1 24 2 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a6e2f89b21e1e13720ab2149816e66c8.mp3 10a6c758f21fa394e94a6951911f9a3c https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/389be2d5f36808bdc683b151f78a100d.pdf db116260094e176da54b4d554a5f00eb PDF Text Text Dropping the Salvation Fantasy From the series: Spiritual Life – Religion Re-Imagined Text: Psalm 131; John 3:1-10 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan July 14, 2002 Transcription of the spoken sermon I begin this morning a brief series of messages on the spiritual life—re-imagining religion. The connection between the two is this: they are not the same, but religion provides the form and the structure for the expression of one’s spiritual life. I believe it is good to think about that and perhaps to make an attempt to reimagine that religion, because religious forms and structures can aid and abet the expression of our spiritual life, or hinder and block, causing the spirit to wither. And so, from time to time, it is good to ask ourselves about our religious practice, our religious experience, the structures and the forms that we utilize in the expression of our spiritual life. Thomas Moore’s book The Soul’s Religion was a trigger for this discussion. Some years ago, Moore wrote The Care of the Soul, which impressed me a great deal. I like this book, too, not so much that I intend to share what he speaks of there, but I like the format. He speaks autobiographically. And as I was reading his story, I was reminded of my story and the fact that there is a great similarity in that he was deeply rooted in the Roman Catholic tradition, coming to the point of ordination to the priesthood when he left the Church. Deeply traditioned as he was, he has never been able to get it out of his soul, nor does he want to. But with its form and structure, the institution can no longer be the vehicle by which he can express the spirituality of his life. As I thought about his autobiographical expression, I began to think about mine. I have spoken for a long time about being in the springtime of my senility, but I have spoken about it so long that I suppose I should confess that I am well into the summer of it now. So rather than trying to remember these things, I decided to make a list. I identified eight transformations in my own pilgrimage, my own experience, and I share them with you, not because you are so interested in mine, but because as I do this, perhaps I can do for you what Thomas Moore did for me—cause you to think, “Where have I been? Where have I moved? Where have I come to and where am I going?” Well, this is my story; this is my list. © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University   �Dropping the Salvation Fantasy Richard A. Rhem Page 2   I have come from a conservative orthodoxy to a liberal openness. I have moved from a supernatural theism to a religious naturalism. I have moved from religion as verifiable truth to religion as experience of the sacred dimension of all reality. I have moved from religion’s dogma to religion as poetry, from religion as institution to religion as community, from religion as consisting of absolute truth to religion as emerging experience, from Christianity as exclusive to Christianity as one magnificent window opening on the holy and the sacred. And finally, I have moved from religion as salvation from damnation to religion as celebration of life. That is quite a journey. I have made a slight course adjustment, some might say 180 degrees, and I would have to agree. Most people who have gone through that kind of transformation, most Christian leaders or religious leaders, I should say, have simply left the institution. They have left the institution probably as an expression of honesty and their own integrity, no longer able to profess, to affirm the institution’s forms and structure and creedal statements. They simply have left the institution as it was. And, of course, there are others who have been invited to leave the institution because their views were judged to be heretical. I have been very fortunate, and I think my experience has been a rather rare experience, in that I have been able to continue the spiritual quest, to continue to wrestle and struggle with the faith within a community because you have joined with me. You have gone with me on this journey, some of you kicking and screaming all the way. Some of you were relieved because you were already there before I was. And some of you, frankly, were just sort of watching from the sidelines, not really engaged. Whatever the case, I have had the rare privilege of being out of the institution, but not out of a community that is a continuing spiritual community on a journey, on a spiritual quest. Thank God for that, because I’d starve otherwise. I am of no practical good for anything else. But more than that, it is the passion of my life to create a community for that narrow niche of people who have gone through the same kind of transformation that I have and have doggedly refused just to throw in the towel and to give up on the spiritual life. And so, it is with a great deal of gratitude that I recognize, having gone through such a transformation, that there still is a community in which we can engage together on the spiritual quest with a freedom to re-imagine religion and to bring our understanding of religion more into conformity with our general human experience. This is a wonderful time to be doing this, because we are in a time between the times. Maybe that is always true to some extent, but it certainly is true in this period of