We must trust our hearts,
dare to act on our intuition, stop fighting over the Bible as though it fell out of
heaven having an authoritarian grip on our lives.
In all its diverse witness, finally it calls us to the way of Jesus, the crucified who
lives - to be as he was, to be the Body of Christ committed to peace. It is time for
us to wrestle with the biblical story again, to take seriously 2000 years of
tradition, to trust our experience and to use our heads! And to be good to one
another, with good humor and grace, and a lot of kindness and compassion.
Finally, dear friends, that’s what it’s all about. Heaven can wait. That can’t.
© Grand Valley State University
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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
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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.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
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English
Type
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Sound
Text
Identifier
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KII-01
Coverage
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1981-2014
Format
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
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Event
Memorial Day Weekend, Eastertide VII
Series
Christian Faith: Interpreting an Experience
Scripture Text
Micah 4:4-5, I Corinthians 15:28, John 20:21
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-19980524
Date
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1998-05-24
Title
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The End of the Story
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Sound
Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on May 24, 1998 entitled "The End of the Story", as part of the series "Christian Faith: Interpreting an Experience", on the occasion of Memorial Day Weekend, Eastertide VII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Micah 4:4-5, I Corinthians 15:28, John 20:21.
cWay of Jesus
Prophetic Vision
Shalom