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Text
A Larger Hope
From the series: Memory and Hope
Micah 5:1-5; Luke 4:16-30
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Advent IV, December 19, 1999
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Advent is a time of contemplation, reflection, and preparation - preparation for
what? For the future, surely, but what future? A future in this world and this
present age, or a future in another reality, in heaven? The Kingdom of God - is it a
present reality and experience, or is it a future state? Advent is a time of
remembering, for we have our minds focused on the coming celebration of
Christmas and thus on our founding story as Christians - But, Advent is a time of
expectation - a time of waiting and the biblical sense of waiting is waiting in hope.
The biblical story is a story about God's engagement in history past and the
promise of God's action in history future. History is the ongoing story between
God's action, past, and God's action, future. That is the biblical notion. In
traditional biblical and liturgical terms, we are in the time between the times - the
past coming of God in our flesh and the future appearing of the one who came,
coming now to judge and bring all things to their consummation.
Year after year, the same story - The child was given; the King is coming. And it is
quite a lovely story that is lodged deeply in our hearts and overflowing with
affectional memories as well as filling us with hope and confidence - It is a story
that enables us to negotiate the passages of our lives in this world, speaking to us
of another world. The story originates in another realm and culminates likewise
in another realm.
We speak of God's salvation and, while that is a present experience, its real
significance is the promise of eternal life beyond the limits of our earthly journey.
Salvation becomes a very personal matter. We hear much about having Jesus
Christ as our personal savior, the one who came to die for us in order to make
possible God's forgiveness and eventual entrance into heaven.
© Grand Valley State University
�A Larger Hope
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
Now I'm speaking about Advent and Christmas in traditional terms. I could have
you open the hymnbook and over and over again I could demonstrate the
primary focus of our Christian faith as we have learned it.
God so loved the world that God gave the son - Born a child of Mary, to live for us
and die for us and bring us to heaven. Annually we are immersed in the story of
one born a child who became a King - a King who will be coming in blinding glory
to judge and rule and bring us to heaven. I'm not really telling you anything new.
This is the old, old story. God's gift of Jesus, our savior, to take away our sins and
open heaven's gates.
And what about this in-between time, this time between his first coming and his
coming again? Well, it is a time for the Gospel to be preached, a time to offer the
salvation God has provided through Jesus' death and resurrection.
The story is about a spiritual Kingdom, about salvation, about heaven. There are
present responsibilities - to preach the Gospel, to work for human well-being,
acts of charity and the alleviation of suffering. But, essentially, there is no hope
for this old world, this present age, this earthly reality of which we are a part. The
world is simply reeling toward hell. It will be destroyed; we must be saved out of
the world.
But, what if we get it wrong? What if we missed the point of Jesus? What if we
made a religious cult out of what Jesus intended as a revolutionary movement of
world transformation? What if we got all bogged down with sin and guilt and
threat of damnation when Jesus was about social, economic and spiritual
transformation?
Let me read a description of the world. See if you recognize it.
... a world where dreams of limitless material wealth and technological progress
danced in the heads of the great entrepreneurs and in the rhetoric of ambitious
politicians - and where the looming nightmares of family breakdown, crime,
sudden loss of livelihood, and untreated and untreatable illnesses plagued the
minds of the vast majority. It was, in short, a world that should seem ominously
familiar - in which sweeping social and economic change was embraced by some
and condemned by others, dramatically transforming the life of all the empire's
people, from the wealthiest nobles in their palaces to the poorest shepherds
wandering with their flocks in the hills. This is becoming increasingly clear
because modern scholars have at last begun to explore the vast area covered by
the rule and civilization of the Caesars to search for the life styles of both the rich
and famous and the far larger, yet mostly hidden, world of the Roman havenots,
peasants, plebians, and slaves.
Richard Horsley, The Message and the Kingdom, p. 2F. As this citation begins,
one might think one is reading a description of life at the end of the 20th Century,
© Grand Valley State University
�A Larger Hope
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
but it is, as becomes clear, a description of the Roman Empire at the time of
Jesus' life in the occupied land of Israel.
Through archeological exploration and cross-cultural studies we are
gaining a wealth of information about the ancient world of Jesus' time and
beginning to understand the poverty and suffering of the lower classes
which formed the vast majority of the population. Occupied by a foreign
power, exploited by the imperial rule through taxation and land
appropriation, there was a brewing cauldron of frustration and anger. And,
where was god? What if the promises of prophets of a new creation, of a
time of prosperity and peace - the shalom of the peaceable Kingdom when
swords and spears would be changed into implements of agriculture?
Where was God? When would this awful suffering cease?
Is it not a natural human question and normal human response? Why, O Lord,
why? How long, O God, how long?" Well, one answer - a common one found in
the Hebrew prophets was that Israel was suffering for its sin. That is how
Jeremiah explained the Babylonian Exile. I could cite passage after passage from
the prophetic book - You have sinned; God is punishing. But, why should the
righteous suffer? Another solution must be found. And thus the rise of the idea
that the world was in the grip of an evil power. For the time being, God was
allowing Satan to hold sway creating havoc in history, the suffering that was
everywhere. But God would not always remain passive. God would act. God
would intervene.
This was the origin of Apocalypticism - Apocalypse - meaning "unveiling" or
"revelation." God would intervene in history; God's judgment and grace would be
unveiled or revealed. In the cauldron of suffering and discontent, there was the
feverish expectation of the exploited and suffering masses when John the Baptist
preached. And John was not the only one. There was a widespread anticipation of
God's dramatic intervention to destroy the evil one and all the agents of
oppression and darkness and the vindication and salvation of the suffering
righteous.
We noted John's preaching of the coming Kingdom in the last sermon - God
would wreak vengeance on the enemies and oppressors of God's people, whether
foreign agents or native collaborators. This was the angry God of Isaiah 34, a God
whose cup of wrath was filled up, ready to overflow in burning judgment.
Jesus came to John to be baptized. Jesus was caught up in the Baptist movement,
himself baptizing down the river a piece. After a time, he distanced himself from
John and his preaching took on a different note - a grace note.
There is a wonderful debate going on in the circle of historical Jesus scholarship
as to whether Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet like John or not. We will have
that issue debated here next March when Dom Crossan and Amy-Jill Levine
discuss Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. But, whether or to what degree Jesus
© Grand Valley State University
�A Larger Hope
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
was part of the apocalyptic expectation, this would seem to be certain - Jesus was
dealing with earth, not heaven, this life, not some life to come, concrete, down to
earth human existence, not some spiritual Kingdom in another dimension.
Jesus left John the Baptist because he pointed to an alternative vision of God and
called for an alternative community. Luke writes his Gospel with an opening
scene of Jesus' ministry in which he announces what he is about.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring
good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to
proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
John's hope was an apocalyptic hope of imminent judgment and salvation from
beyond. For Jesus, that was a hope too narrow. I used the word tribal last week.
Religion tends to become tribal - our God looking after our well-being and
destroying our enemies. God on our side. God favoring and saving us. God giving
us the truth, the way to salvation: others need not apply.
For Jesus, that was a hope too narrow. Jesus embodied a larger hope. In his
home synagogue in Nazareth, they were not happy with the expansiveness of his
vision and hope. He pointed to an Elijah story where the Sidonian widow was
provided for in famine, and the Elisha story where the Syrian Naaman was healed
of his leprosy, thus pointing to the broader swath of God's care and concern. The
hometown folk were not happy about God's wider grace and their anger rose
against Jesus.
Jesus lived by and offered a larger hope from which no one was excluded. There
were no outcasts in Jesus' purview. He pointed to a God whose grace was of
expansive embrace.
But, the grace he offered was the grace that created human dignity and worth to
people who had lost their dignity and all hope. The Kingdom is in the midst of
you, he told them. This is the year of the Lord's favor. To the poor, the blind and
the lame, he brought the Good News of God's presence and called the people to
care for one another.
This was an appeal to the traditional covenantal life of Isaiah, to community of
mutual respect and care.
And the life to which Jesus called the people was revolutionary in its impact. He
touched the anger, frustration and despair of the people, but in a positive way of
giving them dignity and solidarity before their oppressors - the covenant ideal of
Israel where God was King alone and the people lived in covenant community.
That was Jesus' larger hope - a hope that embraced all.
© Grand Valley State University
�A Larger Hope
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
This was the Kingdom that was already present for Jesus, in the towns and
villages, if only people recognized its sanctity and reoriented their community
accordingly - They were poor, oppressed, fragmented. They were disoriented and
dislocated. They had lost hope and they forgot how to live in community. Jesus
called them to remember who they were and to reclaim their lives as children of
God. He called for an alternative community, an alternative society.
Jesus was not a revolutionary of the type that was certainly present -the guerilla
bands that roamed the Palestinian hills, the Zealots that pressed for armed
conflict against Rome - and eventually in revolt brought out the legions of Rome
that destroyed Jewishness in 70 C.E.
But Jesus was revolutionary in calling for the transformation of human society.
This is why he was proved too dangerous to let live. This is why he was crucified.
That he was revolutionary has been proved in our own time by those who learned
civil disobedience from him.
First of all, people must be given a sense of themselves - their dignity and worth
as human beings, as children of God. Then they can resist, non-violently, passive
resistance, civil disobedience, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, the South African
Black Church - all examples of Jesus' Way.