history in which we are living. This period has been going on for some © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Dropping the Salvation Fantasy Richard A. Rhem Page 3   time. I don’t know when something will gel out in the future, but we are in a time between the times. Those who study the philosophical development and religious theological development, the history of ideas, put the past into periods. They will speak of the ancient world and then perhaps the medieval world, and that medieval world included the Reformation world in which my particular brand of faith was honed. From there we have modernity, the last three and a half centuries, the modern period. We have spoken of that many times, characterizing it as the rise of critical thinking, the empirical method of verification spurring the development of all the natural sciences. It included the nineteenth century with the rise of historical consciousness and the sense of everything developing, the whole evolutionary cosmic emerging drama. And modernity presented a tremendous challenge to the old orthodoxy, to the age of faith, so that we are now at a time between the times. Modernity has been around long enough. Today there are those who speak of post-modernity, but that’s a story I won’t get into. Let me simply say that modernity has been around long enough so that its challenge has produced a reaction in our world today, a reaction we speak of as Fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is a reaction to the threat to religious forms and structures and creedal statements that is brought on by critical rationality and by scientific discovery of the nature of reality, of historical development, and so on. The Fundamentalist is one who reacts against that because he or she feels threatened, because a religious community is really a cultural, linguistic community. We have our own language, our own vocabulary, our own forms, our own structures, and our own rituals. As long as we operate in that little circle, we are comfortable. It triggers meaning for us. Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, the scripture readings, the prayers and hymns, all trigger meaning. A certain vocabulary is used, a certain phraseology, and that community is comfortable with it. Now when you begin to analyze all of this, take it apart, it becomes scary. Our meaning and our life are tied up in that cultural linguistic complex of things. When that begins to be threatened, the Fundamentalist is born. (Someone has defined the Fundamentalist as one who reiterates yesterday’s answers to today’s questions.) Religious experience becomes more and more disconnected from everyday experience, because out in the world of business, the world of industry, the world of the arts, philosophy, or education, life goes on. New knowledge brings new methods, new breakthroughs, new technologies, and we enter into that whether we are Fundamentalists or not. Now if I am a Fundamentalist I fly in jets, access the Internet, and invest in stocks and bonds. There is no way my religious community and commitments are going to keep me from being part of the broader cultural scene. But my religious experience, in that case, becomes more and more disconnected from the broader world; it becomes a compartment of my life rather than watering the whole flow of my life. And so the Fundamentalist reaction is a recognition that we are in a © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Dropping the Salvation Fantasy Richard A. Rhem Page 4   time between the times; the old is dying, and the new is too frightening to consider. I did my devotions yesterday with the Grand Rapids Press as I always do on Saturday morning, in order to find some fodder for my sermon or something to get excited or angry about, and I’m usually successful. I am thinking about all of this and then I read this big article about how the mainline denominations, all of them, have commissioned a survey about how to grow again. This is really a survey about how to survive, because they all know they are dying, having all experienced significant membership loss. I could have told them what they found out with a lot less cost. The survey revealed that churches need leaders who are innovative and creative and who are persistent in their purpose. They decided they can no longer build churches simply for “waspy” folks like us. They have to go after racial groups, ethnic and minority groups, and so forth. Well, I wonder why, when there are still enough waspy folks around. The crisis is that they are asking the wrong question. Why are people dropping out? Why are there thousands fewer church members today than there were ten years ago? Is the issue Church survival? Is it to try to figure out how you can hold on, hang on? Or ought the institutional forms be so open, flexible, fluid and free that they can shape themselves around our changing lives? On the back page of the same article was a story about the Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor who participated in Rudy Guiliani’s request to have a prayer service in Yankee Stadium after September 11. Do you remember the story? Yankee Stadium was full and there was a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim and a Hindu, and they had a service in which they sang “God Bless America” and prayers were offered for the nation. The Lutheran pastor who participated as a Christian is about to be ousted from the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church because his participation in that service might have given the impression that there are other gods or