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Do You Really Think He Is Going To Come?
Acts 3:11-21; Revelation 22:8-12
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Advent I, November 29, 1992
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Advent is a season in which we celebrate within the Church the one who came,
the one who comes, and the one who will come. Advent means coming, to
approach for a visitation. Israel was that nation of people who throughout their
history looked for one who would come, who would be anointed with the Spirit of
God. The Hebrew word Messiah means “the anointed one.” The Messiah was the
one that Israel hoped for, prayed for, and longed for in order that God’s will
might be done on earth as in heaven. The anointed one, the Messiah, the longedfor one was anticipated every time a priest was anointed with oil or a king was
enthroned and anointed again with oil, for the oil, the sign of the Spirit, was a
sign of God’s empowering through the Spirit. Every priest and every king was a
sign pointing to that one who one day would come supremely, full of the Spirit of
God, and would bring justice and peace and Shalom.
The Christian Church believes that the awaited one indeed did come, and that
one was Jesus of Nazareth. Sometimes we speak of Jesus Christ as though it is a
first and last name, but that is not correct. Christ is a title. Jesus of Nazareth was
believed in the Church to be the Christ, the anointed one, the Messiah, the one
long looked for by Israel, the one who would bring the will of God into effect on
earth. In the Christian Church, the expectation that this Jesus of Nazareth was
the one grew in various ways among his disciples and his followers. And then he
was crucified. Those who had hoped despaired, for they said, “We thought that
Jesus might be the one! But a crucified Messiah? No way!” But when Jesus was
raised from the dead and he appeared to them, they rejoiced. They also began to
see that the fulfillment of God’s plan and purpose came in a way quite other than
they had expected. It was a new and surprising way, but they believed that this
Jesus who was crucified, resurrected and in the presence of God was the reigning
Lord whom they expected imminently.
I read from the Book of Acts this morning because it reflects one of the very
earliest conceptions of these events that would mark the end. Peter, who had
presented Jesus as the one who was crucified and raised by God, says to those
who were listening, “Repent.” That is, change your mind. Turn around. Repent
and understand that this one whom you crucified was God’s servant, indeed the
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Messiah. He says, “Repent. Turn to God that your sins may be wiped out, so that
the times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may
send the Messiah appointed, that is, Jesus.”
Now when you think about that for a moment, it is rather interesting. “Repent
that the seasons of refreshing may come. That he may send the Messiah.” Well,
didn’t they believe that Jesus was the Messiah who had already come? Yes. But it
would seem as though in this conception, at least in those early days when
everything was fuzzy, they were saying Jesus was the Messiah, but that he was in
the presence of God now, as though heaven is keeping him until you repent and
turn, and the seasons of refreshing come and there is the universal restoration.
Then God will send the Messiah appointed to you again, that is, Jesus.
Now that conception of things did not prevail in the New Testament Church, but
it was one of the earliest understandings—Jesus of Nazareth, Messiah, in heaven
for a while but soon to return. The expectation of the return was obviously very
vivid and the return was to be imminent. At the end of the Revelation to John,
the revelation of the ascended Lord, the Book of Revelation, Chapter 22, we have
these words of the ascended Lord who gives the vision to John. He says, “Behold I
am coming soon.”
How soon is soon? What do you think? What would be soon? He says at the tail
end of the first century, “I am coming soon.” What do we give him? Six months?
Or would you give him a year? Ah, somebody over here says, “I’ll give him two
years.” How soon is soon? What do you think? How about two thousand years?
That’s not soon. That’s not soon according to any kind of soon I’ve ever
understood. And yet for two thousand years there have been preachers taking this
text and saying, “Go outside and watch the sky because it may be today.”
If we had more time this morning I’d sing for you a chorus of “Jesus Is Coming
Again.” I am really tempted to do it, but I won’t. “Jesus Is Coming Again,” and
you can flip your dial anywhere you want to on the radio today and you’ll hear
preachers all over the country saying, “Repent, because Jesus is coming and it
may be today.” How long can you hold your breath? How far can you stretch this
thing out and still talk about Jesus coming soon? Do you think he is coming? Do
you think he is coming soon?
I don’t think you do. In all honesty, I don’t think you do. I think after two
thousand years, anybody that expects Jesus to appear on earth soon and establish
a kingdom is simply going along with a traditional conception of things that has
had a strong hold on the Christian Church. But I don’t think we really believe it.
That raises a question for me. Was perhaps what the New Testament Church
understood about Jesus true, but cast in a form that really could not carry the
freight for us into modern or postmodern times? This is the way I have come to
understand it, the way I have found most helpful in trying to translate all of the
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imagery of the second coming, the end events, and the rapture (or is it the
rupture), the great white throne, the final judgment, heaven and hell and all of
that–the end events. The way that I have come to translate that for myself is in
the same way that I have come to translate the opening chapters of Genesis.
Somehow or other, in the stories of the beginning we have been able to accept the
symbolic presentation of profound truth, moving away from the literal
understanding. But at the other end, we’ve never been able to shed the literal
translations of those images and understand them symbolically.
Think about the beginning. You don’t really think there was a garden called Eden,
do you? You don’t really think there was a Mr. Adam or a Mrs. Eve. Do you
believe there was a snake, a tree, an apple? Well, with Adam and Eve, of course,
there was a pair. And they do say of Eve that she was a peach, but not an apple
with a worm! Not a snake, a talking snake! Yet the story’s message was full of
truth. It was the Hebrew understanding of what was going on in their own time
and in their own existence. What they said essentially was, “Everything that is, is,
because God said, ‘Let there be.’” God said, “Let there be.” And “It is very good.”
Well, then they said, “If it was created very good, why it is so bad? How come
everything is so rotten?” And they said, “It’s not God’s fault. It is our fault,
because we, who were created to worship and adore and serve, usurped God’s
place in proud rebellion and self-assertion. We wanted to be God. And so it was
we who made hell on earth.”
That’s what those chapters tell us. And what they tell us is profoundly true of our
existential experience of the human situation where we are drawn to heaven and
mired in earth, caught in the tension of worshiping and rebelling, wanting to be
God and yet wanting to be God’s. In those symbolic representations of garden
and tree and snake and apple, all of the most profound truth of the cosmos of
God, of the human situation, comes to the fore.
It has been a long time since I’ve been able to negotiate all of that and come to a
deeper understanding of biblical truth. Yet it is only recently that I dealt with the
other end of it in Revelation in the same way. All of those images of the golden
city, the streets of gold, the tree for the healing of the nations–all of those images
picked up from the Old Testament really tell us that paradise was lost. But in the
End, paradise will be regained. The garden out of which we were driven becomes
the city into which we are invited. Essentially the Bible says that God, who in the
beginning had good plans for us, will consummate those plans ultimately in the
end. What the Biblical message is trying to say in those allusions to Jesus
crucified, risen, ascended, reigning, and returning may have meant to intimate a
pouring out of his Spirit, the Spirit of God for us, the community which is the
body of Christ.
Jesus did say, according to John’s Gospel, “I will not leave you comfortless. I will
come to you.” Pentecost was the coming of the risen one. The Spirit of God, or the
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Spirit of Jesus, is with us forming the community. The community is the body of
Christ, which is to live out the life according to the example of Jesus of Nazareth.
Jesus was the anointed one. Jesus was full of the Spirit. And Jesus lived a life
according to the intention of God. Those who follow Jesus are those who form
concretely the community of God’s people where God reigns, where there is
righteousness and justice and mercy and peace, where love abounds. Those end
references are simply the only way we can talk about these kinds of things, by
which we bear witness to our conviction that it’s not all going to come to naught,
but that ultimately God’s way will prevail. God’s purposes will be realized and we
will be gathered into the eternal brightness of God’s presence with all God’s
people.
All of the imagery and symbolism of the New Testament is simply a testimony to
the conviction of the early Church that God had acted decisively in Jesus and the
end was no more in question. It is something like a chess game, to which I get
subjected every once in a while by my grandson Derek on Sunday afternoon when
I am tired and brain dead. The mistake I made was to let my son Joseph, when he
was a little boy, teach me to play chess . . . a little bit. Now I’m humiliated week
after week by my grandson.
But two weeks ago I was doing quite well. I actually had more off the board than
he did, and I thought I might have a chance of licking him until that fateful move
when I unthinkingly did the wrong thing, and I knew it. I thought, the good news
is I am going to be able to take my nap! It was over. So I just put my king out
there where he could get me. He said, “Oh, no, Bumpa. No, no, no. There’s
another move you can make.”
So I made the move, and he had to make another move, and I could make
another move. But it was all over. All he was doing was dancing me all over the
board until finally he got me into the corner where there was no more wiggle
room. “Checkmate!”
In the early Church, in God’s chess match with all that was opposed to God, what
happened in Jesus was that decisive move. There is no possibility that God will
not be all in all. But there is still a little wiggle room. As people of God, we believe
in that already, of the presence of the kingdom, a kingdom not yet in its fullest
expression. In the meantime God is with us.
Do you want me to tell you three things that sum up everything that I could
possibly suggest you believe and bet your life on? They are these: God in the
beginning, God in the end, and God in the meantime. In the beginning all that is,
is because God said, “Let there be.” In the end, God will be all in all. And in the
meantime, Immanuel, God is with us in the flesh of Jesus who came to us and
continues in the ongoing community of God’s people in the bread and in the cup,
tokens of a presence with us now.
© Grand Valley State University
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Where is history going? I don’t really know. What will happen to planet earth? I
haven’t got a clue. I simply know that for myself and those I have loved and lost,
and for my children and my children’s children—in the beginning, God. In the
end, God. And in the meantime, God in tokens of bread and cup, and word, and
in the flesh of the community—in the other that one loves and in whose face one
sees God. That’s enough.
I will sing, “He is coming, He will come again,” and by that I mean poetically in
song, liturgically in worship, that I adore the God who has called us into being
and has come to us and will finally fulfill every promise when we are gathered
eternally in the brightness of God’s presence. Thank God.
Do you really think God is going to come? No, you don’t. But don’t you know that
God is with you and that you could never move beyond the grip of God’s grace?
Of course, you do. And that’s enough. That’s all you need. That’s true!
© Grand Valley State University
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
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Event
Advent I
Scripture Text
Acts 3: 11-21, Revelation 22:8-12
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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KII-01_RA-0-19921129
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1992-11-29
Title
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Do You Really Think He Is Going To Come?
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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Text
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application/pdf
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An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on November 29, 1992 entitled "Do You Really Think He Is Going To Come?", on the occasion of Advent I, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Acts 3: 11-21, Revelation 22:8-12.
Advent
Community of Faith
Grace
Revelation
Spirit of God
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The Risk of Seeing Too Soon
Text: Matthew 23:37; Acts 7:54-55
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Pentecost II, June 13, 1993
Transcription of the spoken sermon
…Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!
Matthew 23:37
When they heard these things, they became enraged and ground their teeth at
Stephen. But filled with the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven and saw the glory
of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. Acts 7:54-55
The early chapters of Acts document that beautiful community that the Spirit
created. A community of harmony. A community of sharing and caring, of
praying and praising. Such an idyllic period. So pregnant with the presence and
the power of God. But it didn't last very long because that community of the Spirit
was also a community of people. The Spirit doesn't just float ethereally out there
somewhere but always indwells God's people. So where there are people, there
are problems. The Spirit that creates community is always a Spirit that tends to
push and nudge towards newness, eliciting from that same community resistance
and conflict. There are sparks that fly. We find that, after the portrait of that
initial harmony and wonderful beauty that characterized the apostolic
community, we have a serious conflict that centered around Stephen.
Stephen was appointed to administer the community, to take care of some of its
details, some of the necessary things that had to happen in that growing
community. But before long he went to preaching. Stephen was probably the
outstanding leader of that early community. We hear of other names, Peter and
James and eventually Paul, that are more familiar to us. None of them were
earlier and none of them had more insight into the universality of the Gospel and
the promise of Pentecost than did Stephen. So before long Stephen became the
spokesman of the truth that came to expression in Jesus and he found himself
following dead in the tracks of Jesus.