Jesus was not tribal. He had not a hope too narrow. Jesus had a larger hope for
human transformation in this down-to-earth concrete reality of history. Jesus
gave people hope for the transformation of their life here and now.
That is a striking fact. Do you at all sense how revolutionary and radical that is? It
should give us pause.
Who is Caesar? Who is Herod? Who are the Priests and Sanhedrin? Who has the
legions and the swords?
Who are the poor whom Jesus called to awareness of their human dignity and
thus to their birthright as children of God?
How are we doing as the Millennium turns? We are the rich and powerful. Jesus
was engaged with concrete human social, economic, and religious conditions.
Then, can we honestly make him into a savior of a spiritual Kingdom whose issue
is heaven?
Wherein lies the hope for the world? Will it not call for transformation - social,
political, economic? The world could be transformed - what if the vision was
caught not by the poor and powerless, but by the rich and famous?
I can't think about it too long and hard. I would have to change. Better simply to
go once more to Bethlehem and see him as God's gift to save us from our sins and
bring us to heaven - And forget about what he was really about.
© Grand Valley State University
�A Larger Hope
Richard A. Rhem
© Grand Valley State University
Page 6
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ef97da966eca29767cef3f84008e9752.mp3
dab6cf4bdefc5177b69f3adcc2fdbe2a
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
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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
Type
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Sound
Text
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KII-01
Coverage
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1981-2014
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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
Advent IV
Series
Memory and Hope
Scripture Text
Micah 5:1-5, Luke 4:16-30
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-19991220
Date
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1999-12-20
Title
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A Larger Hope
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Sound
Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on December 20, 1999 entitled "A Larger Hope", as part of the series "Memory and Hope", on the occasion of Advent IV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Micah 5:1-5, Luke 4:16-30.
Advent
Community of Grace
Inclusive Grace
Transformation
-
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a2740ad6dadda5118f5d10c8f69ced69
PDF Text
Text
You Can’t Fight It, Paul
From the series: Christian Faith: Interpretations of Experience
Text: Acts 9:4; Acts 26:14, 19
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Eastertide, April 26, 1998
Transcription of the spoken sermon
The Christian faith is one of the great world religions, flowing out of the faith
tradition of Israel and developing from the event of Jesus Christ, as Israel’s faith
tradition, following the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem in 77 CE,
developed along the lines of Rabbinic Judaism. Out of the First Century, then,
two religious traditions developed, both rooted in the Hebrew Scriptures, or, as
the church has traditionally referred to them, the Old Testament.
Religions are rooted in a foundational experience of a person or a people in which
some profound insight overwhelms the subjects of the experience, creating a
whole new perspective on the nature of things: on God, on the meaning of being
human, on the purpose of life. One is transformed and one’s life is reorganized
around that life-changing experience. We can speak of a paradigm shift - some
insight, some discovery throws everything up in the air and a whole new
configuration of reality emerges.
This happens in the natural sciences; it happens in religious understanding.
Perhaps it is most accurate to speak of a foundational experience that effects a
radical perceptual shift.
This happens all the time to all of us in all sorts of human understanding in the
spectrum of human knowledge. Some years ago there was a film with a title
something like, "You Are What You Were When." The powerful impacting events
that we experience during adolescence will shape us for a lifetime. Only a
significant emotional experience later can alter our perception of reality and our
instinctive responses to life.
The Stock Market Crash of 1929 - the experience of the great wars of this century,
the Holocaust.
On an individual scale, this happens to us all - experience and the emotional
response to concrete experiences form our perception of reality. On the larger
canvas of the human story, we see the same thing - A foundational experience
finds expression in a story using images, symbol, metaphor; the story eventually
© Grand Valley State University
�You Can’t Fight It, Paul
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
is probed for its meaning and that meaning is given conceptual expression. We
have an intellectual systematic account of reality on the basis of the foundational
experience.
Moses leads a slave band out of Egypt to freedom - the Exodus becomes the
foundational event of Israel.
The Jewish teacher and prophet, Jesus of Nazareth, is crucified by Imperial
Rome and his followers despair because they had hoped through him God would
bring to consummation God’s reign and then one day, preparing to take up again
the fishing trade in Galilee, Peter experiences Jesus as a living presence and he is
transformed by that experience, declaring, "The Lord is risen."
If such an experience had been limited to the immediate followers of Jesus, all
Jewish, all hoping for God’s final visitation to God’s people Israel, there would
perhaps have been an ongoing Jesus Jewish movement - as there was for a
century or two, but there would probably not have emerged what we know as the
Christian church. To understand that phenomenon into which we have entered,
we must move to Paul, or as he is named in his first appearances in Acts, Saul.
Now we are dealing not with a Galilean peasant nor with a disciple of Jesus, but
with a well educated, well traveled member of the strictest of the Jewish
groupings, the Pharisees - the group who was serious in its observance of Jewish
religious practices, strictly following the prescriptions of Torah.
Furthermore, we are dealing not with a Pharisee who was open to Jesus as was,
for example, Gamaliel or Nicodemus. Rather, we are dealing with one who is in
the employ of the High Priestly establishment, committed to the stamping out of
the movement that gathered around Jesus, the movement called People of the
Way.
The story of Paul’s revelatory experience is familiar enough. We read Luke’s
account in Acts 19. Luke sees this experience as so critical to the development of
the Christian religion that he repeats the story twice more, in chapter 22 of Acts
and chapter 26.
We in the Christian church speak without thinking of the conversion of Saul or
Paul. But this was not a conversion from one God to another or even from one
religion to another. Paul was born a Jew and died a Jew and never claimed to be
anything else and consistently declared the God of Israel to be God alone, Creator
of all and ultimate Goal of all. Paul was not a convert to a new religion; rather, he
experienced a radical perceptual shift Jesus was indeed God’s anointed one whose death on the cross was the means by
which God effected reconciliation with humankind. Further, God had raised
Jesus from the dead and destined Paul to declare this reality of reconciliation to
the Gentiles, the nations beyond the bounds of Israel.
© Grand Valley State University
�You Can’t Fight It, Paul
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
I cannot here recount the whole story of Paul’s missionary journeys, the tension
created with the Jewish Jesus Movement led by Peter and James, the brother of
Jesus at Jerusalem, and the compromise they reached. I want, rather, to focus on
the interpretive shift that Paul effected on the basis of his experience of being
encountered by the Risen Lord.
Paul had a vision, a revelation, an unveiling. It was a transformation experience
that resulted in new insight and a radical perceptual shift - out of it came the
Christian movement, the Christian church and the Christian tradition.
The shift from the performance principle - righteousness through obedience to
the Law or Torah, observance as a way of life - to the reality of grace: present
existence as a new creation marked by confidence that God has given us our life
as sheer gift to be lived in freedom with joy and peace in loving community. One
enters the reality of the people of God by faith - confidence that this is so. This
was a new conception of the nature of religion - response of gratitude for the gift
of life. Thus, religious observance is because of, not in order to....
A second insight: God has elected not only Israel and not Israel as a biological,
historical people, but also in Christ, the Gentiles, the nations. This was a radical
departure from the traditional conception of Israel as God’s elect.
But, so far, we might agree that all of this is interesting and does explain the
eventual break between Judaism and the Christian church. But, is the radical
perceptual shift effected in and through Paul the last word?
E. A. Sanders raises the question, what if Paul had lived beyond the first
generation of the Jesus movement, or, what if he could have seen out 2000 years
that his apocalyptic scheme of the near end of the age would not happen? We
know what he thought in his own context: the only way to be saved was through
faith in Jesus Christ for both Jew and Gentile.
But, what if he saw from our historical perspective, the Christian tradition, the
continuing Jewish tradition and a world of other faiths - would he still claim
salvation through Jesus Christ alone? Sanders says he personally would vote
against such a claim in any ecclesiastical assembly today and he suspects so
would Paul.
Paul, in Romans, near the end of his career wrestled with the native convictions
he held - that God had chosen Israel and would be faithful to that election of
grace; yet, in his revelation Paul sees access to God by grace through faith in
Jesus Christ, the one largely rejected by the "Elect People," Paul’s brothers and
sisters. There was conflict in Paul, tension. He struggled with this problem in
Romans 9-11, concluding that somehow the Gentiles would be included by grace
through faith in Jesus Christ and, mysteriously, Israel too would be included.
Israel’s large-scale rejection of Paul’s Gospel distressed him; yet he could not
simply write them off.
© Grand Valley State University
�You Can’t Fight It, Paul
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
I am finally encouraged by the confusion of the great Apostle. I like a questioning
Paul. It gives me courage. Paul entered into a present experience of God’s grace
giving him freedom, joy, peace and love. That was his great discovery and he
witnessed to it with passion. In regard to God’s timetable in history, he was
wrong. The present age did not come to an end. The Messiah, the Risen Lord, did
not return in clouds of glory. So, obviously, there were chapters yet to be written
about which the Apostle had no clue. Nor do we.
But, the present possibility of resurrection life, life as sheer gift to be received
with gratitude and lived with wonder - about that the Apostle was quite right - it
is the continuing present possibility for all who have eyes to see it and mind and
hearts open to it.