other ways to God. That kind of thing is really atrocious, isn’t it? If you are thoughtful, if you are sensitive at all, you would say such an institution really deserves to die because it is mindful of its own life, its own particularity with a kind of absolutist exclusivism that a thoughtful, sensitive, intelligent person could not honestly affirm in our world, in our day. The old institutional forms are dying. We are in a time between the times when the old is dying. I don’t know how long it will take. Maybe there will be another blush of triumph and another hundred years or so, but the old institutional forms are dying. The other reaction to the whole movement of modernity is one of modern atheism or agnosticism or just simply the writing off of the spiritual life as though © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Dropping the Salvation Fantasy Richard A. Rhem Page 5   one was an animal. The extreme expression of that is nihilism, that there is no meaning, nothing means anything. The nihilist would simply say that this whole cosmic drama is just a chance accident unwinding who knows where, and certainly with no purpose, with no meaning whatsoever. And then there are hordes of our contemporaries who, without consciously saying, “I am a nihilist,” are living a nihilist existence, barren of any kind of transcendent dimension in their life. T.S. Eliot wrote a poem, “The Waste Land,” his poetic commentary on modernity, in which he speaks about the great Western religious symbols as a “heap of broken images.” That’s where it is for a lot of people. With the eruption of critical thinking and the scientific method and the whole rise of modernity, the tragedy was that religious people were threatened and so they fought it. Many in the scientific community insisted that what they were dealing with was all there was, and there was a great deal of hubris on that side. And so many who were thoughtful and intelligent, simply dropped out. In the West, the intellectual elite left institutional religion, although they have continued in some kind of personal spiritual pilgrimage. We are in the time between the times when on the one hand there is a shrill Fundamentalism that is afraid because it is losing its grip, and on the other a barren spirituality that lives just a little bit above an animal existence. So it is a wonderful time to be thinking about this. Where do we go? Well, I suggest in the title that we drop the salvation fantasy. Just drop the salvation fantasy. What do I mean by the salvation fantasy? I mean that God is a creator who created humankind perfectly, that humankind was tested and failed the test, came under the curse of God’s wrath and stands in threat of eternal damnation. Then God provided in Jesus Christ the atoning death, taking our sin and guilt, therefore offering forgiveness for those who repent and believe, assuring them of heaven. That is the story; that is the myth. I don’t care whether you take the lilting liturgy of the Anglican community or the passionate address of evangelist Billy Graham or the rumblings of television evangelist Jerry Falwell. Down deep that is the story. That is the myth. That is what is being talked about. It may be talked about in sophisticated tones or it may be talked about in down and dirty, blunt language. I am suggesting that we ought simply to give it up. Give up the idea that God created a creature, put it to the test, and then failing the test, will damn it unless there is repentance and acceptance of Christ’s atoning death. That picture of God makes God a monster and the picture of humankind is degrading. We are not God-damned creatures. We are animals emerging out of the jungle with all of the survival instincts clinging to us. But we are something more. Something within us lifts up our eyes and lifts up our hearts and beckons us beyond where we are. © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Dropping the Salvation Fantasy Richard A. Rhem Page 6   Something tells us that what we see is not all there is. We are magnificent creatures. Are we lost? O, my God, we’re lost. Of course we are lost. We are trying to find our way. That is really what the whole religious quest is all about, the spiritual quest; trying to find our way. Who are we, after all? It is not as though God is angry with us, alienated from us. We’re just simply lost. Salvation? Of course. That word has its root in salve, meaning “healing”. Do we need salvation? Of course we need salvation. We are a blind and lost people, barren in our spiritual life and confused and disoriented. Do we need help? Dear God, we need help. But that is exactly what the invitation is from the God who would never abandon us, the God who embraces us, the God who calls us into a web of meaning. God is not “out there” somewhere, but that sacred and holy dimension which is in us and beyond us, which binds us together in a web of meaning and relationship. You might be surprised that a sermon on dropping the salvation fantasy should have in its text the words “born again.” But I think of old Nicodemus. I suppose that the author of the fourth Gospel was trying to bring Nicodemus to the attention of the Jews who were trying to continue in Judaism without following Jesus: “Look, one of your own leaders followed Jesus. He is a model, an example for all of you.” Old Nicodemus, a rabbi, a member of the Sanhedrin, a leader of the Jewish people, a representative of the best of Judaism, the best of Israel, came to Jesus one night to say, “What in the world is going on? Who are you? Who am I? What’s up?” And Jesus said, “You have