He elicited the wrath and the hostility of that Jewish community that had not yet
gotten over its reaction to Jesus. The criticisms and the condemnations sounded
very much the same. That Stephen and his ministry of the Gospel was
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Richard A. Rhem
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undercutting the centrality and the sacredness of the temple, that Stephen was
playing fast and loose with the law of Moses and the customs that came through
that law. So they called him before the council and asked him whether the
charges, (that had been trumped up, and yet that had an element of truth in
them) were indeed true.
Stephen's defense was most unusual. He took them on a rather lengthy survey of
the history of God's people. He was characterized by Luke as a man full of the
Spirit, powerful, and full of grace. As he stood before the Sanhedrin Council, the
leadership group of Jewish people, they looked upon him and (it is recorded),
they saw, as it were, in Stephen the face of an angel. With great persuasiveness
and power he reviewed that history which was a history of stubbornness and
obstinacy, disobedience and rebellion.
Stephen was a Samaritan. We know that from an analysis of the history course
that he gave them in that address. He had the Samaritan bias. If you had heard
the history of Israel from St. Paul, a Hebrew of the Hebrews with blue blood in
his veins, you would have heard a different nuance to that history. But Stephen
being a Samaritan reflected the Samaritan bias. Interestingly he brings the story
to a conclusion by a reference to the building of the temple.
You see, the Jews and the Samaritans had this ongoing conflict because the
Samaritans never really yielded to the fact that Jerusalem was the city of God. It
was the tabernacle, the tent, the moveable sanctuary that accompanied Israel
through the wilderness that was brought into the promised land and was placed
first at Shechem. Shechem was in the vicinity of Mt. Gerezim. Then David who
came to power as the second king of Israel, in order to unite the south and the
north, conquered the fortress of the Jebusites and founded Jerusalem as the new
capitol, a very clever political move.
Of course, David being king, all of the court preachers exalted this wonderful
move on David's part as though it was all of God's doing that Mt. Zion should be
exalted forever. But the Samaritans, the northern tribes, never really bought that.
Remember the woman at the well, the story that we looked at last week? She said
to Jesus, “I foresee that you are a prophet. Now where should we worship, here at
Mt. Gerezim in Samaria, or there in Jerusalem?” Jesus said to her, “The hour is
coming, and now is, when the true worshiper will not worship either here or
there, but in Spirit and Truth.”
Maybe Stephen was a convert to Jesus through the testimony of that woman. In
any case, he had the Samaritan bias that didn't really “buy” Jerusalem as the only
site where God dwelled. It probably is true as they charged that he slighted
somewhat the temple and all the accouterments of that sacred shrine. He saw
before the rest of them what Jesus was really talking about. He understood the
promise of Pentecost, the breaking out of those narrow ethnic national
limitations and structures and forms, and the universalizing spirit that was now
poured out on all flesh. As he concludes his history lesson, he brings it to this
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Richard A. Rhem
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contrast between the tabernacle that was the moveable tent of meeting, the
worship center for pilgrim people, contrasting it with that fixed temple in
Jerusalem. His charge, the thrust of his history lesson, the point he's trying to
make, he says with conciseness,
“You do always resist the Holy Spirit! You like your forbearers do always
resist the Holy Spirit. What you really want is a fixed temple, a solid form,
when the Spirit prefers the tent and the tabernacle that can be folded
down, mobile, free, fluid.”
As he brings his point home using that image, they can't miss the point. They are
those who have it all wrapped up - in a solid temple, in a thick liturgy, in
established priesthood, the last word, the final form. Stephen, from Samaria,
through the eyes of Jesus says, “You're doing it again. You are doing what our
forbearers have always done. Always resisting the Holy Spirit.” Reflecting the
words of Jesus as he addressed the leaders of his own people, confronting them
with a paradox, the irony that they bring wreaths to the tombs of the prophets
that their forbearers killed, knowing that they will soon kill him as well. He
proclaims to them the irony of the religious who lust for certitude and fixed forms
and always resist the Spirit that would break the forms, that would create
newness, that would move God's people into God's open future.
It's a risk to see too soon. Stephen paid for his early vision with his life. He saw as
Jesus saw and he died as Jesus died. It is a risk to see too soon.
Let me play a little game with you this morning. One of the best ways to hear the
word of God in the biblical story is to put oneself in the story, to identify with one
or another of the characters. I know when we come to church, we may take for
granted, presume that we are a part of the people that wear white hats, the good
guys. So you might say to me, “Obviously I can identify with Stephen as I would
have identified with Jesus over against those obstinate, blind, stubborn,
rebellious Jewish leaders, who were always resisting the Holy Spirit.” But, wait a
minute. The story isn't about blind, obstinate, stubborn Jews of a former day.
This is our story. I ask you, “With whom do you identify?” Might you image
yourself pulling a chair up to the council table as a member of the Sanhedrin,
checking this man Stephen out? As a guardian of the tradition and, therefore,
examining, interrogating this preacher of strange creed.
Or there are a couple of other possibilities. Saul, who was to become Paul, we are
told, was standing by, holding their coats as they stoned Stephen. Maybe you
sense that you might be one of those, standing on the sidelines, seeing what's
going to happen.
Or I suppose there might be one or two of you here that might honestly see
yourself joining the lynch mob, taking up the stones. Where do you see yourself in
the story? Because the story is not an ancient tale of days gone by. It is as fresh as
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Richard A. Rhem
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today. What Stephen was talking about was simply the phenomena of human
religion. You say, “Religion? I thought religion was divine?” Well certainly, in the
sense that it is a response to God. I believe that human religion is not generated
out of the human person. I believe it is the response of the human person to that
encounter from beyond. The response takes a form. The response takes shape.
The response takes a certain institutional character.
What Stephen was talking about in his review of Israel's history was a review of
the people who served the true living God, the creator of heaven and earth. They
had true religion, but it was religion constituted by human shapes, and human
forms, and human formulations. It was those human shapes and forms that they
wanted fixed and final. The whole point of Stephen's speech was: We were better
off when we were a pilgrim people in the wilderness than when we got it all
together here in the promised land. We were better off when we needed
occasionally a charismatic leader to come in and lead us rather than when we got
this monarch, this king, this established palace and this established temple,
where everything was fixed and final.
Oh dear friends, we people love to have it fixed and final. Make it simple. Make it
clear. Give it to me easy. Let me get my hand around it. Don’t leave any loose
ends. Don't leave me dangling.
The human situation is a situation that isn't neat. It's messy. It always has loose
ends and dangling participles. Stephen was saying, “The Spirit of God is the Spirit
that always pushes us to newness. We who are religious always resist the Spirit of
God.”
Jesus said, “Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem.” (Stephen's image too for that which is
solidly fixed) “Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how oft’ would I have gathered you as a
hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but she would not.” Jerusalem that kills
the prophets. Not Mecca, not some place in the oriental kingdom of the Far East Jerusalem.
All the blood from Abel - Genesis, to Zechariah - II Chronicles, the end of the
Jewish canon. The whole Jewish canon from beginning to end, from A to Z. You
killed the prophet, the one called by God to speak God's word. You resist the Holy
Spirit.”
So Stephen paid for seeing too soon, for seeing through, seeing the promise of
Pentecost which Jesus had pointed to, the era of the Spirit.
I was thinking about this this week because I had lunch with a friend of mine, a
very dear friend of mine, a friendship that goes back over decades. We were in
college together and seminary together, and a pastorate overlapped. We studied
in Europe at the same time. But in the last twenty-five years I've only seen him
three times. We had lunch this week. We started out together. We manned the
same “foxhole” in the theological wars of our youth. He is still faithfully manning
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Richard A. Rhem
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that post, and I have gone off the charts to the left of him. Now if he didn't love
me so much he would never sit down to break bread with me. But the reason we
had lunch was because, after a quarter of a century of being separated, he has just
accepted a call to pastor a congregation in Grand Rapids - the most conservative
congregation in the Reformed Church in America. Intentionally, deliberately so.
When he called me for lunch he said, “You aren't thought of very well in my
congregation.” (Laughter) I said to him, “I know.” He said, “When we have lunch
maybe we should both go in disguise.” (Laughter) But there we sat. Loving each
other still. Respecting each other deeply. He, standing where he has always stood,
responsibly, passionately. I, with equal passion and seriousness, believing that in
order to serve the same cause that he serves so well, I must do it otherwise. Is he
right and I am wrong? Am I right and he is wrong? It’s not that simple really. I
believe in him. And I know that we worship together the same good and gracious
God even though we are poles apart.
What is it with this community of faith, which is always being nudged by the
Spirit into newness? Where do you take your place? You see, we are in the era of
the Spirit trying to realize the promise of Pentecost. Now it seems to me that if we
would move toward the Messianic Age, Shalom, and the Kingdom of God that we
have to find that form to which the Spirit is inviting us. We call Jesus, Christ.
Christ is the Greek word for Messiah. Messiah is the Hebrew word for the
anointed. The Messianic Age is the age of anointing. We have identified with
Jesus. Jesus Christ. But Jesus was simply the instrument. The instrument. The
one who was anointed and promised the anointing of God's people.
I wonder if, in the history of human religion in response to the true God, Israel
was a stage issuing in Jesus, issuing in the Church. But I am wondering if the
Church hasn't gotten locked into Jesus, forgetting that Jesus is the one anointed,
promising the anointing of us all, leading us into the next stage whatever shape it
may take.
I don't know. There is a certain risk of seeing too soon, of getting a sense of
something. There is a peril of seeing too soon. But there's a greater peril for the
people of God in not seeing soon enough. Where is the Spirit of God leading us?
What is the Anointing Age, the Messianic Age, the Age of the Spirit? What form
will it take, and what place will we play in it? Would you stand with Stephen? Or
do you sense now, pulling a chair up to the council table, feeling called rather to
be a guardian of the tradition? Or maybe you are sort of on the periphery with
Paul holding the coats of those who are slugging it out.
Pray God you're not reaching for a stone.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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0fa9b69427b77ebddd803535e275ecb4
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
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Event
Pentecost II
Scripture Text
Matthew 23:37, Acts 7: 54-55
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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KII-01_RA-0-19930613
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1993-06-13
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The Risk of Seeing Too Soon
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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Sound
Text
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Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on June 13, 1993 entitled "The Risk of Seeing Too Soon", on the occasion of Pentecost II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Matthew 23:37, Acts 7: 54-55.
Community of Faith
Inclusive
Pentecost II
Spirit of God
Universality
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f3b9baec9f0d1edfd13dd1a0eae1a05b.pdf
6d7b37ff437f88d8b694c2e721f7caef
PDF Text
Text
Can I Be Included?
Text: Deuteronomy 23:1, Isaiah 56:7, Acts 8:37
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Pentecost III, June 20, 1993
Transcription of the spoken sermon
“The eunuch shall not be permitted to the assembly of the Lord.” Deuteronomy
23:1
“…for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” Isaiah 56:7
“What is to prevent me from being baptized?” Acts 8:37
Jesus had promised that if the disciples would wait in Jerusalem they would be
empowered from on high. He charged them to begin at Jerusalem and go through
Judea and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth, and to tell the good
news of God's wonderful grace. It would have seemed that on Pentecost when
indeed the Spirit was poured out that Peter, at least, got the message. For he said,
“This is what the prophet Joel was speaking about when God promised through
that prophet. He said the days would come when old men would see visions, and
young women would have dreams, and young people would prophecy.” He
preached a great sermon. He got all caught up in his own rhetoric, and concluded
with that wonderful promise “that the promise was to you and to your children,
your seed after you, and to all those that are afar off.”
Stephen definitely got the message. He understood what Jesus had shared with
that woman at the well of Samaria, “that neither in Mount Gerizim, nor at
Jerusalem, but the day was coming and now was when the true worshiper would
worship in Spirit and in truth, that the Spirit would push the true worshiper
beyond all of the concrete forms of human religion.” But though Peter seemed to
have gotten the message on Pentecost, when it came to the implementation—that
was another thing. It’s one thing to preach and it’s another thing to do anything
about it. It took a vision. Finally the Spirit of God had to say to Peter, “Go. Go to
the house of Cornelius.” So Peter went—and told the story of Jesus. To his
amazement the Spirit of God fell while he was preaching.