And, is that not enough - life as gift, sheer gift, the gift of God Whose intention
was revealed in the face of the Crucified, who lives, who is present with us in the
ongoing journey of faith in the adventure of life?
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/329ad83de6f1219e845df9d3fbf957be.mp3
ca726f061c2fb34ff2d90c1137f38730
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
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
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<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
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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
Eastertide III
Series
Christian Faith: Interpreting an Experience
Scripture Text
Acts 9:4, Acts 26:14, 19
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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KII-01_RA-0-19980426
Date
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1998-04-26
Title
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You Can't Fight It, Paul
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 April 26, 1998 entitled "You Can't Fight It, Paul", as part of the series "Christian Faith: Interpreting an Experience", on the occasion of Eastertide III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Acts 9:4, Acts 26:14, 19.
Nature of Religion
Paradigm Shift
Transformation
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Authentication
From the series: The Human Face of God
Text: Luke 24:5; Philippians 2:11
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Easter, April 12, 1998
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Well, we made it once again; we have paid our dues, walked through the
darkness, remembered the passion and pain of Jesus, lingered at least briefly at
the cross and now, thank God, we’ve emerged on the other side. A new world
dawns this Easter morn. The alleluias return, the thrill of triumph, unalloyed joy
permeates our being, all is well, life is good. Spring is here.
Thank God it’s over - Lent, that is, the minor-keyed music, the extinguishing of
light, the disconcerting "My God, my God, why ..."
Were I a decent pastor, I would let you off the hook, let you cut loose, ring bells,
shout Alleluias, let you have at least this day for total triumph, celebration, and
release.
But, for a few moments, let me ask you to reflect on the meaning of the stark
contrast between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
There were only a handful of you here Friday noon, so let me picture it for you. In
fact, let me begin with Thursday evening. The meal shared, the altar stripped, the
sanctuary darkened, the choir lined the brick walls with tiny, illuminated crosses:
I then took the Paschal Candle, walked it out, snuffed it out, using the words with
which John tells the story as Judas was dismissed from the Last Supper, "It was
night."
Friday, the altar stripped, the old wooden cross leaned against the table draped in
black by Cathy Weideman who waited at the cross as a few pilgrims straggled in.
Then as Greg Martin sang, "Were You There?" she danced in vivid portrayal of
the nailing to the tree, the laying in the tomb. In a darkened sanctuary, the Seven
Words from the cross were read, prayers following, concluding with the somber
tolling of the bell.
That’s all - we heard the words again, "My God, why." "It is finished." "Into thy
hands ..."
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And now, look at us - White replacing black, flowers in resplendent beauty, joyful
anthems, hymns resonate with joy.
You know this; it’s all familiar. Some of you have actually experienced it again
right here in these past days. Most of you have had at least some exposure to it
through the worship of the season of Lent. But, I want you to think about it for a
moment.
Darkness to Light
Despair to Hope
Death to Life.
That is the central paradigm of the Christian faith, is it not? In the appointments
of the sanctuary, the mood of the music, the tone of the liturgy, the stark contrast
is brought to expression.
Now, here is a question for you: What is the relationship of Lent to Easter, of the
darkness to the light, of Good Friday to Easter Sunday?
For most of my life and ministry, this is how I would have answered the question:
The human family, alienated from God through disobedience, was lost in
darkness, destined to eternal death. God sent Jesus to live among us, to do what
we failed to do.
As Paul in Phil. 2 writes,
Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with
God as something to be exploited ...
That was Adam’s problem, who stands for us all - created in the image of God, he
asserted himself rather than humble himself as befits the creature before the
Creation.
Jesus perfectly obeyed, took upon himself the sins of the world, endured God’s
just judgment on the cross, and was raised by God as a sign that the penalty for
human guilt was paid in full; therefore, once destined for death, now by faith in
Jesus Christ we are destined for life.
It happened once for all, back there - The darkness was engaged, defeated. This is
now an Easter world. Therefore, the bare altar and darkened sanctuary, sign of
the judgment of God borne by Jesus, become the brightness of Easter morning
with new Easter fire. To say it in other words - Jesus’ death was about atoning for
human sin, absorbing human punishment, effecting salvation, life now and
forever.
That is the classic salvation myth we have inherited from the Christian tradition.
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A new age dawned.
A new world was born.
Death is overcome; heaven is won.
Therefore, we remember the darkness of his abandonment on Good Friday,
hardly able to wait to get beyond it to the celebration of this happy morning.
But, something doesn’t seem to fit with the manner in which we have observed
Lent. The focus has been The Human Face of God. We have followed the life of
Jesus from his baptism, his call and claim, his identity as the Suffering Servant,
the clarity of his vision to portray an alternative world - a world marked by grace,
including all and excluding none, a world marked by compassion, justice and
non-violence. In a word, Jesus was about the mending of creation, the shaping of
a different kind of society, about the transformation of this world, this good
earth, this present concrete human experience.
If that focus is true to the real Jesus, then one might wonder what all the shouting
is about because it doesn’t seem that much has changed in 2000 years. In the
course of the Lenten messages, I have had occasion to point out the parallel
between Jesus weeping over Jerusalem and contemporary voices weeping over
Jerusalem as Israel prepares to celebrate 50 years of statehood. I have pointed to
figures within our own historical experience who, following the way of Jesus,
have suffered the same fate - Gandhi, Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, to
mention only three.
Let me suggest that we have declared victory too soon. We have grasped eagerly
on the resurrection of Jesus as a victory that is ours to celebrate, as though the
battle’s o’er, the victory won, when, in reality, the battle is not over and the
victory has not been won.
Sorry to ruin your Easter, but if I would be a faithful servant of the Word of God
and honest with the human condition, I must tell you the old world has not
changed.
This is not an Easter world; it is rather very much still a Good Friday world. To
deny that is to live in denial. The only way to avoid that conclusion is to stick with
the old evangelical explanation that Jesus was about securing personal
forgiveness and promises of heaven through his death and resurrection. But, I
don’t know how one can fail to recognize that Jesus was about something much
larger, about the transformation of the world, no less.
So, what, then - is there nothing to celebrate? Is there no reason for singing an
Easter song? Is there really no Good News?
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There is good news. It is really good news, given an honest appraisal of the world
as a continuing Good Friday world.
The Good News is that our history marked by Good Friday is not the whole
story; it is part of something larger, the dimensions of which we cannot conceive
and from beyond history, beyond the limits of our Good Friday world, the way of
Jesus was confirmed as authentic, reflecting the way through one in the big
picture.
I came across a tribute to a biblical theologian who died December 30 of last year.
John Howard Yoder was a Mennonite, people whose roots lie in the Netherlands
in the first part of the 16th century. They were part of the radical Reformation;
that is, they went further in their reforms than Luther and Calvin. A
distinguishing mark is non-violence. They are pacifist, living in simplicity, similar
to the Amish.
In Sarasota, Florida, in February, we walked out on the beach in bright sunshine
with a great variety of human flesh exposed to the sun’s rays. There sat a half
dozen or so folk, full-clad, all in black, on lawn chairs, on the beach. They were
Mennonites, appearing so out of place.
John Howard Yoder was an excellent scholar. He served for a time at Notre
Dame. His most popular work was entitled The Politics of Jesus - a politics very
much as we have observed in our Lenten focus. In the piece, in memory of John
Howard Yoder, was this paragraph appearing near the end of that work:
The key to the obedience of God’s people is not their effectiveness but their
patience. The triumph of the right is assured not by the might that comes
to the aid of the right, which is of course the justification of the use of
violence and the other kinds of power in every human conflict; the
triumph of the right, although it is assured, is sure because of the power of
the resurrection and not because of any calculation of causes and effects,
nor because of the inherently greater strength of the good guys. The
relationship between the obedience of God’s people and the triumph of
God’s cause is not a relationship of cause and effect but one of cross and
resurrection.
Let me see if I can express Yoder’s point and thus express what I am claiming is
the really good news of Easter. Yoder is saying that the triumph of right is
assured. But that triumph will not be the result of the obedience of God’s people
as cause and effect.
The key to obedience is not effectiveness, it is patience, or persistence - the
willingness of following a way that never has and never will win the world. It is a
patient persistence in the embodying of the life of the Kingdom of God in the
midst of this world, which always manages to crucify such embodiment. The end
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of obedience is the cross. Resurrection is God’s action beyond the cross, beyond
history.
But the victory is assured. How can I believe that? Because - a quote from Yoder,
"The people who bear the crosses are working with the grain of the
universe."
I find that a fascinating statement. I have always claimed that the way of Jesus
cut against the grain of our natural inclination. And it does. The call of the way of
Jesus brings us into conflict with the way of the world, with the way of our
natural I inclination. But, here’s the point:
The way of Jesus goes with the grain of the universe. From beyond history comes
the power of resurrection. Authentication is God’s act after the Good Friday
world has worked its worst. We want to pull Easter into history. We want victory
now. We want to win now. But, we won’t to the extent we follow the way of Jesus.
It is not ours to win; it is ours patiently to live out the way of Jesus.
That will mean going against the grain of every natural drive and compulsion, but
it will be going with the grain of the universe - and it will count; it will count with
God. And the end will be transformation. To the extent that we would do that
seriously, we would stick out as sharply as Mennonites on lawn chairs, completely
covered in black, sunning ourselves amidst the company of nearly nude sun
worshipers.