to be born again.” Or born from above, or born spiritually. It is not so different from what I’ve experienced. I’ve been “born again.” I’ve seen things that I looked at forever and never saw before. I’ve had fresh spiritual insight, was able to move out of the cramped and crimped straitjacket of original orthodoxy that claimed to be the exclusive truth and into the spacious grace of inquiry, of openness, and freedom. Religion needs to be re-imagined so that one like Nicodemus who was deeply rooted in the establishment could come and be confounded by the statement that he had to be born again. Born again not as Jimmy Carter popularized it, not as the television evangelists harangue us about it, but born again with eyes to see and ears to hear, with a fresh awareness of new openness, and with a hunger and a thirst and an ongoing spiritual quest that is never done, but always inviting us to something more and something beautiful. Did you hear that marvelous statement of Psalm 131? “O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high. I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me, but I have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child with its mother.” There is a certain humility and rest and trust and peace, knowing that we are woven together in the bundle of life which consists of © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Dropping the Salvation Fantasy Richard A. Rhem Page 7   beautiful relationships and deep and profound meaning that causes us to see the wonder and the miracle, the glory and the joy of life, which is a gift full of grace. Last evening I sat on the bluff and watched the sunset and in that magnificent western sky illumined by the globe, the sun poured its radiance across the waters and there was a path of yellow gold. Then I went up into the loft and continued to work as the evening sky emerged. When I looked out the window later, I saw the silver crescent of a moon next to the evening star and noticed on the lake that the yellow gold path had become a silver path of moonlight, and I said, “O, my God.” And it is enough. © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and 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 VIII Series Spiritual Life - Religion Re-imagined Scripture Text Psalm 131, John 3:1-10 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-0-20020714 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2002-07-14 Title A name given to the resource Dropping the Salvation Fantasy 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 July 14, 2002 entitled "Dropping the Salvation Fantasy", as part of the series "Spiritual Life - Religion Re-imagined", on the occasion of Pentecost VIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Psalm 131, John 3:1-10. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Sacred Dimension of reality Spiritual Quest https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/dc35bd2dad1d50bcd97d74fce79cd9b3.mp3 b894fd7f6586dd05b576240465ef03f1 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/58576bf55689509de0f96a8d4bc3ca33.pdf f5b4e87aaaec8924aad3d60eda211d74 PDF Text Text The Presence of God: Intelligence and Attention Pentecost XIII I Kings 19:1-14 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan August 26, 2001 Transcription of the spoken sermon Gary Eberle, in The Geography of Nowhere, commenting on the passing of the age of faith, uses a marvelous poem by Philip Larkin, an English poet. Eberle comments, In "Church Going," Larkin imagines that someday Christian churches will fall into disuse and ruin as had Stonehenge and the Acropolis. Perhaps scholars will come with their notepads, or the superstitious will come at night to perform half-remembered magic. He sees the old church becoming: A shape less recognisable each week, A purpose more obscure. I wonder who Will be the last, the very last, to seek This place for what it was... And yet, he notes one thing about this place will not pass away - the inner spiritual need and hunger of the beings who built it in the first place. A serious house on serious earth it is, In whose blest air all our compulsions meet, Are recognised, and robed as destinies. And that much never can be obsolete. Since someone will forever be surprising A hunger in himself to be more serious. And gravitating with it to this ground, Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in. If only that so many dead lie round. Sometimes it happens as it happened to Elijah. It's no accident that chapter 19 follows chapter 18 and the story of Israel's history recorded in I Kings. Chapter 18 is that story of the duel between Elijah, the prophet of Yahweh, and the prophets © Grand Valley State University �Presence of God: Intelligence and Attention Richard A. Rhem Page 2 of Baal, introduced by Queen Jezebel, the foreign royalty who had brought another worship and cult into the very heart of Israel. Do you remember that story of the prophets of Baal in a contest with Elijah? They pray for their gods to consume the sacrifice and the heavens are brass and there is no response. Then, Elijah, as the sacrifice is drowned in water, calls upon the name of the God of Israel, and fire consumes the sacrifice. What a mountaintop experience, literally. As is often the case after such spiritual exhilaration, there set in upon Elijah a deep depression, for he was struggling in a very difficult time in the life of Israel. It was not an easy time to be a prophet of God, and he fled to Mount Horeb or Sinai, the mountain of Moses and the encounter of God with Israel in the Exodus experience. God is