The message of the fire of Pentecost seemed irrepressible. Philip, who had been
appointed with Stephen to administer the community that was growing, heads to
© Grand Valley State University
�Can I Be Included?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
Samaria. He is preaching in Samaria, and there is tremendous response. The
Samaritans are turning to Jesus, hearing the Gospel, believing it, and responding
to it. And the Apostle Paul is spreading the Good News as well. Well, of course, to
get through to Paul, God had to knock him off his horse. But once he got the
message, Paul went everywhere, as far as Rome itself bringing the Good News of
Jesus. Before long that Christian movement had spread far beyond Jerusalem,
beyond Judea, beyond Samaria, up to Antioch, and indeed was sweeping the
ancient world, the Roman Empire like a spreading flame.
Ah, and nothing succeeds like success, you know. Yet the very success of that
mission created the great crisis for the early church. It was THE crisis of the early
church, and it was a crisis of major proportions. It was crisis created by the key
question: What Does It Take To Belong? As long as it was this Jesus Movement
within the Jewish temple there was no problem. Even though there might be
hundreds and thousands of Jews who believed that Jesus was the Messiah there
was no problem. Because this was not the Christian Church, this was the Jesus
Movement within Israel. This was just the people who believed in the God of
Israel and worshiped in the temple. They simply believed that God had indeed,
fully invested Jesus, that Jesus was the anointed one, the Messiah. They shared
common heritage, common tradition, common background, common comfort
levels, common language, common everything with their Jewish sisters and
brothers. But now you move that out. You get to Samaria and you have already
got some tension. Then you get to Gentile Antioch and you've got a real problem.
You have Paul going all over the Ancient World preaching the Gospel and saying
to the people, “Repent. Believe and be baptized in the name of Jesus and you are
one of us.” There were others back in Jerusalem who said, “That's not enough.”
Finally the crisis was so severe that they had to call a council. We call it the
Jerusalem Council. You can read about it in the 15th chapter of Acts.
Probably the premier preacher today in this country is a man named Fred
Craddick, who has a great sense of humor, and who pictures the Jerusalem
Council as a typical church synodical meeting. He says, “Church meetings can be
the most incendiary of them all, you know.” He envisions the people coming with
great fear and trepidation knowing that this was going to be a hot session. He
says, “You know you knew you were in for trouble when you came into the
assembly hall and there was a forest of microphones. So the meeting was called to
order and someone stood up at microphone #2.” All over the country in the
synods and general assemblies of the various denominations you will see all these
microphones, and suddenly somebody was recognizing the speaker at
microphone #2. He said, “As far as this issue about who can be included is
concerned, I just wanted to say that back home in our congregation we've been
studying Ezra. Ezra made it very clear, ‘Get the foreigner out, even if you are
married to one, divorce her. Get rid of her. No foreigners in the assembly of God's
people.’ Thank you very much.”
© Grand Valley State University
�Can I Be Included?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Then a rather quiet voice from the other side of the room at microphone #5 stood
up. Some lady from Berea, who said, “Well, we have this Bible class that meets
Tuesday mornings at 9:30 a.m. Wonderful fellowship. We have been studying the
Book of Ruth. Ruth was quite a woman. As a matter of fact, did you know she was
an ancestress of David and, therefore, of our Lord. She had Moabite blood. She
was a Moabitess. So our Lord has Moabite blood, so it would seem that the first
speaker is out of line to make the limit so narrow.”
Then there was somebody up in the balcony who couldn't stand for that who
stood up at Microphone #9. He said, “If you read Amos it says, you of all the
people of the earth, you alone, you the Jews, you alone. Not you alone, etc., etc.
You alone. That's all I want to say.” Then someone else with a kind of tremor in
their voice stood up and said, “I can remember back in Sunday School I
memorized a verse, I can't quite remember it right now, but it went something
like, ‘The mountain of the house of the Lord will be exalted above all the
mountains and all the nations. All the nations will flow into it.’” Obviously they
weren't going to settle it in this session. They were going to have an extended
session. It was pretty tense. Tempers were about to explode. There was a lot of
electric in the air. They broke for lunch, and over lunch somebody at one of the
tables said, “Whose fault is this anyway?” Somebody said, “I know whose fault it
is: Stephen’s. After all he made that speech about the temple. He sort of
denigrated the temple. That's what started it all.” Someone else said, “No. No.
Peter. Peter isn't admitting to it. He's trying to keep it quiet, but do you know the
word is out. I've got a sister that lives in Caesarea and she says that Peter actually
ate with some Italians.” (Laughter) Somebody else said, “Nah, it’s Philip. What's
he doing in Samaria anyway? You know Samaritans have always been
irresponsible. You can't count on them. Any time you let the Samaritans in you're
in trouble. You know, there goes the neighborhood.” (Laughter) Another one
pops up and said, “Ah, come on. That's all child's play. What about Paul? Paul has
gone everywhere—Galatia, Ephesus, Rome itself. He just says, ‘You all come. You
all come.’ Why, they don't know what circumcision is. They never heard of Moses.
They don't know anything about the Law. He just says, ‘Come on in. You can even
be baptized. It's okay, just come on in.’ What is this going to come to? We had
such a good thing going. There was such unity. There was such power. There was
such verve. There was a sense of community. We had such a good thing going and
now it’s going to split us wide open.”
Well, you may think I am kidding, but I'm not kidding at all! I haven't
exaggerated a bit. The tension was that sharp and the issue was that clear-cut.
What did it take to be included? Would the promise of Pentecost finally break out
beyond those narrow limits or would God's Spirit once again be managed?
Somebody at the table who had not spoken and had not gotten into the debate
finally said, “You know whose fault it is? It’s not Stephen's or Peter's or Philip's or
Paul's. It’s God's fault. The Spirit of God pushing and shoving. The Spirit of God
never satisfied with any boundary lines, with any barriers. Look. None of us
would be out there except that there was a kind of compulsion, the compelling of
© Grand Valley State University
�Can I Be Included?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
the Spirit of God. It’s the Spirit of God. That's why we're in trouble. And that's
why we had better take seriously this thing that is before us.” That's what Luke is
telling us about the early church. If we think we have got tensions today. If we
think we've got issues today—that was an issue that involved the total turning
upside down of everything they had ever believed. But Luke knew. As long as you
could talk about issues in the abstract, as long as you can talk about theoretical
cases, you can all sit around all day and debate, argue…get nowhere. But Luke
knew that if you really want to deal with an issue, what you have to do is focus on
one concrete individual.
So for just a little bit he turned the camera on a strange sort of person, an
Ethiopian eunuch. Philip had been carrying on a great evangelistic crusade in
Samaria and Samaritans were being saved by the thousands. He had his picture
on the front page of the newspaper almost every night, interviewed on the
evening news, and suddenly the Spirit of God says, “Philip, go south…the road to
Gaza.” Then he finds himself next to an Ethiopian eunuch. An Ethiopian. Well,
it’s not the modern day Ethiopia, but there was such a place south of Egypt. On
the other hand, in that ancient world in classical discussion and literature, an
Ethiopian was somebody who was from beyond the end of the world. Sort of like
we sometimes say, or I used to say, “Where's he from? I don't know. Timbuktu.”
Or, “She can go to Timbuktu.” That means beyond nowhere—Ethiopia. This
Ethiopian was a very powerful person in a great position, and he was a eunuch. A
eunuch is a male rendered sexless by accident or by surgery. They were very
valuable in the Ancient World and often commanded high posts in the palace.
The kings liked them because they created no problems with the harem. The
queens liked them because they minded their own business. Everyone liked to
hire a eunuch for a key position because the eunuch would stay late at the office
every night. The wife never complained, “Dinner's cold again.” The eunuch never
got interrupted with his duties by having to take care of the car pool. They were
valuable, often commanding powerful, prestigious posts. Deuteronomy 23:1
(Read it tonight after you put the children to bed. It's a little more explicit than I
have in the bulletin.) says, speaking about a eunuch through accident, “They have
no place in the assembly of God's people.” They are excluded.
Now this eunuch had been to Jerusalem on pilgrimage to worship. Maybe he was
a proselyte. Maybe he was a God-fearer. We don't really know, but obviously he
was serious, searching, longing, yearning, and going to Jerusalem on pilgrimage
to worship. But if he had just read Deuteronomy 23:1 he would have known
there's no place for a eunuch in the house of the Lord, in the assembly of God's
people. So what's he doing anyway, making his way to Jerusalem? What does he
want to do? Does he simply want to make himself feel more miserable? Does he
want to feel more sharply his exclusion? Or maybe, does he want to start a civil
rights movement or a sacred rites movement as the case may be? In any case, he
goes to Jerusalem to worship even though Deuteronomy 23:1 clearly excludes
him. I wonder why people go where the door is closed? I wonder why people
bloody their knuckles rapping on a gate that is locked?
© Grand Valley State University
�Can I Be Included?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
He was reading his Bible when Philip caught up with him. Maybe Isaiah 56
caught his eye. “Do not let the foreigner say, ‘The Lord will surely separate me
from his people.’” The foreigner not separated. Who is this prophet? Ah, this was
Isaiah 2. This was the one who had this magnificent universal vision, this vision
of salvation for all people. He says, “Do not let the foreigner say, ‘The Lord will
surely separate me….’” This caught his eye, “For thus says the Lord: ‘To the
eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, and choose the things that please me and hold
fast to my covenant—I will give in my house and within my walls a monument
and a name better than sons or daughters.’” That was the problem of the eunuch,
no sons and daughters to carry on the family name, which was so important in
that day. No one to remember. No generations to follow. But here in book of the
prophet Isaiah the Lord says, “I will give in my house and within my walls a
monument and a name…a name. In the house of the Lord, a name better than
sons and daughters. I will give an everlasting name.”
About the time Philip got to him he was in the 53rd chapter, about the lamb led to
the slaughter. “Sheep before its shearers silent.” The one who was cut off with no
generation. What's he doing? He's looking for his name. He is trying to find
himself. He wants to find himself in the story. He wants to find himself in God's
story. He's looking for his name. He reads about this one who is cut off, who
leaves no generation. He says to Philip, “Who’s he talking about? Is he talking
about himself or some other one?” Philip says to him, “He’s talking about Jesus.”
“Well didn't he have any seed?” “No. He was taken up out of the land of the living.
He left no heir. But God gave him a name. Like the prophet says in a couple of
chapters over—a name better than sons and daughters…an everlasting
name…and they shall not be cut off.” Looking for his name. Jesus went up to
Jerusalem with a yearning in his heart. The Torah had said he couldn't belong,
there was no place. But he went anyway.
I wonder why people go where they are not wanted? Why do people try to force
their way in where the gate is obviously locked? Blacks? I remember when I came
back from Europe after the tumultuous 60s. It must have been the summer of '71.
My first gathering with my extended family. I made the mistake of engaging an
aunt in conversation, (which is a euphemism) (Laughter) about the whole civil
rights thing, African-American ascendancy. This is the aunt, I've talked about her
before, she's not always right, but she's always certain. (Laughter) I think she got
the sense that I was winning the argument so she cut it off at that point. She said,
“You may be right, but I will still say to my dying day, they were better off when
they knew their place.”
Why do people bloody their knuckles rapping on doors that are locked? Women,
trying to get into ministry, scaring the likes of myself, threatened by what that
might mean. (Laughter) Let them take care of the kitchen for God's sake!
(Laughter)
© Grand Valley State University
�Can I Be Included?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
Gays in the military! What do they want to get in the military for? Don't they
know they are odd? Wonder why people always try to barge in, crash walls, break
down barriers? I suppose it’s just like this eunuch. Just looking to find his name.
Looking to find if he could belong.