Let me put this question to you: If Jesus’ death and resurrection were not the
effecting of your personal salvation as has been so commonly claimed in the
church, would you still follow Jesus?
What if we simply bracket the question of our personal forgiveness and assurance
of salvation - not denying that, but simply putting that to one side for a moment,
would you still follow Jesus because you really believed his way is the only way
the creation can be mended and the world transformed?
Again - apart from questions of salvation, heaven when you die, etc., apart from
that - do you believe Jesus’ way of being and doing is God’s way? If it got you a
noose, a bullet and surely a cross, are you so gripped by Jesus that you would
follow his way?
I could on this day simply let all the stops be pulled out, simply cut loose, claim
the victory. I suspect there is even some place for that. But, is that really honest?
Does that really prepare you to go back into a Good Friday world? Is it not more
honest for me to tell you that following Jesus’s way will meet the same opposition
today and have the same consequences today as then?
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So then, if you are really inwardly compelled to walk that way in fear and
trembling, partially, falteringly, you will not be disappointed by lack of success or
startled by opposition.
Why would one do it? Why did Jesus? or Bonhoeffer?
Because it is right, it is true - and to obey what one is convinced is right and true
is to be free, is to live, is to experience resurrection now, and the eternal
brightness of God finally. It is to be working with the grain of the universe.
Resurrection is a present freedom of spirit and hope for the dawning of Light
Eternal. It is living from inside out, true to one’s vision, finding hope in the
resurrection of Jesus as sign from God of ultimate authentication. When one
reaches that state of integrity of vision and life, one has moved beyond the
possibility of disappointment or defeat. That is life eternal.
Jesus is Lord to the glory of God.
That was, they say, the earliest Christian creed. Jesus is Lord. That was the
confession that flowed out of Good Friday darkness and the dawning
consciousness of Easter light.
Jesus is Lord! Kurios Jesus!
The whole world shouted back,
No way!
Caesar is Lord! Kurios Caesar!
Jesus is dead!
But, a few followers knew better "The Lord is risen!," they cried. Jesus is Lord!
Jesus’ way authenticated in a Good Friday world by those whose lives reflect that
way, living with the grain of the universe, trusting God that history’s final
darkness is not final; that the darkness will not forever suppress the light, but
finally yield to the brightness of Light Eternal.
The Lord is risen.
Jesus is Lord!
That is the good news in a Good Friday world.
History reels on its violent, drunken drive for power and glory toward death. But,
history is not the last word. The crucified lives. Jesus is Lord. Therefore, in this
Good Friday world strewn with crosses of the gentle ones, there is reason to hope
and to keep on loving, gracing, caring - forgiving, for from beyond history’s limits
dawns the Easter world.
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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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Interfaith worship
Sermons
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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Event
Easter
Series
The Human Face of God
Scripture Text
Luke 24:5, Philippians 2:11
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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1998-04-12
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Authentication
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University
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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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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on April 12, 1998 entitled "Authentication", as part of the series "The Human Face of God", on the occasion of Easter, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Luke 24:5, Philippians 2:11.
Easter
Grain of the Universe
Non-violence
Transformation
Way of Jesus
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PDF Text
Text
It’s So Simple, Once You See It
Ephesians 3; Matthew 2
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Season of Epiphany, January 11, 1998
Transcription of the spoken sermon, published in a collection of sermons,
Re-Imagining The Faith by Richard A. Rhem (2004)
The season is Epiphany, the season of manifestation, Jesus manifest to the
nations. The symbol is the star which led the Magi to the Christ child, where they
worshiped and offered gifts. The heart of the season’s truth is that the God of
Israel is God alone, Creator of the cosmos whose embrace is as wide as the whole
world; that what was embodied in Jesus, and came to expression in his life, was
the moment when the particular revelation of God to Israel broke out to enlighten
all humankind.
That such should occur was clearly a theme in Israel’s prophetic tradition.
Indeed, the calling of Abraham and Sarah was a particular call with a universal
purpose–that all nations would be blessed within the Covenant of Grace intended
for all peoples. The movement to the universal that occurred in Jesus was Paul’s
great insight–given to him, he claimed, by revelation from the resurrected Christ.
I cannot take you to the story of his “conversion” as he tells it in the first chapter
of Galatians or as Luke records it three times in the Book of Acts, but clearly the
consequences of his heavenly vision were his tireless efforts to bring the good
news that happened in Jesus to the ancient world.
Let me explain here that the reason the word conversion is in quotation marks is
to indicate that the popular view and easy assumption that Paul “converted” from
Judaism to Christianity is unfounded. Like Jesus, Paul was born a Jew and died a
Jew. The God of Israel is the only God Paul ever knew or worshiped. What
happened to Paul was not conversion from one world religion to another.
Actually, Christianity as we know it did not exist in Paul’s time, although a strong
case can be made for the claim that Paul was the founder of Christianity. But, out
of his profound encounter with the risen Christ in the vision on the Damascus
road, Paul was unintentionally drawing out the implications of Israel’s faith.
Paul’s moment of revelation was not a rejection of Judaism. Rather, he was
coming to terms with its most far-reaching implications: Yahweh was not a tribal
deity. Yahweh was God alone, Creator of the Cosmos, the One who enlivened all
things living. Out of his revelatory experience, Paul–without consulting the
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disciples in Jerusalem–went alone to Arabia for three years, trying to make sense
of his faith tradition and his encounter with the Risen One.
In a fascinating study, the English writer A. N. Wilson sets the context for Paul’s
visionary experience. Wilson says that Paul was part of the Temple police on his
way to Damascus to arrest the followers of Jesus. Was Paul already part of the
Temple police when Jesus was arrested? Was he even involved?
Certainly Paul knew the horror of crucifixion, and certainly he was party to the
violence of religious persecution. And, while on another mission of such violence,
he sees a light–a blinding light. He hears a voice which raises the haunting
question, “Why are you persecuting me?”
Wilson paints a picture of the world of Judaism in Paul’s day, telling us that the
Temple was magnificent, one of Herod’s great building projects. People from the
ancient world came to view its splendor. Yet, Herod was an Arab, purportedly a
convert to Judaism, but not a native Israelite, and the financing came from
Roman imperial funds. Wilson writes:
There it was–a splendid Temple set on the Holy Mountain with spacious
courts and colonnaded areas. Yet, the inner sanctum, the Holy of Holies,
could not be entered by any non-Jew.
Here was the conflict, the contradiction: Israel was to be a beacon, a light to the
nations, yet marked off its inner sanctuary as exclusive territory.
And the followers of the Way were, like Paul, Jews. Now the conflict was not only
between the insider Jew and the outsider Gentile, but within the Jewish
community itself–exclusion, persecution, violence. And he, Saul, is a part of it, on
his way to perpetrate more violence when he sees a blinding light and hears a
voice: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”
Wilson uses creative imagination in setting the context for Paul’s vision, but not
without good biblical data.
The consequence of that encounter was not that Paul became a Christian. It was,
however, a transforming moment when he became convinced that Jesus was the
Christ–that is, the Messiah–and that, in Jesus, God was making evident what was
always true: that God embraced Jew and Gentile and the purpose of God’s
revelation to the Jews was to bring the light of God’s love and grace to all.
That was Paul’s realization consequent upon the revelation. That is expressed
nowhere so succinctly as in the Letter to the Ephesians. What does Paul
understand his mission to be? “To make everyone see what is the plan of the
secret hidden for ages in God who created all things.”
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To make everyone see. The word in the Greek is photizo. From it comes our word
photo; a photo is the exposure of a film to light. Paul’s mission is to proclaim “the
light–becoming of the secret.”
And the secret? Verse 6: “that is, the Gentiles (the nations, in Greek the ethnai,
from which we get ethnic) have become fellow heirs, members of the same body,
and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.”
The word mysterion can be translated as mystery or secret. Paul says it was a
secret hidden in God throughout the ages, but now made manifest. Now, Paul
claims, the secret is out.
The secret revealed is that the outsider has been included together with the
insider in God’s love and Messiah’s realm. For Paul, this was not simply a piece of
intellectual information, it was a life-transforming truth and a transforming
religious insight.
Now Paul sees something bigger than peace among rival Jewish factors.
Suddenly, or gradually perhaps, the lights come on for Paul. Not only is the
intramural conflict within Judaism wrong, so is the Jewish exclusion of the
Gentile wrong, at least now that light has dawned in Jesus. Now God has revealed
in Jesus what was always in God’s heart - love for all humankind.
Jesus brought peace. Jesus broke down the wall that separates. Jesus did away
with the hostility. Now Jew and Gentile were made one new humanity. Now the
community of Jew and Gentile would result in worship offered to God by Jew and
Gentile alike, bringing peace to the world.
Understand: here Paul moves out alone. Now he does battle on two fronts.
Against him is the Jewish establishment, which had employed him, and the
Jewish followers of Jesus who were not at all ready to open the doors to the
Gentiles.
Paul’s revelation made him a visionary. There was no rejection of Judaism. Paul
remained a Jew, but was rejected by his native faith. And he was contradicted
even by those who before him believed Jesus was the Messiah, for he saw
something more radical in Jesus than did James or Peter. Paul saw in the
revelation of God in Jesus Christ a Divine grace that embraced the whole human
family.