not altogether sympathetic with this prophet. He says, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" And Elijah pours out his self-pity as though he and he alone is left faithful to God. And then, God says, "Stand in the mouth of the cave," after which Elijah experiences dramatic effects in nature, an earthquake, wind and fire. But, God is not in any of these dramatic displays, but rather, in the sound of sheer silence. Richard Elliott Friedman, commenting on that passage, notes that that is the point of transition in Israel's experience of God. That experience is the last time it is recorded, "And God said ..." Early on in the scripture story of Israel, God is speaking all the time and acting all the time, but now the sound of sheer silence is a signal that theophany is over and, along with that, is increasing responsibility on the part of humanity to carry on the story. There was a shift, and the writers who put the story together were obviously signaling that shift and that juxtaposition of Carmel and Sinai and silence. The scriptures signal those cultural shifts in the understanding of God and of reality and of all things that pertain to our human experience, and we know those cultural shifts, as well. In our own Christian tradition, there was a move in those early centuries from classical Greek and Roman culture to a culture that, over a few centuries, became totally shaped by the Christian vision, finding its apex in that high Medieval period, only to be shifted in the Renaissance to a focus from heaven to earth. And after the detour of the 16th century Reformation, there was the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment and the whole Modern period, and that Modern period, of which we are the heirs, saw the rise of secularism and, to large extent, the questioning of God and the undercutting of that faith tradition which had built cathedrals. Gary Eberle, speaking about our own present Post-Modem situation, points to the cathedral as the symbol of the Modern period, and, as a matter of fact, how the cathedrals of Europe particularly have become more tourist stations than places of worship. Those of you who have gone on tour with me know that they are always ABC tours, "another bloody cathedral." So, I have been guilty of turning them into tourist places, but not simply tourist places, for we have often stopped and © Grand Valley State University �Presence of God: Intelligence and Attention Richard A. Rhem Page 3 worshiped in those holy places. Nancy will never forgive me for one Sunday when the two of us were alone in Rome and we spent five hours in St. Peter's, if you can believe it. It is not as though that holy space does not continue to speak, but there is no question that the cathedral is a monument to the faith of an earlier age and, in modernity, the faith that built the cathedrals has been seriously challenged and in many ways undercut. For the thing that marks the modern age is the rise of critical thinking and the rejection of all forms of authoritarianism, whether it be the authoritarian claim of the Church as institution, or of the tradition as in Eastern Orthodoxy, or of the Bible, as in Protestantism. The thing that marked modernity was that rise of critical thinking, the scientific method, the empirical method of investigation, no longer taking some word from prelate or scriptures or tradition as authoritative, but rather going out and looking at the world, experimenting, probing, investigating, accepting nothing on some authoritative word, but with critical rationality evaluating the evidence. That is what has marked modernity. In large measure, the Modern movement has been a movement very, very seriously weakening the Christian Church. I sat a couple of weeks ago with the New Testament professor that I studied under in Leiden back in the 60s. He was in the area and called, and I picked him up and we shared a breakfast together, and we talked about the European situation today. For example, in England just 6% of the people go to worship in that land that has these magnificent cathedrals and this grand Anglican tradition. We talked about the Netherlands where he still lives and where I had so many wonderful experiences. I looked across the table and I said to him, "How long can it last?" He said, "Jesus came, in my understanding, not to build the church, but to proclaim the kingdom." I like that, because what he was saying is what the poet Larkin is saying, that institutions, forms and structures may flourish and flounder. They may rise and pass away. But, somehow or other, there is that within the depths of the human being that will seek out a place like this, a serious place, on serious ground, because no matter how secular, no matter how lacking in any kind of observance, there will now and again, here and there, rise up that which will surprise that hunger and that yearning for the presence of God, for that which is sacred and holy, for that dimension that always accompanies our ordinary human experience, suggesting something more, not a supernatural being "out there" that runs the universe. I came across the other day a sermon of a year ago when, out in front of our house, a child was drowned in the waves of Lake Michigan, and I remember preaching that Sunday on the pitiless universe. God does not interrupt the rip tide or the raging surf, and God plays no favorites. That understanding of God, if we would be honest, has been undercut by everything that we know, thanks to the natural sciences and the investigation of all of those respective disciplines of © Grand Valley State University �Presence of God: Intelligence and Attention Richard A. Rhem Page 4 human learning. But, does that mean, because that image of God that has marked our tradition in the past, does that mean, then, that God is dead? Richard Elliott Friedman, who comments on the Isaiah experience in his book, The Hidden Face of God, uses Nietzsche as the prophetic voice of the modern, Nietzsche who said, "God is dead." Nietzsche said it with not any sense of triumphalism. Nietzsche said it in anguish because he said, "God is dead and we have killed God." The modern with all of the wonder and all of the amazement, and all of the fruitfulness that has come to us, to the exercise of critical rationality and the empirical method - all of the wonders of mathematical formulas that have tied our earth into a network of communication creating the possibility of a global community - all of that, all of that without the sense of the presence of God becomes empty and hollow and now and again, here and there, we will be surprised by a hunger because we have been created with a God-shaped hole in our soul. And so, we have entered into a period of time which is called the Post-Modem period. The Post-Modem period into which we have entered and the periodization of cultural shifts is very untidy, but basically this 20th century has come to see the limitations of human rationality. And so, when medievalism broke apart and authoritarianism was undercut, we entered into the Modern period, and there was a sharp break. When modernity comes to understand its limits, we have called it Post-Modernity, which means it is after the modern. It is not a rejection of the modern, for we had better never reject all of the fruitfulness that has come from critical thinking, from critical rationality, from the use of intelligence, from the mind that probes and investigates. We cannot go back to some authoritarian claim that hears voices from heaven. The exercise of critical intelligence is a continuing and ongoing dimension of the Post-Modem period. But, Post-Modernism has come to be a time in which it is more and more being recognized that intelligence, thinking which we value so highly here, is not enough. Intelligence and attention, or I could call it awareness. Or, I could call it simply an openness to that which is beyond the limits of our minds to grapple and grasp, an openness to that which is sacred and holy and which permeates the whole of reality so that I would speak of God not as some supernatural being "out there," beyond creation, intervening and tinkering and arranging here and there, arbitrarily and capriciously, but rather the God of whom I would speak naturally as the Soul of the universe, as the creative Spirit that now and again rises into our conscious attention or awareness, taking the time consciously and intentionally to open our lives to that dimension that cannot finally be captured in a syllogism or a mathematical formula or a test-tube, to that dimension that demands a poem or a painting, a sunset or a starry heaven, a gathering with friends in a common search for the touch of God of which Peter spoke earlier, brushed with angels' wings, washed by grace. How? © Grand Valley State University �Presence of God: Intelligence and Attention Richard A. Rhem Page 5 Who can tell? When? Who could predict? But awareness that, as I live my ordinary days, what I can see and touch and handle is permeated with something that is always beyond my grasp, that alwayspresent to the soul that seeks and searches and is open, the presence of God. Not in spite of my mind, my intelligence, my probing, my serious thinking, but, when all of that is done, an attention to a reality that once was so beautifully expressed in the stone of a cathedral, but continues here and now to be expressed in a variety of ways. Mies van derRohe, one of the great architects of the 20th century, who with Frank Lloyd Wright and a couple of others, were the pioneers of the clean lines and objectivity and efficiency of architectural form, was asked shortly before he died, "If you could build what you have never been able to build, what would you build?" (I should note here that post-modernism came to expression first in architecture.) This leading modem architect of form and structure that has marked the city and the skyscraper, this one said shortly before he died, "If I could build what I have never been able to build, I would build a cathedral." Indeed. References: Richard Elliott Friedman. The Hidden Face of God. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995. “Church Going,” by Philip Larkin, in The Geography of Nowhere: Finding Oneself in the Postmodern World. Sheed and Ward, 1995. © 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 XIII Scripture Text I Kings 19:1-14 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI References Richard Elliott Friedman. The Hidden Face of God. HarperCollins Publishers, 1995. "Church Going," by Philip Larkin, in The Geography of Nowhere: Finding Oneself in the Postmodern World. Sheed and Ward, 1995. 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-0-20010826 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2001-08-26 Title A name given to the resource The Presence of God: Intelligence and Attention 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 26, 2001 entitled "The Presence of God: Intelligence and Attention", on the occasion of Pentecost XIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: I Kings 19:1-14. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Critical Thinking Open Mind PostModern Sacred Dimension of reality