I was in Minneapolis this past week for a couple of days with Churches Uniting
for Global Mission (CUGM), the kind of thing that Bob Schuller keeps talking
about on the Hour of Power. Tuesday evening, after all the festivities were over,
Bud Ritter and I were invited to his room for some conversation—just the three of
us. He told of his experience in Africa a couple of weeks ago— it must have been
an absolutely shattering experience for him—Dr. Leon Sullivan, the AfricanAmerican leader who started the program Teachers for Africa, this outstanding
leader from Philadelphia who has a sense that part of the problem in our world
today, is that the leaders (in this case African-American and black African
leaders) are not talking to each other. So he organized a black summit and he got
the leaders from this country, Governor Wilder from Virginia, Jesse Jackson,
Lowry, etc. to attend. He chartered two 747s and went over to Africa. It wasn't
going to be in New York or L.A. or Chicago, it was going to be in Africa. Got the
leaders of the sub-Saharan nations together. They met on the west coast of Africa.
He invited one white man and that was Bob Schuller. Bob Schuller with all of
these black leaders. Bob told about sitting in his hotel and watching the Atlantic
wash the shore of Africa, becoming cognizant of the fact it was his Dutch
forbearers that brought their ships there to load up 20,000,000 blacks, enslaving
them and bringing them to America. Later he was eating breakfast and the Chief
of Protocol, of Lewis Farrakhan, the head of the Black Muslim nation, who are
militant in the style of the early Malcolm X., the one who makes the statements
that make your blood run cold, he came to Schuller and said, “Lewis would like to
speak with you.” The next morning for two hours at breakfast they spoke together
and Bob's summary of it all was simply this: He wants in. I had heard that he was
seeking to move toward the middle where he might be a part of the genuine
dialogue instead of firing from the periphery. Lewis Farrakhan wants in.
Schuller was given no duties at this summit, but in one session Dr. Sullivan said,
“We'd like to hear from you.” And he stood up and he couldn't speak. He began to
weep. On Tuesday evening when he told the story he wept again. He said, “It was
the most dramatic experience of my life. In those moments I was ashamed I was
white.” As he stood there weeping a black man got up from the audience and
came and stood next to him. Just stood there. At one point Schuller looked at him
and he smiled. Bob said it was as though he was saying, “I forgive you.”
Eventually Bob stammered a few things and sat down. But he said, “You know, it
shatters everything I've always thought or believed. The man who stood next to
me and gave me forgiveness was a Muslim.” Bob said, “You know all the
boundaries are dissolving.”
I shared with him what we have been talking about these weeks, that, indeed, I
was going to talk about the next morning to the CUGM group, that the
© Grand Valley State University
�Can I Be Included?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
boundaries are dissolving. That maybe there was the period of the Jewish Church
and maybe the period of the Christian Church, and maybe because of the
blindness of the Jewish leadership there had to be a Christian Church. Maybe
because of the blindness of the Christian Church there needs to be something out
here which the Spirit of God will shape and form, because you see it’s really
finally God's fault. God's Spirit will not tolerate barriers. God's Spirit will not
tolerate walls. God's Spirit, the Spirit that Jesus promised, the Spirit of Jesus, the
Spirit of the God of Israel, the Spirit of the one true God, the Creator of the
heavens and the earth will break down every barrier and will make all God's
people one. That's maybe where we are in the world.
The eunuch said to Philip, “Look, there's water. Can I be included?” I suspect
that's probably everybody's question and heart’s desire. Can I Be Included? Can
we say ‘No’ to those to whom God has said ‘Yes’?
God forbid!
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/59fbd6a81f263e318e5d5618ca3b25af.mp3
8354b01eb35392a7aafe6addd34e0fe7
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981-2014
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost III
Scripture Text
Deuteronomy 23:1, Isaiah 56:7, Acts 8:37
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01_RA-0-19930620
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-06-20
Title
A name given to the resource
Can I Be Included?
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on June 20, 1993 entitled "Can I Be Included?", on the occasion of Pentecost III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Deuteronomy 23:1, Isaiah 56:7, Acts 8:37.
Inclusive
Pentecost III
Pluralism
Spirit of God
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A Charismatic and Open Future
From the series: The People of the Way
Text: Acts 1:8; 3:19-21; 10:34; 11:2, 4
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
January 22, 1995
Transcription of the spoken sermon
The Lesson from the Epistle is a reading from the Book of Acts, in fact several
passages, in my attempt to give you a sense of how the Jesus Movement was
founded and continued, and how the New Testament document was put together.
We have spent a couple of weeks looking at the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke,
John, the founding story. Those stories were written a long time after the event
itself and they were not biographical in the sense of simply telling the story of
Jesus. They were faith documents. They were written with a selective vision in
order to create a portrait that would elicit faith in people. Those four Gospels
come first in the New Testament, I suppose, because it would seem logical that
the founding story would be there first.
The other large piece of the New Testament are the letters, particularly the letter
of Paul. Between the letter of Paul and those gospels you have the Book of Acts.
Sometimes we call it the First Church History. Well, that’s as erroneous as to call
the gospels the lives of Jesus. Just as the gospels were proclamations of faith in a
narrative form, so the Book of Acts was a proclamation of faith in a narrative
form. It does in a sense create a bridge, but it really is volume two of the Gospel of
Luke. If you would read the opening verses of Luke and then the opening verses
of Acts you would see that it’s the same hand, the same intention to set forth
these things in orderly fashion.
But, just as the gospel was the founding story in narrative form to tell about the
life and ministry and resurrection of Jesus, so Acts was the continuing story to
show how the Jesus Movement developed and spread. So, as I read, I want you to
see that this Jesus Movement was the movement empowered by the Holy Spirit
of God, and was thrust out into the world, not without conflict and resistance, but
finally breaking the narrow bounds of Israel and going to all nations, or to the
Gentiles.
There are those who say this may be one of the earliest formulations of the
conception of Jesus that the Church eventually came to. This was a very primitive
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Richard A. Rhem
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understanding; this Jesus that they all knew, this Jesus, God has made Lord in
Christ.
There’s a dramatic healing at the temple and everyone wonders about it, and then
Peter has another chance to preach. On that occasion he says, “Now, brothers and
sisters, I know that you acted in ignorance as did your rules. But what God
foretold by the mouth of all the prophets that Christ should suffer, he thus
fulfilled. Repent, therefore, and turn again that your sins may be blotted out, that
times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that God may
send Christ (the Messiah) appointed for you. Jesus, whom heaven must receive
until the time for establishing all that God spoke by the mouth of the holy
prophets from of old.” It is as though Peter is saying, “Come now, turn. If you’d
just turn, then God could get on with it, you see, and this Jesus could come,
Messiah, Lord, and wrap everything up.” Well, it wasn’t to happen.
The community continued to grow and to develop and it was very much a Jewish
community. What Luke does is to give us some models, or some paradigms of
how that movement developed and took shape. The Cornelius story, Peter and
Cornelius, was certainly a classic paradigm of how this gospel broke the bounds
of Israel and was brought to the non-Jew. It happened simply because Peter was
given a vision that he couldn’t deny and an experience that simply overwhelmed
him. So he has a vision, hears a knock at the door, there are men beckoning him
from Cornelius who has had a vision, and he comes to Cornelius’s house and he
says, “You know I shouldn’t be here. This is contrary to everything I’ve ever been
taught, associating with the likes of you. What do you want?”
They asked, “What’s God telling you? Tell us.”
Peter opened his mouth and said,
“Truly, I perceive that God shows no partiality.” [Pretty good for Peter.]
“But in every nation, anyone who hears him and does what is right and
acceptable to him. You know the word which he sent to Israel, preaching
good news of peace by Jesus Christ. He is Lord of all. The word which was
proclaimed throughout all Judea beginning from Galilee after the baptism
which John preached, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth of the Holy
Spirit and with power. How he went about doing good and healing all that
were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all
that he did, both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put
him to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the third
day and made him manifest—not to all the people, but to us who were
chosen by God, as witnesses. Who ate and drank with him after he rose
from the dead, and he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify
that he was the one ordained by God to be judge of the living and the dead.
To him all the prophets bear witness and everyone who believes in him
receives forgiveness of sins in his name.”
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Richard A. Rhem
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While Peter was still saying this, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard and the
believers from among the circumcised who came with Peter were amazed because
the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. They heard
them speaking in tongues and extolling God, and Peter declared, “Can anyone
forbid water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as
we have?” He commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, and
they asked him to remain for some days. Now the apostles and the brethren who
were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also received the word of God. So when
Peter went up to Jerusalem the circumcision party criticized him, saying, “Why
did you go to uncircumcized people and eat with them?” Peter began to explain to
them step by step.
About the same time, sometime between 70 and 100, the Gospels were written:
the Book of Acts was written and the Gospels as well, the Gospel of John maybe
toward the end of the century. But John, too, was trying to shape the future by
understanding the present. So he tells the story of Jesus, and in the fourth
chapter of the Gospel of John is the familiar story of the woman at the well in
Samaria. She’s a woman. She’s a Samaritan. Jesus talks to her, already shattering
the preconceptions of his day. Then he indicates to her that he knows a thing or
two about her, and she thinks to herself, “This is getting too personal, let’s talk
theology.”
So the woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers
worshiped on this mountain and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where we
ought to worship.”
Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this
mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you
do not know. We worship what we know for salvation is from the Jews. The hour
is coming and now is when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit
and in truth. For such the Father seeks to worship.”
The problem with following the course is not that Jesus has failed us, but that we
failed Jesus—over and over and over again. So there’s a Christian church instead
of simply the blossoming of Israel into a great world religion with a message of
light and salvation for the whole world. The Gospels tell the story of Jesus, but as
I said, they’re faith documents trying to create faith in those to whom that story,
that narrative form of that faith commitment is woven, and the Book of Acts as
well. Often we see Acts as a bridge between the Gospels and Epistles, as I said at
the scripture reading. As a matter of fact Acts is not a history, although it is in the
shape of history. What the Gospel writers were doing and what the author of Acts
was saying was the same as the Gospel of Luke, Volume II. What they were doing
was telling the story not simply recording the past.
You know, historians are sneaky people. You think they are sort of harmless
because they just grub around in the past. But you know what historians are?
They grub around in the past until they can understand the present so they can
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determine the future. There’s not a historian alive who is an objective observer of
what really happened, because most of the time we can’t really determine what
really happened. So, there’s data back there. There’s a connection with concrete
events, but the historian is one who weaves that data into a story. And that story
becomes compelling. That story interprets the present and it shapes the future.
This story was written sometime between 70 and 100. We are four decades,
minimally, away from the event. The Jesus Movement has started with some
considerable success already. It has permeated the ancient world, and it’s in
crisis. The Church is always in crisis; it’s nothing new. The crisis is that the Jesus
Movement starts out very understandably as a Jewish movement. Jesus was a
Jew. Sorry to tell you, folks, Jesus wasn’t a Christian. I don’t think Jesus ever
intended to be anything other than a Jew, a faithful son of Israel—the fulfillment
and the blossoming and the culmination of all that marvelous tradition. So it is
understandable, as well, that the first movement, the Jesus Movement, was a
Jewish movement you could call People of the Way. In the story of Paul’s
conversion, from Saul to Paul, in Acts 9:2, you’ll read that he went after the
People of the Way. Acts 19:23: once again, when the talk in Ephesus was about
some controversy, these are People of the Way.
How do you characterize new movements? No one knows quite what to call them
and so they were called People of the Way. So it’s a Jewish movement, those who
believe that this Jesus of Nazareth was indeed God’s anointed one, God’s
Messiah. It is a community in Jerusalem in which Jesus’ brother James becomes
a dominant figure.
But the intention, Luke tells us, was that this thing go in concentric circles out to
the whole world and so it started in Jerusalem, a Jewish community, where it
gets some opposition. There was a good solid Jew named Saul, who was on his
way to persecute the People of the Way. Bingo, he receives a vision, a light from
heaven, and he turns around—a dramatic conversation – and he becomes St.
Paul, the apostle of Jesus Christ.
Now, his vision entails a ministry beyond the limits of Israel. He begins to go out
into the Roman Empire. He tells the story at the synagogue to the Jews first but,
when he gets turned away there, he preaches in the marketplace to anybody who
will listen. Before long there’s a community there: the cities in Galatia, Asia
Minor, etc. Now there’s trouble brewing. This I think is what the Book of Acts is
really about. It is not a bridge between the Gospels and Paul’s letters. It is
attempting to be a bridge between the Apostle Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles or
the nations, and James—the Lord Bishop of the First Reformed Church of
Jerusalem. That’s the tension.