Following the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 C.E.,
only Rabbinic Judaism, the Pharisaic Party, survived and formed the basis for
ongoing Jewish faith and life. Gradually the parochial Jewish Jesus movement
died out. Because Paul had brought the good news of the God of Israel revealed in
Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, there emerged the Christian Church through which
we are included.
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Paul’s mission, he writes, was to make everyone see the “light- becoming” of the
secret that there is one God and one human family loved by God and thus, one
family called to peace, to community. He was consumed by the passion of his
insight. Listen to his prayer:
I bow my knees before the Father from whom every family in heaven and
on earth takes its name. ... That you may be strengthened in your inner
being with power through his Spirit, that Christ may dwell in your hearts
through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. ... That you
may comprehend with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and
height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses
knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
And Paul is not through; such ecstasy of imagination brings him to doxology:
…to the praise of the God who by the power at work within us is able to
accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine–to God
be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus.
One cannot read those words, I think, without being caught up in the surprising
wonder of the vision that animated the apostle. He has no words sufficient to
articulate the fiery passion that would burst his mind and heart.
Remember who he is: a Temple policeman, committed to violence in the name of
the religious institution, who in a moment of blinding insight and years of
subsequent reflection sees the big picture. Paul sees the absurdity of claiming the
God of Israel to be God alone, Creator of cosmos, and then acting as though that
God was a tribal deity, mean-spirited, petty and narrowly limited in the offer of
love and grace. Suddenly for Paul, the light goes on, the truth dawns in him; he
sees! And his life from that realization was passionately poured out in the
proclaiming of God’s grace in Jesus Christ for the whole human family.
On the threshold of the Third Millennium, look at our world: still marked by
exclusionary claims of competing religions and religious institutions; still bathed
in violence fueled by religion; still crippled by divisions kept alive by petty
meanness and narrowness.
Look at the church in general, to say nothing of the perilous situation of
competing religions. The church is divided and threatened, marked more by
insecurity and threat than by confident joy; by shutting out rather than drawing
in; by creating fear rather than giving confidence; by judgment rather than grace;
by shrill claims rather than calming assurance.
Thank God we’ve discovered something together here. We do not have easy
answers, but we are discovering the real questions. We have not arrived, but we
are a people on the way. We are not morally beyond reproach, but we know the
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grace of forgiveness. We do not love fully or perfectly, but we have tasted the
humanizing quality of loving the other. We have not the full spectrum of the
human family represented here, but we are learning the enrichment of embracing
the stranger.
We have been marked for a quarter century by a theology of grace that is
expressive of God’s love in action, inviting, embracing, healing. We have been
open to all and have excluded none that sought community here. That theology of
grace has worked on us, changing us, making us sensitive to a growing number of
those traditionally outside our community.
Jewish-Christian dialogue has opened us to the enrichment and beauty of the
Jewish community. Sensitivity to the claims of women has opened us to an
awareness of how injustice has marked us in the matter of gender. Breakthroughs
in the understanding of sexual orientation have enabled us to stand against the
exclusion and condemnation of persons of homosexual orientation. And we have
only just begun. But begun we have, by God’s grace.
Paul’s whole being throbbed with passion that could hardly find expression once
he saw it. “The secret is out,” he said. No more are there outsiders and insiders;
the whole human family takes its name from the one God who loves all and
excludes none.
And I pray you will begin to comprehend, to be strengthened in your inner being,
rooted and grounded in love.
“My whole life,” writes the apostle, “is a mission to make everyone see, to bring to
light the secret now made manifest.”
Ah, dear people, don’t you see it? God give us Epiphany eyes to see, to see!
It’s so simple, once you see it!
Reference:
A. N. Wilson. Paul: The Mind of the Apostle. W. W. Norton & Co., 1998.
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<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
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
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Event
Epiphany I
Scripture Text
Ephesians 3, Matthew 2
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
A.N. Wilson. Paul: The Mind of the Apostle, 1998.
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KII-01_RA-0-19980111
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It is So Simple, Once You See It
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Richard A. Rhem
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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>
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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 11, 1998 entitled "It is So Simple, Once You See It", on the occasion of Epiphany I, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Ephesians 3, Matthew 2.
Inclusive Grace
Theology of Grace
Transformation
-
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PDF Text
Text
An Ancient Dreamer
From the Advent series: Songs of Liberation
Text: Isaiah 11:9; John 1:14
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Advent I, December 7, 1997
Transcription of the spoken sermon
It is Advent again and so we march out those same familiar passages of scripture.
They are wonderful passages; we celebrate the Christian Year thus annually. We
come around the cycle and the themes surface once again, and there is a
familiarity about those prophetic scriptures and gospel lessons. In this Advent
season, we’re going to be looking at the Songs of Liberation. Subsequently, we
will be taking another look at Mary’s marvelous "Magnificat," Zachariah’s song of
delight at the birth of John the Baptist, but today, "The Ancient Dreamer," the
prophet Isaiah, who is representative of that prophetic vision that dreamed of a
world other than it is, of a different human condition, of a transformed human
society, of the kingdom of God, of Shalom on earth, of a totally transformed
human situation. We hear the prophetic words, "From the stump of Jesse,"
seemingly just a dead stump, comes a sprout, and that sprout blossoms forth and
becomes the king anointed with Spirit or a Christ, a Messiah, one who judges, not
according to appearance or what people are saying, but according to truth, who
advocates for justice, who has a concern for the poor. And not only is the whole
social situation transformed, but nature itself is transformed. The wolf and the
lamb lie down together and all of the nature red in tooth and claw is domesticated
and docile in a beautiful, harmonious totality - the Shalom of God.
The Ancient Dreamer paints the picture and, representative as he was of that
poor and oppressed people, it was the longing and the yearning for things to be
different than they were. We’re going to look at the Songs of Liberation once
again this Advent season, but this morning I’m going to dump in your laps a
problem. I want you to think about it with me in this Advent season. I’ll indicate,
perhaps, the direction in which I’m thinking, but what I really hope to accomplish
this morning is the rather modest task of confronting you, making you aware,
bringing to your consciousness a very serious problem, and it is this - the Songs
of Liberation that fill the prophetic scriptures of the Hebrew tradition and the
ballads of liberation that fill the Gospel, telling the story of the arrival of Jesus,
those songs of liberation are the songs of an underdog people. That must be
obvious. People in dire straits, people under oppression, people under systems of
domination, people in poverty, disease, hopelessness are still human. There’s
© Grand Valley State University
�An Ancient Dreamer
Richard A. Rhem
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something in the human heart that cries out against that. There’s that cry of the
Old Testament, "How long, O Lord, how long?" And so, it’s quite to be expected,
and we would find emanating from Israel, a minor people, marginalized, just a
pawn in the game of international power brokerage – it is rather obvious that that
people in the situation of poverty and destitution into which Jesus was born, it
was quite understandable that such a people should be marked by songs of
liberation. They were underdogs.
Now, here’s the problem for Advent. How do the Songs of Liberation emanating
from underdogs get appropriated by top dogs?
We love this season. It’s beautiful. We come into the sanctuary and there’s
something that touches us deeply - the music, the ritual, and so much about the
celebration of the Advent-Christmas season is very dear to us. We read the
scriptures. They are the prescribed ones, but fortunately, we don’t really hear
them, lest they ruin our celebration. Now, isn’t it true that we sort of take Advent
in our stride? We hear these songs of liberation, but we don’t really want them to
be realized, do we? Because if the songs of liberation, the ancient dreamer’s
dream, Mary’s Magnificat, Zachariah’s paeon of praise - if they were to be
realized, our world would be turned upside down. There would be such a radical
transformation of the human scene, that everything about our lives would be
changed. It’s one thing to sing that way when you’re an underdog, but it would be
foolhardy to sing that way when you’re the top dog.
Do you hear me? That’s easy enough, isn’t it? How does a top dog connect his or
her life to the yearning of the underdog?
Well, we’ve got a solution. We’ve pushed the dream out into the future, into the
world beyond, and we, in the meantime, read these stories, these ballads, sing
these songs, offer our prayers, and trust that nothing radical will happen until the
end when God will fix it all. Because I think we’re not really against God fixing it
right, just not right away. Eventually, eventually, let’s get everything straightened
out, the Golden Age of the future. That way, we can read the passages, say our
prayers, but carry on life pretty much business as usual. But you see what’s
happening? The biblical story isn’t connecting with the reality of our lives. The
biblical story has become a piece of our compartment labeled "Religion." But it is
not in touch with the everyday reality of our life and profession and business,
public life, society in general. And so we have a "Religious" compartment and it is
not in connection with where we really live. So, maybe we have to look at those
songs once again and revisit the scripture and see how it is that top dogs should
respond to the longing of underdogs.
Last September we had a Jewish-Christian Dialogue when Rabbi Hartman came
back to town, and the theme of his discussion with Father Richard John Neuhaus
was carefully selected - "The Word of God and Interpretive Communities." That
means that the Word of God always comes filtered through an interpretive
community. That means that there is no bare naked Word of God out there in the
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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world. The only Word of God out in the world is the Word of God filtered through
the human receiver. And then, underneath that title, "Possibilities for SelfCorrection." That biblical tradition, that Word of God as it has come down to us
through interpretive communities - what are the possibilities for self-correction?
Well, David Hartman gave the experience of the Jewish people which I think is
very helpful. He said in the scriptures we have a couple of paradigms or models of
the relationship of God to the people. The Exodus, the founding experience of
Israel, was an experience where Israel was in bondage; they cried to God; God
moved for deliverance, and they passively received the redemption of God: God’s
unilateral movement to redeem a people. That was the Exodus model, which was
the shaper of the founding of the people Israel.
But, a little later, Moses led that people to the foot of Mount Sinai and they got
the law of God and the covenant of God, and now we hear a little different tone.
Now it’s not just God acting unilaterally, but now God invites them into
responsible covenant relationship: "I have borne you on eagles’ wings and
brought you to myself. Now, therefore, if you will hear my voice and obey my
command...." And that Sinai covenant is summarized in the Book of
Deuteronomy where we have Moses’ farewell sermons as he summarizes the
experience, and what does he say in a climactic passage in the Book of
Deuteronomy?
"Look, I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose
life, that you may live."
Israel is confronted with a responsibility to respond to God, so there came that
whole tradition in Israel of the responsibility of the leadership of the people, the
rabbis, to implement the moral law of God, the active implementation of the
moral law. When that was not implemented, when that moral law was not
followed, the prophets rose up and condemned Israel and said, "You will be
judged for this."
But, David Hartman said there was another stage. It happened in the centuries
right around Jesus, Second Temple Judaism, the Talmudic period. Then the Jews
made another move. Not only did they take responsibility for the implementation
of the law as it was written, but they became the interpreters of the law. Why did
they have to interpret the law? Well, the situation had changed. History moved
on. There were new situations, new conditions.
They had to obey God, follow God, worship God in a whole new context, and so
they developed the method of interpretation that not only said what the law said,
but now they interpreted what the law meant. That was a significant move in the
life of the Jewish people, whereas, David Hartman said, the rabbis, the biblical
scholars became, as it were, the creators of the Word of God, never starting out
with something brand new but, always working with that tradition, saying, "Now
© Grand Valley State University
�An Ancient Dreamer
Richard A. Rhem
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in this new situation, this is what the Word means, thereby becoming an
interpretive community.
But, the Jewish people still considered themselves to be in exile and the
predominant, at least orthodox, opinion among the Jewish people was that they
were scattered in exile waiting for the Messiah to come. We say that Jesus was
the Messiah. But they say that Jesus was not the Messiah. Jesus could not be the
Messiah, because, when Messiah comes, the world will be made right. And the
world is still filled with war and violence and all the rest of it. Obviously, then, the
Messiah has not come.
Well, we said the Messiah came, but he came in a little different way than we
expected and he’s going to come again and fix it up.
Now, we have the Jewish people and the Christian church both looking for the
Messiah to come - we looking for a return, they looking for the first time, because
the predominant Jewish mood was, if history is going to be changed, God is going
to have to change it through God’s anointed one, the sprout out of the stump of
Jesse.
In the 19th century there were some secular Jews, not observant anymore, who
said, "You know, we’ve really had enough of prayer and fasting. We’ve really had
enough of waiting on God. Let’s do something," and the Zionist movement was
born. The Zionist movement was an innovative movement within Judaism in
which the secular Jews for the first time took responsibility for history. They
began to say it is not enough to pray and to say, "How long, O Lord, how long?"
Let us roll up our sleeves and let us make it happen. The Zionist movement of the
19th century issued in the establishment of the Jewish homeland in the 20th
century and there is Israel today, a reality.
Now, my question to you this Advent season is whether or not that secular Zionist
movement within Judaism did not perhaps get it right, and that maybe the
Christian church ought to take a lesson and begin to implement the kingdom of
God here and now? Maybe we ought to be done with that "golden age" out in the
future which God will make happen. Maybe we ought to begin to say, "Where in
the world is the Spirit of God moving now, and how can we get in the flow of that
Spirit to realize more and more the kingdom of God, here and now, right here
and now, in this world, in this place?" Maybe in Advent we ought to catch
ourselves up short and not say, "How long, O Lord, how long?" And, "O Lord,
when will be the day of his appearing?" But maybe we ought to hear, for example,
Micah in the text of a couple weeks ago, "The Lord has showed you what is
required of you and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justly, to love
mercy, and to walk humbly with your God."
Maybe we ought to take seriously what we profess when we say the Word became
flesh. Maybe we ought to get serious about the fact that God has embodied in
human flesh the eternal intention of God - "In the beginning was the word and
© Grand Valley State University
�An Ancient Dreamer
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
the word was with God and the word became flesh and dwelt among us," and in
the flesh of Jesus we have the embodiment of the intention of God. Maybe God is
saying, when we say, "How long, O Lord," maybe God is saying, "That’s my line!
Why are you crying to me? Haven’t I made it clear? Is it a problem that you don’t
understand? Is it a problem that the way is not there? What do you want further
from me? Why aren’t you doing something about it?"
My problem with celebrating Advent unreflectively, according to custom,
delightful though it is, is that we endanger ourselves in becoming very
hypocritical, because, you see, it seems to me that Advent prayers in the
sanctuary or the chapel ought to be not, "O God, bring in the day of your
kingdom," but rather, "O God, give me wisdom, discernment and courage to
affect your kingdom here and now." Perhaps our prayer and our worship ought to
be a time of waiting on the Lord to give us that inward strength and courage and
boldness to begin to act according to the way that clearly God has called us to act.
And what would happen if songs of liberation began to be sung, not only by the
underdogs, but by the top dogs? And is it possible that in our Western tradition
we have already all kinds of things going for us that ought not to be seen as some
secular developments, but perhaps as the beginning germination of the kingdom
of God within the course of history? We could name a lot of things. How about
the feminist movement, where a woman says, "Could you treat me as a human
being, fully human? Could I be treated equally?" What about our growing
understanding, as we have here, that sexual orientation is not a choice, but is a
part of the vast diversity of God’s creation? What would happen if you took into
your arms one who had felt the sting of rejection and felt her salty tears as she
knew for the first time she was included? Wouldn’t it be the beginning of the
kingdom of God? What about the dignity of the human person that we’ve come to
appreciate in the West? What about the democratic process, what about the
opportunity to worship God according to our conscience?
Those values are not just human values arrived at through secular speculation,
but I believe they are the consequence of the impetus of the Spirit of God in the
course of history. What if we got serious about taking those things seriously and
making them applicable in ever-widening circles? What if we got concerned as
top dogs to begin to implement the yearning of the underdogs of the world?
Wouldn’t that be something?
We don’t have to throw our world away. We don’t have to throw our freedoms
away. We don’t have to throw the economic miracle away; we don’t have to throw
our medical miracles away; we don’t have to undo what we have done. What we
have to do is to see that all that has been done has been done by grace and ought
to be implemented more and more for more and more, and then, I believe the
kingdom would be coming and then we would be less concerned about some
golden age and less imperiling our soul with hypocrisy by praying, "Lord, when is
© Grand Valley State University
�An Ancient Dreamer
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
the day of Your appearing?" and we would start making something happen here
and now, and maybe for the first time be honest at Advent.
There have been secular writers who have described political reality in marvelous
terms that are somewhat comparable to the ancient dreamer, and people write
them off. They call them Utopian. And when anyone comes up with a different
idea of another world and the way it could be, they could easily be written off as
Utopian. "Aaah, it’s Utopia! Why don’t you get in the real world? Get real!" You
know what Utopia means from the Greek? Literally, no place. Utopia is no place,
and the Messianic Age is no age. The Messianic Age and the ideal of Utopia is that
critique of every moment of history and by God’s grace and by God’s Spirit, we
are the people who have the resources and the power and the vision to make it
happen. When will we begin to take responsibility for our world? There have been
some interesting things written about the sextuplets as God’s miracle. That’s not
God’s miracle, that’s a medical miracle and it has questionable qualities about it;
it’s a question of medical ethics, it’s something that human beings ought to think
about, wrestle with. God isn’t going to answer that problem.
We need to stay out of the chapel and off our knees asking God to do what God
asks us to do when He says, "Why don’t you do what you ought to be doing, have
enough knowledge to be doing, enough wisdom to be doing, if you would do it
humbly, walking with your God, conscious that life is gift and you are charged
with responsibility, but have access to the Spirit so that you could change your
world?"
That is what I’d like you to think about this week.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4b4824d8aef5ba3fc0d0d31e19d90b0f.mp3
0337713fce117840ceb0a68d511a22ce
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
Advent II
Series
Songs of Liberation
Scripture Text
Isaiah 1:9, John 1:1-14
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-19971207
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1997-12-07
Title
A name given to the resource
An Ancient Dreamer
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 December 7, 1997 entitled "An Ancient Dreamer", as part of the series "Songs of Liberation", on the occasion of Advent II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 1:9, John 1:1-14.