You see, there were a limited number of Jews to evangelize in the world, but there
was a whole world of Gentiles. And when the consistory met in Jerusalem at the
First Jewish Christian Reformed Church, they said, “You know this fellow, Paul?
If he keeps doing what he’s doing, saying that those Gentiles can be members
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Richard A. Rhem
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with us in the community of faith without first becoming Jews, the whole
character of our church will be changed. It will no longer be like it has been. They
don’t know our customs. They don’t know how to act. They don’t know the inside
jokes of the family when they gather. They’ve got a lot of strange things about
them. It doesn’t feel comfortable. How can we be a family when people are
coming right out of all kinds of pagan practices and expecting to sit down at table
with us?”
Anybody with any insight could see that, if Paul was successful and the mission to
the Gentiles should prosper, it was going to be a whole new ball game. There was
sharp tension because the things that have been for us, the mediators of grace,
the things that we have grown up with, the things that we feel in our depths
without having to think intellectually about, those are precious to us. We don’t let
those go easily and we don’t open ourselves up to that which might threaten that
very easily.
Well, poor Peter got caught in the crossfire between James and Paul. And what
Luke does as an author, as a spinner of a literary tale, is to give us marvelous
paradigms. The central paradigm, the hinge-point of the Book of Acts, is the story
of Peter and Cornelius. We read it earlier together. Peter, kind of against his will,
finds himself in a setting and doesn’t know what to do but to tell a story of
Jesus—his ministry, his death, his resurrection. Bingo, the Spirit zaps these nonJewish listeners and Peter says, “I can’t believe this, but it would appear that God
shows no favoritism, there’s no partiality with God.” So he says, “Go ahead,
baptize them.”
Well, it’s one thing to have a vision as Peter had, it’s one thing to have one’s
concrete experience confirmed, the intuition, but it’s another thing to have to go
back to headquarters. And he got it in the neck. They said, “We understand you
had ham and eggs?” So Peter started to tell the story, step by step. Now folks, that
isn’t just an interesting little tale. Today when I’m preaching the truth, which isn’t
always the case, of course. (Laughter) But, preachers are like historians, they are
also trying to understand the present in order to shape the future out of the facts
of the past. That’s what was going on.
So, this People of the Way, a Jewish movement, was developing a People of the
Way, a Gentile movement. The People of the Way, Jewish movement, were able
to be brought around to where they could see that this Way [involved more] than
they first dreamed of. Unfortunately, not much of the leadership of the Jewish
church at the time was able to do that 180-degree turn like Paul did, and like
Peter did, and maybe the 110-degree turn that James did. James never quite
came around, but he turned around enough to get in and stay in. But what
happened is that a Jesus movement within Judaism began to get an identity and
then it got connected to this Gentile movement of Jesus. Before long, even though
these people were so close together, as history developed they separated because
what happens in human groupings is that when there’s a lot at stake we need to
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Richard A. Rhem
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justify our separate existence. And we justify our separate existence over against
the other. It works both ways. Before long the People of the Way were comprised
of Jewish and Gentile people, but it becomes a separate movement from Israel,
the womb that gave it birth.
That Jesus movement was a charismatic movement, which means that it was a
movement gifted by the Spirit. In the Christian church today we talk about
certain charismatic churches. Well, I want to tell you the whole church is
charismatic or it’s nothing. Now, in the whole church some groups come alive
suddenly and they experience the power and presence of the Spirit, and they
begin to sing and dance and stomp their feet. Then we say, “Oh, they are
charismatics.”
Well, so are we, although we’re kind of dull and boring. Because what was
happening, what moved that Jesus Movement out, was the gust of the Spirit. As
Luke tells the story in the Book of Acts, it is the risen Christ whose presence, not
in flesh but in Spirit, whose power was still on—the power, the presence,
everything that they had experienced with Jesus – was still there. It was within
their community. It was a movement of the breath of God, the wind of God, the
Spirit of God.
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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Epiphany III
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New Testament Series
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Acts 1:8, Acts 3:19, Acts 10:34, Acts 11
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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The People of the Way: A Charismatic Community, An Open Future
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on January 22, 1995 entitled "The People of the Way: A Charismatic Community, An Open Future", as part of the series "New Testament Series", on the occasion of Epiphany III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Acts 1:8, Acts 3:19, Acts 10:34, Acts 11.
Followers of Jesus
Historical Jesus
Liturgical Calendar
Spirit of God
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Fire From Heaven
Pentecost Sunday
Scripture: Joel 2:28-32; Acts 19:1-7
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
June 11, 2000
Transcription of the spoken sermon
It was as the past century was about to dawn that there was a significant event in
Chicago, just down the lake. On the shores of Lake Michigan, there was created
the Columbian Exposition. I was not aware of the tremendous dimension of that
event, the Chicago World's Fair, but on the shores of Lake Michigan in 1893 there
was created what they called The White City. The great architects of the country
vied for the right to design that city. This exposition covered some 644 acres and,
as one came from the lake or along Lakeshore in Chicago, one was met by this
gleaming, white city: resplendent buildings, a reflecting pool, the triumphal arch
- all made sort of like out of material similar to plaster of Paris or papier-maché.
There were steel ribbings for the shape, but it was not a lasting kind of creation. It
was the sort of thing you do for a fair and exposition, a temporary display. But it
was magnificent, it had the grandeur that was Greece and the glory that was
Rome, and it was the celebration of the coming to this continent of Christopher
Columbus. The Columbian Exposition was full of all of the daring and the
boldness and the greatness and self-assurance of the American spirit at the end of
a century looking forward to the 20th century which would be the American
century in which the American spirit would dominate the world, obviously, in the
providence of God. There was, to look at it in retrospect, a great deal of hubris, a
great deal of human pride, but there was a great vision.
The Cosmopolitan magazine of March 1893 had on the cover a bundle of sticks,
called a fades, a Roman symbol for authority that the magistrates had paraded
before them, a bundle of sticks bound with a cord and an axe, and on each one of
the sticks was written the name of a denomination, obviously all being bound into
one, and there was a ribbon that tied the bundle which said, "The fatherhood of
God and the brotherhood of man," and there was an American eagle with his
sharp eye guarding it all, which had in its beak a twisted ribbon on which was
written, "Intolerance." The centerpiece of the Columbian Exposition was the first
World Parliament of Religions, and the planners brought to Chicago religious
leaders from all around the globe. There were Hindus and Shinto priests and
Catholic priests and Baptist preachers and Buddhist monks - you name it. The
ten great religious traditions of the world were represented in this first ever
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Richard A. Rhem
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Parliament of Religions which was dedicated not to the snuffing out of the
respective religious, but rather, a banding together of all the religions against all
irreligious. I don't have time to read to you some of the statements of the opening
of that exposition, and particularly its centerpiece, the Parliament of Religions,
but there are statements that are filled with idealism, filled with hope, filled with
a vibrant spirit that humankind was on the very threshold of realizing the
kingdom of God. That was at the beginning of the 20th century.
The exposition closed in October. There was an economic downturn, and the
condition of those who had served as waiters and cleaners and all kinds of
personnel in this great exposition all summer found themselves without work.
Many of them became homeless and found in this temporary exposition, now
abandoned, a place to find shelter. This spectacular White City in January of
1894, because of those who were finding shelter there and making a fire to keep
themselves warm, a fire which got out of control, the whole White City on one
night was reduced to dust and ashes. It may have been an omen of what was to
come, for all of the hopes and all of the dreams that were gathered together in
that exposition and that Parliament of Religions, in a great closing ceremony at
which was sung "America" and "The Hallelujah Chorus" by a 500-voice choir, the
fusing together of the heavenly city and the earthly city - all of those hopes and all
of those dreams which envisioned a future unlimited, were shortly brought to
grief as the world entered into the first great World War and then the second
great World War, and then the Holocaust and the horror in our own memory of
that awful event. Those wonderful dreams of humanity, of oneness, of unity
which, of course, were all under the auspices of the American spirit and a kind of
benevolent, liberal, white Protestantism, nevertheless came to grief. The journal
to which I still subscribe, The Christian Century, was named at this particular
period The Christian Century because the 20th century was to be the Christian
century, and then it all came to grief.
There was a group of theologians in the 60's who became known as the "Death of
God theologians," and Professor Harvey Cox from Harvard, who was here
recently with us, wrote a book at that time which became a bestseller, The Secular
City, asking how one finds God in a culture totally secular, a culture in which the
leading scholarly opinion is that God is dead. From that exuberant hope and
idealism at the end of the century before to the middle of this past century, the
despair.
Harvey Cox, who wrote The Secular City, has a more recent book just a couple of
years out which he has entitled Fire From Heaven, which documents the great
White City and the hopes of the Parliament of Religion, and he says at the same
time there was in Los Angeles among the poor in a totally down-and-out district,
in an abandoned warehouse, an outbreak of spiritual enthusiasm and power.
1906, among uneducated, many illiterate poor folk under the leadership of a
black pastor, a movement that has become known as the Pentecostal movement,
the stark contrast between the White City and the Parliament of Religions, the
© Grand Valley State University
�Fire From Heaven
Richard A. Rhem
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aspirations for a unity and oneness for all humankind, sort of under an American,
Protestant, Christian banner brought to dust and ashes, and in a few decades
coming to expression in the death of God, and this little movement no one
noticed from people about whom no one ever heard, called the Pentecostal
movement, which is alive and well today at the end of the 20th century and
moving into our own present 21st century. Harvey Cox acknowledges that he took
the analysis of the death of God theologians too seriously and that, while the
hopes of those great leaders at the end of the 19th century have come to nothing,
God was doing a work among an obscure people, beginning a movement that
encircles the globe today. So, instead of the Secular City of the 69's, Harvey Cox’s
latest book is entitled Fire From Heaven because, finally, the present and the
future are not left to human ingenuity and human planning, but rather, we wait
upon the Spirit of God.
It is a fascinating historical retrospective and I would say only this - that it is very
easy 100 years later to mock the planners of the World Parliament of Religions
and the hopes and the dreams of the White City. It is easy enough at this point to
recognize human pride, human naiveté. It is easy enough to put them down for
what was, nonetheless, a magnificent dream.
It was naive in that, in its speaking of Pentecost, the arrival again of Pentecost,
this language in which they spoke, they were really seeing a blossoming of liberal
Christianity, and they were naive to think that somehow or other we humankind
can plan and shape and determine the landscape of the future. But, let's give
them credit - it was a magnificent dream, and what the horrors through which we
have passed in the 20th century have taught us is perhaps a touch of humility and
then the recognition of a diversity which is not to be put into a blender and
homogenized into some kind of bland human formula, but a diversity that is
representative of the depth of the human spirit, that is, representative of the
diversity of the human creature that is a reflection we would say today of the
intention of the Creator. Oh, we can put down those dreamers of yesteryear, but
they had a great dream, and what we have had to go through, the horror of war,
of Holocaust, and the globalization of our human experience is the recognition of
a grand menagerie of human creatures, of a grand rainbow of human personality
and human beings.
We have come, I think, today to celebrate and to rejoice in the diversity which is
not an obstacle to be overcome, but a creative wonder in which to rejoice. As we
recognize that diversity, we just may be in a better position to begin to realize the
hopes and the dream, acknowledging all of its naiveté and all of its human pride.
Nonetheless, the dream of a world that is one and a humanity that is living in
peace, giving to each one dignity and acknowledging that God, that deep Mystery
Who is the ground of our being and the Source of our life, that God Who is
beyond each of our traditions but present in each through God's breathing, God's
Spirit, we just may be on the threshold of a new, wonderful age for humankind
who have come to give up their dreams of dominance and their fear of the other,
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Richard A. Rhem
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ready to join hands with all of those who are other, whether through race,
religion, ethnicity, education, economic status, sexual orientation, whatever it
may be - to look at the other and not be afraid, but to embrace in an
unconditional love that recognizes in each one the image of the God Who is
beyond us, but on Pentecost came to dwell within us, and finally, to make us one.
As you go through the narthex, pick up a little ribbon and wear it as a sign of your
solidarity with all who are other, with whom we are one through the Spirit of
God.