Prophetic Voice
Shalom
Transformation
Way of Jesus
-
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bcf170f5ed80ce39571fa7eb8e404350
PDF Text
Text
Founding Vision: Floundering
Independence Day Weekend
Text: Isaiah 58:12; Romans 12:2
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
July 2, 1995
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Let me simply try to give a word that will wind together the various pieces of this
morning as we've thought about our nation, about our present situation, the
challenge before us. It seems to me that that song elicits from us that which is
deepest in us. It is the poets that draw out that which is noble, and I really believe
there is a great reservoir of good people and of good heart in the American
people, frankly in the people of the world. And I believe that it is poetry in song
that moves us in our depths and allows that which is best about us to come to
expression. It is finally the vision that will beckon us to realize that high goal of
the rule of God, moving toward the Shalom of which the prophets spoke.
Our world is in crisis, and our nation is in crisis. It is not an overstatement to
speak in our day of culture wars. But it is good for us to know that that's really
nothing new. There has always been in this land protest, taking to the streets, the
political process, the lobbying for advantage, the clamor for rights and for human
dignity. And in our particular situation today, maybe the nub of it in this nation,
in a time of transition and a lot of social unrest and turmoil, centers around
whether or not we can realize that founding vision which is floundering. Whether
or not we can realize that grand dream of our founding documents and the
passion that filled the lives of those who came to this land to create an
experiment in freedom. The question of whether or not there is an American
culture, an American dream that is rooted in reality, that is reflective of truth.
One of the great tension points in our society today can be understood under that
catch word "multiculturalism." There are voices from the margins, the minorities,
the outsiders who are saying, "Hey, you tell your history and you have an identity
which is caught up in the myth of the melting pot. But some of us never got
included. Some of us have been left out. You tell the American story, but it's not
reflective of the part that we've played. And you tell the American story and you
gloss over some of the dark shadows that lie across it." And so we have voices,
and they clamor to be heard. And then some of us who have been so steeped in
the tradition and so blessed by it grow defensive, and we grow hostile and, before
© Grand Valley State University
�Founding Vision: Floundering
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
we know it, there is a great gulf separating us. The right and the left. Us and
them. And the nation is torn with tension and strife.
But it seems to me that, on this anniversary of our nation's founding, it's
important to us to hear that word from the Lord and to see whether or not that
founding vision is not rooted deeply in the biblical tradition. I think it is. Giving
all due to the claims of those who have been excluded and have been left out and
have been hurt, nonetheless, there is a magnificent vision there, a vision of
human dignity, of human freedom, in responsible community. I think that Jon is
quite right - the government will not do it for us. And it is for the people of God to
lead the way. There was that day when God's people said, "Look, we're doing all
of our religious thing. We fast and you don't hear." And then the word of the Lord
came saying, "Take care of the poor. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, take the
homeless into your homes. Then you'll call and I will hear. Then you will seek me
and I will be found by you. Then the dawn will break upon you. Then you will
raise again the foundations of the generations. Then, then there will be streets in
which you can dwell in safety."
It's almost as though the prophet could have written yesterday rather than way
back in ancient Judah. But the point of the vision was that God is known and
experienced in the doing of justice and in the loving of mercy. And in that
founding vision, although it was not broad enough, although it was not inclusive
enough, it was nonetheless rooted in that prophetic vision that comes to us as a
gift from Israel's faith, that understanding of God as the Creator. Our founding
documents root human dignity and human freedom in the Creator God, and we
cannot in 1995 be Americans first any more than we can be Christians only. Our
world is the size of a grapefruit. We live in a global community with intimate
connection with a multiple diversity of this globe. It is time for the bells to sound,
the bells to sound that celebrate the diversity of life, that can still find its unity
and its coherence in its grounding in the Creator god who calls us to justice laced
with compassion.
When I think of the task I read in the vision, something within me melts. I know
it's true. And I observe the world and I could weep. Ready to throw up my hands
and say, "Why preach? Why strive? Why continue to care? It goes against the
grain of human nature. It's so contrary to every other aspect of our lives. Why
continue to raise one's voice and hold up the vision and call people to dream the
dream?" But then I remember that human transformation is possible. This is
what Paul was writing about. "Be not conformed to this world." Do not give in to
its aggressiveness and to its consumerism, to its competitiveness and to its
destructiveness. Do not give in to its rugged individualism and its selfishness. Do
not give in. Continue to dream. Continue to have rumors of Shalom floating
across the atmosphere through the transformation of your mind.
That's what it really takes, folks. It really takes a transformation; it takes an
altered consciousness. It calls us to a whole new way of being. Be not conformed
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind to find the will
of God, what is good and is true and acceptable. And down deep there's
something in me that so yearns for that. And I believe it does for you, as well. If
we could just turn the decibels down, that shouting across the great divide. If the
Church, if the people of God could be at the forefront of reconciliation rather than
the catalyst for division, if we could just listen to our hearts, if we could just
follow the song, if we could just make real the songs we love to sing. Of America
the Beautiful, thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears. Dear God,
is it not worth a commitment of life anew on this Independence Day Weekend?
God grant it.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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Interfaith worship
Sermons
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
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Independence Day Weekend, Pentecost IV
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Isaiah 58:12, Romans 12:2
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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KII-01_RA-0-19950702
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1995-07-02
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Founding Vision: Floundering
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University
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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 July 2, 1995 entitled "Founding Vision: Floundering", on the occasion of Independence Day Weekend, Pentecost IV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 58:12, Romans 12:2.
Global Community
Inclusive
Shalom
Transformation
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PDF Text
Text
Introduction to Progoff
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
January 30, 1989
Transcription of the spoken lecture
I am giving you the first of three introductory looks at the proposed fall seminar
with Ira Progoff. I wanted to begin now because I want to give you a bit of my
rather slight understanding of Progoff and also to let you know why I was
interested in Progoff in the beginning and why I believe that to bring the Journal
Workshop to this community is the kind of thing that I would like Christ
Community Church to do as a service to the broader community. I am going to
try to stick somewhat to my area and not get into an area which is not at all my
own, namely, the whole field of psychology and specifically depth psychology,
because I know very little about it. But I see in the work of Progoff, in the
knowledge I’ve had of it and of the persons with whom I’ve spoken, the kind of
resource that would be valuable for persons, for many kinds of persons, a broad
spectrum of persons, and therefore I have been rather excited about the
possibility of getting him here.
Getting him here is no small feat, and I guess he does only 4 or 5 Journal
Workshops a year across the country. But, wonder of wonders, the man himself
has agreed to come here this fall. I think to have the presence of someone like Ira
Progoff in itself is significant and very meaningful.
I have divided up what I want to say to you tonight into a few sections. The first
thing I want to say is just a word about who I am, because some of you are from
Christ Community, and some of you are from parts beyond. I want to say that I
understand myself and I understand Christ Community as a kind of purveyor of
this experience. Probably after tonight these kinds of things won't need to be said,
but I want to say them at the outset. I want you to know that I am, first of all, a
Christian person. My faith is in Jesus Christ, and I have found God through
Christ and the grace of God experienced in Jesus Christ. I'm just a simple
believer.
Beyond that, my vocation, my profession, is that of a theologian and a pastor. I
didn't know whether to put pastor first or theologian first, but I learned a little
about my self-understanding because I put theologian first. And that means that I
am a Christian who, in his vocational and professional life, is constantly trying to
understand Christian faith and tradition and Christian existence in the larger
context of the human experience. I'm always trying to do that. I am a pastor; I
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Richard A. Rhem
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have pastoral responsibilities for this community of faith, but I think this
community of faith, as we have postured ourselves, is concerned about the larger
community, the total community beyond our bounds. And so, that's who I am.
You have to know that I am a bridge person, or a boundary person. I always live
"on the edge." I live on the edge of the Church. I almost can't stand to live in the
Church. It's restricting; I get disappointed with it; I get frustrated with it. What
little hair I have left I could tear out at the behavior of the Church, which, I think,
in its institutional form has become rather rigid, has become very defensive, and
has lost the sense of movement with which, of course, it began in the aftermath of
Jesus Christ. It has become an institution with a lot of vested interest and a lot of
structure and harness and all that kind of “stuff” to preserve. I think most of its
posture is characterized by defensiveness and conserving and preserving, rather
than stretching and probing and pushing. So I always live with uneasy
relationship with the Church. I am a boundary person or a bridge person, and, as
I understand myself, I feel it my calling to try to understand the whole spectrum
of human knowledge in the light of the Gospel, and the larger Christian tradition,
but then to attempt to translate that Gospel in the light of that context. So, it's
always a two-way back and forth with me.
I believe that in the scriptures I have a history of Israel and the event of Jesus
Christ which is a given for me. But then the other pole is the present horizon, the
world in which we live. It seems to me that the task of the theologian is to
constantly be living between those two poles: trying to understand that which is
given in the revelation in Israel and in Jesus; and to understand as much as
possible the larger cultural context with its various human disciplines; and then
seeking from that understanding of the larger culture to have questions
addressed to the Gospel, which I believe bring new insights out of the Gospel; but
also bringing the Gospel to bear on our culture so that culture is not absolute but
is always under judgment of the Gospel. So, one must live in that kind of tension.
I think the systematic theologian has the largest task of any thinker, frankly. We
live in a world of great specialization. More and more people know more and
more about less and less. And we know that the academic world is characterized
by a lack of communication, a breakdown of communication and deep
specialization where there is no longer the ability to communicate across
disciplines. But the theologian is the one who claims to speak of God and, if God
is the source and the ground of truth, then to speak of God is to speak of that
whole spectrum, and therefore to be responsible to provide that umbrella that
can bring some kind of unity and coherence to the respective human disciplines.