References:
Harvey Cox. Fire From Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the
Reshaping of Religion in the 21st Century. Da Capo Press, 2001.
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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English
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Sound
Text
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KII-01
Coverage
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1981-2014
Format
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost
Scripture Text
Joel 2:28-32, Acts 19:1-7
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Harvey Cox. Fire From Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the 21st Century, 2001.
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-0-20000611
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2000-06-11
Title
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Fire From Heaven
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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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
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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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Sound
Text
Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on June 11, 2000 entitled "Fire From Heaven", on the occasion of Pentecost, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Joel 2:28-32, Acts 19:1-7.
Diversity
Inclusive
Pentecost
Spirit of God
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8c6751e1e19dddb047ed60397bfc5bf4.mp3
2b4158c043b4c57ef7b070d091553d38
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f18249fe9dc72d95801dae723075c1a3.pdf
47cf452e950ee7461b0177a581664366
PDF Text
Text
Mystery, Manifestation and Community
Pentecost III
Text: Exodus 3:2; Mark 1:11; Acts 9:3
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
June 25, 2000
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Reflect with me for such a few moments about what we have done here this
morning, what we have experienced. In the tradition from which I stem, the
church at its worship is to be marked by word and sacrament. That is, word
which gives explanation and the sacrament which is a visible demonstration of
the meaning of the word. As we reflect on that, we will be doing what the sermon
is intending to do - to reflect on the sacramental action in order that we might be
reminded again or that we might have clarified for us who we are and what we
are to be about. Before I proceed, however, let me remind you that two weeks ago
was Pentecost and we celebrated the Festival of the Holy Spirit and we brought to
a close that approximately six-month cycle in which we go through those marks
of the life of Jesus' birth and life and death and resurrection and the gift of the
Holy Spirit on Pentecost.
And then the Sunday following Pentecost is Trinity Sunday in the calendar of the
Church, because at that point we are ready to reflect or to realize, perhaps, as
never before the Trinitarian structure of our religious experience, that that
Ultimate Mystery not at our disposal, that Ultimate Mystery that we call God,
does break in or emanate from, become apparent to the likes of us in the arena of
history. The Ultimate Mystery shows itself in some historical manifestation and
that historical manifestation becomes the agent by which the mystery is revealed,
at least to some extent, and a believer is engaged by the Spirit, for to look at that
manifestation, some say "I believe," and others would say there's nothing to it.
But, to look at that manifestation ... for example, to look into the face of Jesus
and say, "My God," the Church has always recognized is the consequence of the
Spirit of God; it is the gift of God. God reveals God's self, and so there is Ultimate
Mystery, historical manifestation, and the concrete encounter of the individual,
the believer who has the epiphany, who sees, who experiences the illumination.
Sometimes that illumination results in a message and a mission whose
consequence is a community, a movement, a community of faith. Sometimes
even a religion is born. But at this point on the Church calendar, we can see the
trinitarian structure, not only of the nature of God, but the trinitarian structure of
our own religious experience, an ultimate mystery, a manifestation of history, a
© Grand Valley State University
�Mystery, Manifestation and Community
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
believing person through the Spirit who may become the nucleus of a community
of a whole religious tradition.
I selected the scriptures I read in order to demonstrate that that is exactly what
was going on with Moses. Moses, brooding in the wilderness, tending sheep. I
love Chaim Potok's description of this moment in Moses' life. It's in the insert in
your liturgy. Read it this afternoon. It takes a novelist to tell you what the Bible is
all about, really, a great writer like Potok. You may say, "Well, he psychologizes
that experience of Moses." Yes. How else? How else does it happen? Of course,
and Chaim Potok is using his imagination, to be sure, but I think it's so moving,
so powerful. There's Moses who has been raised with the knowledge that he is a
Jew, but in the court of the Egyptians, lashes out in an heroic act or a dastardly
act of murder, and flees from justice. He is in the wilderness tending the sheep
with too much time on his hands to rummage it around in his mind – the gods of
Egypt, slavery, murder, all of that - must there be some other god? Must there not
be some other truth? And then one day a bush is burning and is not consumed
and he hears a voice and it becomes a holy place, and Moses becomes the
historical referent of that ultimate mystery and from Moses stems the nation
Israel and the Torah whose roots are in Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and whose
consequence is the history of Israel. Ultimate Mystery. Moment of manifestation.
Community, religious community flowing therefrom by the Spirit of God.
It was no different for Paul. Paul, restless, serious, cantankerous, passionate,
urgent, on the way to Damascus to stamp out that Way, maybe unconsciously
because he felt it was such a powerful way, this way of Jesus, only to be blinded
with light and turned around in his tracks, becoming now not the one who was
out to arrest the followers of the Way, but the one who took that way and
understood it after three years of meditation in the desert, understood the way of
Jesus as Judaism for the Gentiles, who understood the way of Jesus as the
universalizing of that which was intrinsic in Judaism, even though Judaism had
been particular and local. Yet, Paul could see Yahweh was not a tribal God;
Yahweh was the creator of the heavens and the earth. There was no other God.
Therefore, in Judaism itself, in its particularity, in its understanding of the one
true God, Creator of heaven and earth, was the invitation to the whole world. The
grace that Israel knew was for a world, and Paul becomes the great founder of the
Church.
Of course, it was with Jesus the same way, not really so different. When he joined
the Baptist Movement, when he was baptized with John the Baptist, he was
joining a revolutionary movement that was looking for the imminent incursion of
God. He was looking at the horror of the historical situation, the poverty and the
homelessness, the domination and the oppression and, in identifying with John
the Baptist through his baptism, Jesus was identifying with that movement of
social criticism that believed that somehow or other if God was just, God would
have to do something. And he hears a voice and in the hearing of a voice, he gains
identity and a mission, and he is driven out into the wilderness forty days and
forty nights. "Who am I? Whence the voice? What is this all about?" And from
© Grand Valley State University
�Mystery, Manifestation and Community
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Jesus comes Paul, comes you and me, the community of faith that moves from
that historical encounter with the word made flesh, who had face for the heart of
the Eternal.
So, you see, that simply is the nature of religious experience. I marvel sometimes
at my naiveté. I sort of always knew that there was this trinitarian thing, that God
revealed God's self in Jesus and illumined our eyes by the Holy Spirit, binding us
to Jesus who bound us to God. I knew that was a gift; I knew that was a
revelation. But, I thought that it was the only true revelation and, if it's the only
true revelation, you see, then anybody else who had a revelation has to be wrong.
Then I came to see that every religion claims a revelation. There's no religion
where someone sat down and said, "I think I'll think up a new scheme of things."
Mohammed had a vision resulting in the Koran. The Buddha had his pilgrimage
and experience and illumination. Moses did. I even had to say in my naiveté that
Moses, who was the historical agent of the Jewish faith and the tradition of Israel,
wasn't understood by Moses' own people, because they didn't read it through the
eyes of Jesus. I had relativized the Old Testament. I even had to claim that the
Jewish people didn't understand their own book. Is that arrogance? It certainly
was ignorance.
Now I can see the trinitarian structure of all religious experience, and I want to
say that every community claims its story and every community that develops
because of the authenticity of that story, that experience, develops its rituals and
its sacraments, and every such community has a mark and that is what we did
this morning at the baptismal font in the name of the Father and the Son and the
Holy Spirit, baptismal water prayed over for the Spirit's movement, placed on the
forehead of infants as a sign that they belong. We've all been baptized and that's
what marks us; it is our union card, as it were. And then we came to the table
because a community, to be a community, to have an identity, a sense of who it is,
needs to commemorate, needs to come back again and again to its founding
story, needs to come back to the table of our Lord, a table of Jesus where bread is
broken and the cup is poured out as a sign of the violent death that this one
experienced because of the way he lived, of the way he was, of the manifestation
of God that he was. So we come back to this table in order that we might
remember Jesus, in order that we might have fresh in our minds that face that
reflects the mystery, the ultimate grace and love of God at the heart of things.
The sacramental character of the Church. We could use different symbols,
different materials, we could enact it differently, but what we do has long history
and deep meaning, and I want to say just two things in closing. One is that that is
our way. That is a way. That is not the way. But, because it is not only a way, and
our way, it becomes for us the way. Why should I play fast and loose? Why should
I treat with nonchalance, why should I accord lack of importance to that
baptismal font and that communion table just because it is not the only way?
Because it is my way, and if it is my way, it is the way. While I look at another
© Grand Valley State University
�Mystery, Manifestation and Community
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
who walks another way but experiences a similar grace, experiencing that
ultimate mystery that is known here in baptism and in table and in preaching and
in sacred dance, hear me again - our Christian way symbolized in baptism and
table is a way. It is not the only way. But, since it's our way, for us, the way, and
it's full of grace and wonder and beauty, and I love it very much.
Then, I would say this, although it is not the only way, although it is one way, if it
is good and true and beautiful, then it is worth the passion of my life to keep the
community that has grown up around it alive and healthy. Then it is worth the
engagement of my life to keep a community like this alive and well, with a strong
sense of identity, knowing its tradition, loving the life to which it is called. If it is
my way, if it is for us the way, then it deserves the passion of our lives.
We've had a lot of funerals here lately and just last Sunday in this place we buried
Betty Hofstra, 88 years, a beautiful saint of God. She was the fourth generation,
the daughters and grandchildren and the great grandchildren. And because it was
Sunday and they didn't open the grave, nonetheless, I went to the cemetery with
the family and there, particularly the fourth generation, the little ones took yellow
roses and stood around the gravestone where Great Grandpa Oscar was marked.
It was a beautiful experience with beautiful children remembering their Great
Grandma in the presence of the grave of their Great Grandpa, sanctified by
prayer. How else do you give sanctity to human life? How else do you celebrate
the death of a saint? How else do you give adequate value to a newborn? At the
moment of birth at the gift of a child you want to pray, you want to sing, you want
to dance, because life is pregnant with the holy if only we have eyes to see, if only
we pause long enough, if only some place along the way there is a community of
people with whom we can join in order to celebrate birth and death and the
commemoration of the heart of our story.
It's been quite a weekend. I married a daughter, baptized a grandson whose
father I baptized, and as we speak, a sister is being operated on in emergency
whose consequence will be serious cancer, I'm sure. Now, how do you do that
unless there is a God before whom one can kneel, before whom one can pause
and be still, before whom one can know that ultimately all is grace and all will be
well? Why in the world, if this is a way, even if it isn't the only way, need I treat it
nonchalantly? Should I denigrate it? Why can I not be passionately engaged in it
because it's not the only way, but, by God, it's good. It's good.
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981-2014
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost III, Father's Day
Scripture Text
Exodus 3:2, Mark 1:11, Acts 9:3
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-0-20000625
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2000-06-25
Title
A name given to the resource
Mystery, Manifestation and Community
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on June 25, 2000 entitled "Mystery, Manifestation and Community", on the occasion of Pentecost III, Father's Day, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Exodus 3:2, Mark 1:11, Acts 9:3.
Community of Faith
Inclusive
Spirit of God
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a2c95b324aa87274759ecff83283c5c7.pdf
a3d41a836b1e01de3bfbc6116b62c57e
PDF Text
Text
In the Holy Spirit: Butterflies Are Free
From the series: I Do Believe
Scripture: Exodus 34:29-35, II Corinthians 3:1-4:2
Text: II Corinthians 3:17
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Pentecost, May 26, 1996
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Butterflies are free. I do believe in the Holy Spirit, and I believe that the Spirit is
the Spirit of God, the Spirit of freedom. For Pentecost 1996, for Christ
Community Church, the butterfly is an appropriate symbol. It's an ancient
symbol in the Church for the resurrection because of the transformation, the
metamorphosis that it goes through from the caterpillar, the cocoon, to the
butterfly - this magnificent little creature that goes aloft and catches the wind
beneath its wings. As I thought of Pentecost 1996, Christ Community and a whole
new world before us, I thought of the butterfly, a symbol of resurrection, the
butterfly that soars with the wind beneath its wings, linking Easter and Pentecost
and launching us into the future with great faith, unafraid.
We celebrate Pentecost as one of the historical festival days of the Church and, if
you only had Luke, you would think that this thing just unwound, progressed
rather naturally and smoothly. There was Israel and there was Jesus. Death,
Resurrection, Ascension, Pentecost, Christian mission, world mission - all of it
very smooth, just moving along according to the plan and purpose of God.
Wrong! For one thing, if we had only John's Gospel, we'd celebrate Easter and
Ascension and Pentecost all on the same day. That's all John knows. He speaks
about it all in one package. But, Luke began to see that the early return of Jesus
just wasn't very early. Nothing was happening, as we have noted recently. That
Messiah who was crucified and raised and brought into the presence of God did
not return, and Luke began to see a historical perspective. So, in his Gospel and
in the Book of Acts, he gives us the story of Jesus, his death and his resurrection,
and the Gospel ends with Jesus being taken out of their sight. The Book of Acts
begins with Jesus moving into the clouds, and in Acts, Chapter 2, the day of
Pentecost. Well, the day of Pentecost was a feast day, a Jewish feast day fifty days
after Passover, fifty days, then, after our Easter. If we just take Luke's scheme, it
looks like it developed very naturally. The time of progression during that 40-day
period, Jesus verifying his resurrection, his living reality, leaving their midst, and
then the power of the Holy Spirit. That's Luke's nice, smooth, historical scheme.
© Grand Valley State University
�In the Spirit Butterflies are Free
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
But, it wasn't that easy, folks. First thing, note that the feast of Pentecost and the
ecstatic experience of those first followers of Jesus was a holy Jewish event. It
was about the God of Israel; it was the Spirit of the God of Israel - these were
Jewish followers of Jesus gathered on a Jewish festival day. Their ecstatic
explosion of power was totally within the context of the Jewish people.
Jesus never intended to found a world religion. The Christian Church was not in
the purview of Jesus. It was a call to Israel to be faithful to the God of Israel and
to renew itself according to the call of Jesus, but not a new movement, so to
speak, but rather, a renewal of that old movement. However, it soon became a
conflict situation. Initially there was great growth among Jewish people. There
was a Jewish Jesus Movement. However, when Jesus didn't come back, there
were Jews who were scratching their heads and saying, "You know, I wonder
whether we should leave all of our great traditions."
Then in 70 A.D. the Temple is destroyed and now there is the Jewish Jesus
Movement and there is the Rabbinic Jewish Movement - which movement will
emerge as the ongoing, continuing Jewish identity? Well, we know from John's
Gospel that the Rabbinic Jewish Movement came into the ascendency, so that to
say that Jesus was the Messiah was to be put out of the synagogue. And since
Jesus hadn't returned and, at the threat of being put out, many said, "Maybe we'd
better stay with what is familiar and what is our spiritual home."
But there was another factor operative. There was a Jew named Paul who had a
vision of the resurrected Christ and a sense of being called to bring the Gospel to
the nations, to the Gentiles. And Paul was powerfully persuasive and very
successful. One of the ironies of this whole development was that it was the very
success of Paul and the Gentile mission that dried up the movement of Jews to
Jesus, because, if the Jews had joined the Pauline church, they would have lost
their distinctive Jewishness. The threat in the 20th century, Jewish people tell us,
is assimilation through intermarriage. But there was an earlier threat in the first
century. If the Jews had followed the Jesus Movement according to the Pauline
conception, there would be no distinctive Judaism today, and would not our
world be diminished without that rich ingredient of the Jewish people? But, Paul
was successful and, therefore, there was a conflict situation in that early Church.
You've got to remember our Gospels were all written after the destruction of the
Temple in 70 A.D. Our Gospels arose in a conflict situation. They were pleading
with Jews to follow Jesus; they were presenting Jesus as the Messiah, the answer,
the Promised One, and they were showing Jesus was the Messiah from citing the
old scriptures, the Hebrew Scriptures. But, there was Paul out among the nations,
the Gentiles, and he was gaining a great many converts. And now you have a
situation where there are Jews who follow Jesus but want to remain distinctively
Jews. For example, James, the brother of Jesus - he was the leader of the
Jerusalem Church, and there are those who think that Luke wrote the Book of
Acts in order to play down the tension between James and Paul. Whoever said
© Grand Valley State University
�In the Spirit Butterflies are Free
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
the Christian Church was kind of a sunny, sweet, sentimental, sickly, kind, loving
bunch? It never has been. There has been conflict and tension, and it was sharp
between Paul and James. James was a Jew, an observant Jew. James followed
Jesus, believed he was the Messiah, and James believed that that message should
be taken to the whole world. But he wanted the whole world to be like he was - an
observant Jew following Jesus.
Paul, too, was an observant Jew. But, Paul had another idea. Paul did not want to
exclude Israel from the grace of God. There are all kinds of statements in Paul's
writings that indicate that it never entered his mind that God was done with
Israel. Paul didn't want to exclude Israel, but Paul wanted to include the Gentiles,
the nations. And he felt that it was his calling to bring the story of Jesus to the
nations. And in so doing, he had to decide - what do I do in Thessalonica or
Corinth or Ephesus or Rome when somebody says, "I believe Jesus is the
Messiah. I would like to become a member of the movement; I'd like to be
baptized." What does Paul do? Does he say to him, "Believe. Be baptized. The
grace of God embraces you"?
Or, does he say, "Believe. Be baptized. Be circumcised. Follow the food laws, the
whole Mosaic Law; be an observant Jew"?
Now, that's not exaggerating the situation, folks. Don't you see it? That's what
James would have said. He would have gone throughout all of the world telling
the story of Jesus, inviting all of the world to come to join the Jesus movement,
but James would have expected that the Gentile become a part of the whole
Jewish religious way.
Paul - and this is Paul's radicality (a lot of things I don't like about Paul, but I like
this about Paul) – Paul could see that the Jewish religious system, its ceremonies,
its rituals, its code of laws, its Torah, its way of life, he could see all of that as both
being from God and not being absolutely necessary. He could see all of that as
being provisional for a time, but he could also see that that was a human
container and that the Spirit of God could create new containers. And so, the
radicality of Paul, the brilliance of Paul was that Paul understood that God could
embrace people beyond Israel as they were without putting them into the
religious structures that had become Israel's way.
That was a brilliant insight. It caused conflict. It put him at odds with James. He
got into arguments in every congregation he founded. In the reading from
Corinthians, for example, he is defending his ministry. He said, "I don't need
letters of recommendation. You, my people, are my letter of recommendation."
(You see, he took a lesson from me; or maybe I learned that from him, I don't
know. Probably so.) He said, "Look, Corinth, people transformed by grace, people
with gifts of the Spirit, this lively, vital, charismatic community - I don't need a
letter of recommendation. You are my letter of recommendation. Because you are
a letter of Christ written by the Spirit on the fleshly table of the heart. Something
new has happened."
© Grand Valley State University
�In the Spirit Butterflies are Free
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
And then he realizes that there are those who are shaking their head, "No. No,
this is not sufficient. These Gentile believers of Jesus are not yet adequate. They
are not yet full-fledged people of God; they are not yet Jews, observant."
So, he said, "Look, you remember when Moses went up on the mountain and got
the Law, the Ten Commandments, and he came down and his face was all aglow?
He put a veil over his face so that people wouldn't see the glory fade away."
Now, it doesn't say that in Exodus. All it says is he put a veil over his face in order
that people might not be afraid of that shine, that glow. But, probably somewhere
along the way there was a Jewish Rabbi scholar who made some comment about
maybe Moses put his veil over his face so they wouldn't see when the face didn't
shine as much - that doesn't matter. It's pretty clear what's operating here. Paul
says Moses got the Law from God, the only God there is. He got the Law, the true
Law; he got the true Word. He came down from that mountain and his face was
shining because he had been in the presence of God who is Light. Then he says he
put the veil over his face because that shine was only skin-deep and it started to
fade, and Moses thought, "If they see the glory fade from my face, they'll think the
glory is fading from the Law," so he put a veil over.
And then Paul says, "You know, that reminds me. That's exactly what's
happening to my Jewish brothers and sisters today. They read their own
scripture, they read Moses and it's like they got a veil over their face. They read it
and they don't understand it. They read it and they don't believe it. They read it
and they can't see it. Hardened hearts, dull minds, veil over their face. Why don't
they read it? Why don't they see it? How can they be so dull? Moses was of God.
Moses' light was of God. That truth was truth, indeed, but it was partial, it was a
lesser splendor, it was a step on the way but it wasn't the absolute and the end of
all."
Paul says, "Don't you see that with Jesus, God has done a new thing? With Jesus
there is a brightness and a fullness and a splendor and a glory such as Moses
never, ever conceived of! Don't you see that Moses got light from God, reflected in
skin-deep glow, but we, beholding Jesus, not beholding Torah, we beholding
Jesus are transformed into Jesus' likeness from one degree of glory into another?
Don't you see that what we have in Jesus is so much more?"
Well, James said, "No. Not really."
James said, "Paul, if you have your way, there will no longer be a distinctive
Jewish tradition. If you have your way, there will be no ongoing, distinctive,
observant Jewish people. I agree with you about Jesus; I agree with you that God
was in Jesus, all of that. But, I don't agree with you that it is enough simply to be
graced by God through Jesus without all of Moses."
Paul said, "You're blind."
© Grand Valley State University
�In the Spirit Butterflies are Free
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
And James said, "You're radical."
Paul said, "What must I do?"
And James said, "You're out of here."
You see, who was right and who was wrong? Is it really an issue of right and
wrong? Is it necessary that I say that Paul was right and therefore God was done
with Israel and the Christian Church becomes the New Israel and supersedes
Israel? You know what that kind of thinking leads to? That has led to the
triumphalism of the Christian Church; it has led to anti-Semitism; it has led to
the Holocaust; it has led to pride that has divided the world and has made the
world a hostile place – that kind of spirit.
Why can't I just say, "Paul, you had a vision. Paul, through you the God of Israel
was brought to the nations. Bless you, Paul! Paul, you could see that human
religious structures, human religious rituals, humanly systematic formulated
doctrines are necessary and important and useful, but provisional and temporary
and never absolute."
Why can't I just say, "Paul, bless you for that freedom. Bless you for seeing that
new times demand new human containers," without having to say to you
somehow or other, "If you don't follow me, James, you're out. And James, James,
could you bless Paul? Could you be content to say, 'I'm the guardian and the
caretaker of a true and ancient and precious tradition. Bless you, Paul. Take its
wonder and glory and truth, and if you insist, its greater glory, and bring it to the
world. Because Paul, when you talk about Jesus, you're talking about the Jesus of
the God of Israel. Paul, when you talk about the Spirit, you're talking about the
Spirit of the God of Israel. Consequently, Paul, we are not competitors. We are in
the same business, for God's sake!'"
Paul - thank God he saw the relative, provisional, historically conditioned, partial
adequacy of every human structure, liturgy, doctrine, and he saw the Spirit of
God as always out ahead, blowing where it will, shattering forms, creating new
containers, and embracing an ever-greater circle of the children of God. The likes
of us who, as he says a bit later in the fourth chapter, have seen the light of the
glory of God in the face of Jesus. But the likes of James who saw the glory of God
in the Torah found his fulfillment in walking the way of Moses.
Well, I would have been on Paul's team. I think I like James better, but I would
have been on Paul's team. Paul's kind of radical; revolutionary people are not
always the kind you want to invite to dinner. It's a lot more comfortable with the
caretakers and the guardians. But some people are called to probe the frontiers,
to find the new containers and to praise God in ways not yet conceived of. Not a
new God. Not a novel idea. Continuity with the old, but tradition as the
instrument of continuity and change, because in our present human existence
there is no absolute, no absolute certainty.
© Grand Valley State University
�In the Spirit Butterflies are Free
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
Dear friends, there's risk, but there's also wonder - the wonder of a freedom, the
freedom of the Spirit of God. Paul says, where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is
freedom. Butterflies are free. And so are we.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/bcce1d4d3f4f23f0677da23a27431ba3.mp3
faaf7e46b097cf5569189cd1a9dea28c
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
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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>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
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English
Type
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Sound
Text
Identifier
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KII-01
Coverage
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1981-2014
Format
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost
Series
I Do Believe
Scripture Text
II Corinthians 3:17
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/.
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KII-01_RA-0-19960526
Date
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1996-05-26
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In the Holy Spirit: Butterflies Are Free
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University
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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 26, 1996 entitled "In the Holy Spirit: Butterflies Are Free", as part of the series "I Do Believe", on the occasion of Pentecost, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: II Corinthians 3:17.
Pentecost
Re-imagining the Faith
Resurrection
Spirit of God
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/bdbf8feb65f2ac2c464cfcf0c388e7c1.pdf
0fae8d580784c10584e0ad8b8e8d7e84
PDF Text
Text
Spirit, Spirit: A Cosmic Drama
Pentecost
Text: Genesis 1:2; John 3:6
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
May 18, 1997
Transcription of the spoken sermon
The consternation in the heart and mind of a Nicodemus brought him to Jesus,
confused as to exactly what was going on in the life and ministry of this one, this
respected teacher of Israel. And so, he came to him, saying, "Rabbi, we know that
you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you
do apart from the presence of God." Jesus responds with the claim that one must
be born again, from above. Nicodemus' confusion only deepens. He says, "How
can this be?" And I suppose that all religion arises out of those deep existential
questions, from whence have we come? Whither are we going? And what is the
meaning of it all, the purpose, the intention? What is our life? With Nicodemus, I
think, from time to time we all say, "What does this mean? How can this be?"
We keep ourselves busy for much of our lives, frantically pursuing our
penultimate goals, but there are those moments that dawn upon us, maybe when
we take a candle as a young person, maybe as a parent holding an infant at a
baptismal font, maybe some moment with the bread in our hand; or at a moment
of great fear, tragedy or loss, or deep joy and delight. Sometime or another, we
ask, "How can this be? Whence have we come? Whither are we going? What does
it mean?" Because we are human, and after a cosmic drama of 15 billion years,
the likes of us have emerged on planet earth, able to wonder about it all,
becoming when, how, who knows but, at some moment, conscious, selfconscious, aware, aware of the other, finding voice, having language, able to
express deep thoughts. And before the mystery of life, its wonders causing us
awe, its terrors causing us dread, we ask, "What does it mean? Where are we
going? And what is this human existence into which we've entered?"
That is the source and the origin of the wide diversity of religions, belief and
religious practice throughout the ages and around the world. That was no less the
case with the Hebrew poets and prophets. Interestingly, the clear statement of
God's creation in Genesis did not arise until that people had a national identity
for centuries. The creation account in Genesis arose out of the situation of exile,
when that people in their alienation and estrangement had lost their confidence
in their Yahweh God, believing as did most ancient peoples, that God was the God
of the winners, or that the winner's God was God. Then, in the midst of that
© Grand Valley State University
�Spirit, Spirit: A Cosmic Drama
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
rather despairing exilic community, there arose a voice, a poet, who stirred them
to the depths, reminding them that the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob was
none other than the Creator of the heavens and the earth, and he wrote that
marvelous poem, "In the beginning, God ..." There was an earlier account,
somewhat less sophisticated, that focused on the human person, the creation of
humankind.
In those stories we see a people orienting themselves and their lives around the
sharp focus of a God Who spoke and called all things into being. Obviously, the
conception of the natural world, the universe, the cosmology reflected in those
Genesis accounts was representative of the understanding of the age in which the
poet wrote. It was a three-storied universe, the heavens above, the waters
beneath the earth, and God was the Great Mechanic, the Great Architect, the
Great Designer, the Great Clockmaker, as it were. God was a being, a Superbeing.
God was like us, personal, only bigger, more so. God was the Supreme Being
Who, from beyond, out of the depths of eternity, decided to call into being that
which was not, and did it like a designer, like a contractor, like one who
constructs a model. There was a kind of naiveté about that account, as we look at
it 25 or more centuries on. The world is not the world that was conceived of by
the biblical writer. But, ancient people were not naive. Ancient people had all of
the questions that we have. Those creation accounts are an attempt to give
account of the reality of the universe and of the human experience. And there is a
profundity there. The Spirit of God - in the Hebrew language, spirit, breath, wind
are all translated by the same word, Ruach - brooded over the chaos. Over that
soupy chaos, the poet tells us, the breath or the wind of God brooded or hovered,
and out of the chaotic stew, through the brooding of the breath of God, came the
cosmic miracle of which the ancient writer knew only a little.
In the other account in the second chapter, you see the beautiful simplicity of this
Creator God coming down to the earth that was created and scooping up a
handful of mud, fashioning a body and breathing in life so that the man became a
living soul. Such an insight saw the human person connected absolutely with the
elements of the earth, but having something more, that spirit dimension that
created the possibility of consciousness and awareness and attentiveness. Rooted
to the earth but beckoned upward by the Spirit, the human person comes from
the hand of the Creator God.
The Psalmist sang about it, sang about it with delight and with joy. "Every living
thing, the whole vast created order, all of it emerged at the behest of the Creator's
Word Whose breath, whose Wind, whose Spirit enlivens it all. You remove your
Spirit and we die. You bestow Your Spirit, and we live." The Psalmist sang about
the God Who is life, the life of the world, the life of all that is.
The Hebrew tradition out of which we have come is a tradition that is centered in
that breath of God, Spirit of God, wind of God. Poets and prophets with vivid
imagination envisioned a whole new world endowed with Spirit, looking for the
© Grand Valley State University
�Spirit, Spirit: A Cosmic Drama
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
day when one would come, filled with the Spirit. The story goes on to the point at
which one was conceived by the Holy Spirit, according to the Gospel, Jesus by
name, in whose life and ministry there developed that movement from which we
stem, a Christian Church, celebrating the birth of that movement on the day of
Pentecost, according to Luke. For Luke would have us see that that which
happened in the wake of Jesus was nothing more than the continuation of that
activity of the breath of God, the breath and the wind of God that swept upon that
early gathering of disciples, empowering them, enlivening them, firing them to go
out and to tell the story, the Good News of what God had done in Jesus Christ.
So, on Pentecost we recognize that we are preeminently a people of wind, the
people of breath, the people of Spirit, that it is Spirit that marks us as humans,
that causes us to wonder, to raise those deep questions and to seek after God.
Nicodemus came to Jesus in his confusion and Jesus confused him even more.
"You must be born again," or "You must be born from above," or "from beyond."
That new birth, if we were to understand it today, would have to be translated
from the understanding of Jesus, because Jesus didn't know our cosmology.
Jesus saw a distinction between the flesh and the Spirit, and we certainly
understand what he meant. All of us know and of some of us it is true that we are
dead while we live. And certainly that was the reality to which Jesus was pointing,
the possibility of living a human existence without being human, being a human
automaton without spirit, without consciousness, without awareness, without
attentiveness, without that spirit dimension, that depth dimension. But we would
have to say today, in the light of what we know about this amazing cosmic drama
into which we have been caught up, that there is no such thing as flesh and spirit,
for there is only one cosmic river of energy.
Fifteen billion years ago there was an explosion, the Big Bang, as the physicists
speak of it today; 15 billion years ago, Jesus, would you believe it? They tell us it's
not like an explosion of TNT, but rather, the explosion of a musical chord,
perhaps the most famous chord in all the world, Beethoven's Fifth. You know
how it begins. It's "Boom, boom, boom, boom." That's it, you see, the Big Bang. It
is a chord that begins to reverberate outward, outward, outward, and as it goes, it
does not fill space, it creates space; it does not take time, it creates time, so time
and space are expanding in resonant circles outward, outward, outward, for 15
billion years. Here we are at this late point of development in a cosmic drama,
and we understand that we have been created with spirit that has become aware
of it all. Fifteen billion years until there emerged the likes of us, who could ask
"from whence did we come," and "whither are we going," and "what is the
meaning of it all?"
We have discovered that we are not flesh and spirit, but we are enspirited flesh,
for we know that energy and mass are interchangeable, and that our mass is but
dammed up energy, coalesced for a time and then released in another form. We
find ourselves little whirlpools of meaning in that cosmic river that has been
© Grand Valley State University
�Spirit, Spirit: A Cosmic Drama
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
flowing for 15 billion years, and if we cannot discover the meaning of it, we have
become those who can give meaning to it and create meaning for it. We create
meaning in our lives in community with one another, trusting in that process that
has been emerging, baffled by the mystery of its beginning, and being without a
clue as to the manifestation of its culmination, but in the meantime, trusting God
Who is spirit, Who enspirits, enlivens, fires the imagination and creates between
us and among us human community.
As you know, this past week Nancy and I spent a few days in New Jersey and we
were privileged to hear the English scholar, Karen Armstrong, who spoke twice
last Tuesday, in the morning on "The History of God." In 1993 she published her
rather significant work, The History of God: 4000 years of the human
understanding and conception of God. Then in the afternoon she spoke of "The
Future of God," and she addressed, I thought, very profoundly the present state
of the human family. We don't get a very good feel for that in Western Michigan,
but the institutional Church is certainly in trouble, and the manifestation of the
great religious traditions around the world that were once thought to be passé are
experiencing a resurgence. There is confusion on every hand. Karen Armstrong is
currently researching a book on Fundamentalism, which she sees as the
desperate human attempt to resuscitate the God of the Bible, the God of that
cosmology of the Genesis writer, that God "out there," that Clockmaker, Designer,
King and Ruler. That conception was reflective of the understanding of the day
but cannot carry the freight in our day. She said in all of the monotheisms, Islam,
Judaism, Christianity, even in some of the Eastern religions, there is currently a
fundamentalism which is a kind of a fanatical attempt to resuscitate an old
conception of God, bringing that which is dead and to bring "Him" crashing back
into history, the God that has long since been dead.
Well, are we then in a period of atheism? Much of the world is, notwithstanding
the resurgence of that fundamentalism manifest around the globe. In the long
haul, where we are going is into the darkness of atheism. But then she said a most
interesting thing, and I believe she's right. You don't have to worry about
atheism, not even if you're making your Confirmation today, because atheism is
not a rejection of God. It is simply a rejection of an inadequate conception of God.
Years ago, J.B. Phillips, who paraphrased the New Testament, wrote a book
whose title says it all: Your God Is Too Small. We are living in a period of time
when the conception of God that has come with us out of the past is not adequate
anymore to connect with our human experience. That conception makes no sense
of this 15-billion-year river of energy that is flowing, God knows where. But, in
the meantime, in the darkness it's as the poet Keats claimed: You don't just sit
down and write a poem. You wait in the darkness. You wait in the darkness until
the poem writes itself. And so, now, we don't know so much, and there are big
questions afoot. But if we trust, if we have faith to believe, then we will not idolize
those formulations and conceptions that have come to us. We will recognize
where they are inadequate, where they can no longer connect with our
© Grand Valley State University
�Spirit, Spirit: A Cosmic Drama
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
experience, no longer give orientation for our human life. We will wait, wait in
the darkness, trusting, not knowing what will be, but knowing what can no longer
be.
And I want to say to you young people, those who tell you so clearly all about
God, don't know, because we don't know; we trust that Mystery, and we have
seen the reality of the Mystery revealed in the face of Jesus and we have
experienced the breath of God in community. Thus we know all will be well. Let
God be God and let us with confident trust move into the future unafraid, for you
see, Pentecost keeps happening. Pentecost is simply the presence of the Spirit.
In the words of the poet,
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights of the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings
Pentecost. Breath. Spirit. God. Wonder. Wonder!
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/85ed5a1f0f1ac0262770bd0b2686d8af.mp3
a9ab35106c27c01007166902efee6b55
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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
Series
A Cosmic Symphony
Scripture Text
Genesis 1:2, John 3:6
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-0-19970518
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1997-05-18
Title
A name given to the resource
Spirit, Spirit: A Cosmic Drama
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University
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
Text
Sound
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 May 18, 1997 entitled "Spirit, Spirit: A Cosmic Drama", as part of the series "A Cosmic Symphony", on the occasion of Pentecost, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Genesis 1:2, John 3:6.
Community
Consciousness
Cosmic Evolution
Spirit of God
Trust