Now, that's how I understand what I'm about and I love it and am fascinated by
it, and I think that it is important to me as a rooted and committed Christian to
be in that kind of dialogue and conversation with the broader spectrum of human
learning. And then, let me say a word about this particular community of faith.
One of the models by which we have shaped ourselves over the past couple of
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decades – one which I enunciated back in 1971, which had come to me in my own
studies and kind of existential quest – was that this community should always
seek to combine intellectual integrity with evangelical passion. The uniting of
head and heart. Intellectual integrity, searching honestly for truth, wherever that
may lead, in the confidence that the source of truth is in God and that God's
revelation in Jesus Christ is an expression of that ultimate truth, and that
therefore any genuine quest for truth cannot be something that will lead away
from but, rather, to God, to the extent that it is an authentic quest. But also with
evangelical passion, for we are not finally on a head trip, but we are engaged in
seeking to bring good news to persons. And we are about human transformation
here. We are about the transformation of the human person, which is more than
communicating a system of doctrines or structure of belief. That is a means;
that's all part of the mix. But, what we really are concerned to do is to see a
human person transformed, moving toward wholeness.
The best model that I can give you for that which we have had some experience
with here, is the AA model, where various steps are set forth which are simply a
borrowing of the Gospel without the names attached, but which lead to the
transformation of persons. And I believe that what we see in the movement of AA
is really what should be happening and happens all too little in the Christian
Church. Through that genuine encounter, that community of support, that total
acceptance and openness, which allows genuine confession and self-exposure in a
healing environment, there does occur the transformation and the healing of the
person. And the healing of the person is to say about the individual what we hope
for the larger picture, and that is the humanization of society. Now, that may
sound very humanistic. But, I happen to think that God is about a very
humanistic thing. I think that God is about gracing persons in order to release
their full potential and to recreate them into the image of Jesus Christ who, I
believe, is the human person par excellence, and that the Kingdom of God is the
rule of God or the reign of God and, where the reign of God is recognized, there
will be a very human society. So, I could speak about the Kingdom of God, but
just to keep it kind of down to earth, let me say once again, the transformation of
the person and the humanization of society - that, I think, is what we must be
about.
And of course, our resources are dynamic; our power, our vision comes out of our
understanding of the God revealed in Jesus Christ, and we do believe, as Scott
Peck says in The Road Less Traveled, that this is a graced universe, and that
there is a grace operative in the world at large which is a healing and positive
movement of God toward this world and toward persons.
So, that's kind of in a nutshell the way we operate here. That's what this
community of faith, this particular congregation, is all about. To the extent that
people have come and the church has prospered, to that extent, anybody that has
come in has kind of bought that vision, and I suppose that I'm guilty of shaping it
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in large measure, but that always happens when you get to stand up front once a
week, front and center.
So, we are a Christian congregation, and yet we see, I believe, a broader world out
there. We are not content to live a kind of parochial life of a Christian
congregation, within a Christian tradition, but would seek to understand
ourselves and to relate in a positive way to the broader cultural spectrum, and to
the world of spirit in whatever form that manifests itself.
I happen to believe that we are on the threshold of a new inter-dialogue among
the religions, and I think it is inevitable. The earth has shrunk to the size of a
grapefruit, and we really are members of a global community. It is no longer such
that we have a largely Protestant religion in America, and that you go East to find
Buddhism, and you go to the Middle East to find Islam or whatever. It's all over.
The crosscurrents of religious expression are everywhere, whether you go to Ann
Arbor or Chicago or New York, Los Angeles, you can find it all. Not only can you
find it all, but also you can find all kinds of offbeat brands more and more. The
religious resurgence in our day is one of the remarkable phenomena of this last
quarter of the 20th century. It seems to be incumbent upon us to be in dialogue
with that larger religious scene.
I brought along this little study of Martin Buber, the great Jewish thinker. Martin
Buber is very deeply knowledgeable of Christian faith, thinks very highly of Jesus,
does not understand Jesus as I understand him, but nonetheless really sees a
kind of movement of Messianism as he, as a Jew, understands it coming to
expression in Jesus. But he says, speaking to Christians,
It behooves both you and us to hold inviably fast to our own true faith, that
is, to our own deepest relationship to truth. It behooves both of us to show
a religious respect for the true faith of the other. That is not what is called
tolerance. Our task is not to tolerate each other's waywardness, but to
acknowledge the real relationship in which both stand to the truth.
Whenever we both, Christian and Jew, care more for God Himself than for
images of God, we are united in the feeling that our Father's house is
differently constructed than our human models take it to be.
Now that is a much broader understanding than has been true of Orthodox
Christianity, which would see other religions as expressions of error. It is the
understanding of my mentor, Hendrikus Berkhof, who says that, since the split of
the Jewish and the Christian religions, God has had two peoples, and Berkhof
bases that on his own biblical understanding of the irrevocable covenant that God
has entered into with the Jewish people. That question is debated among
Christian theologians and there is difference of opinion on it.
The point is I think we need to be deeply rooted. Let me say, personally (I don't
want to take you in on this), I need to be deeply rooted in my tradition. I need to
be deeply rooted, deeply committed, and I must bring to the discussion my
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deepest and best understanding of Christian faith, and not try to just jot that
down and remove the sharp contours of that in order to make it fit, but only as I
do that as genuinely as I can can I engage in genuine dialogue with someone like
a Martin Buber who will be genuinely Jewish.
Harvey Cox is a theologian who has written a number of books, one of which is
Many Mansions. He's been involved in much of this dialogue among the religions
and it's his feeling that what we need in this inter-religious dialogue is not so
much seeking to find the lowest common denominator, as bringing into the
discussion the sharpest focus of each understanding, so that there can be genuine
meeting and encounter.
Well, let me say that that kind of dialogue I affirm. I'm not afraid of it. I don't
think that our faith is so fragile that we will be tainted. I don't think that. I used to
think that I had to protect my people. I used to think that one of my tasks as a
pastor was to protect my people from error. Now I find that my people are well
able to handle themselves in such areas, and that more often I don't generally
really have to protect them. More often, I have to push them. I don't know if it's
true in most congregations, but it's true in this congregation that I'm always
pushing. I'm always trying to push people into risking and into scary places,
because I believe that is faith-building. I don't think that you need to be
sheltered. And, as a matter of fact, I wonder how long in the world in which we
live anybody can be sheltered anymore. I think it could be less and less possible.
All right. That's a little bit about the posture with which we approach this thing.
Let me say a word about what I see in the horizon of our world. You maybe
didn't ask for all of this, but give me an inch and I'll take an hour. I think we're in
a very interesting period in the world's history. I think that the period in which
we find ourselves is toward the end of a period of tremendous revolution and
transformation in human understanding. And I think that we have moved out of
the settled past of maybe eighteen centuries of unquestioned tradition. And we
are at the end of a couple of centuries of thrashing about, experimentation, of
overthrowing old forms and shaking foundations, but we are not yet at a time in
which new contours are clearly set.
Just, for example, the social-political context. If you would read Hans Küng's
Does God Exist?, you would find him tracing the roots of modern atheism. He
would take you back to the Socialist Revolution in Russia, for example. But,
behind that, you would go to the philosophical writings of the German
philosopher, a Protestant pastor's son, Ludwig Feuerbach, who was the first to
speak of religion as a human product, that religion arises out of the human
person, and that God is the projection of our needs. We have these needs; we
create God; we project God onto the screen of reality; we bow down and worship.
The God we worship is the God we need. We created God. Religion is a human
business.
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It was on the heels of Feuerbach that you have Karl Marx in the social-economic
realm. You have Sigmund Freud in the psychoanalytical field, and you have
finally Nietzsche with his nihilism, where he came to the conviction that nothing
is nothing and that there is ultimately nothingness, the abyss. I do think that
nihilism is really the logical conclusion of atheism. If God is not, then finally
nothing is. And you can turn everything upside down and there's no reason
for saying that good is evil or evil is good. You have no norms. It's over.
But, if you see that development, you will also see that those people were dealing
with very real issues in history and society which were manifesting themselves,
and the reaction of the Church was, again, one of fear and defensiveness and
refusal to engage in genuine dialogue with the realities of history that were right
there.
The Marxist theory was constructed on the background of a class society in
Europe and the church leadership was very insensitive and not at all in genuine
dialogue. If you take the actual political-social revolution, the Russian Revolution
particularly, you see that it took on this atheistic form because the Church and
the State were joined together; throne and altar were one. To throw over the
government, to throw over the political and economic system was also to throw
over the Church, because the two were joined where the Church ought never to be
joined. Then the whole social revolution that took place took an atheistic bent,
not because the economic theory demanded it, but because the social situation
meant that those two were wedded and when one went, the other went. And if
you come down to our present day and you see how that revolution has kind of
spent itself, it has not brought in Utopia. In fact, Gorbachev would tell us that the
whole thing is a failure and we can well pray that Gorbachev is successful in what
he is about because he has by economic necessity been forced to see that it is
either change and transform that old giant, or it's not viable.
I think that you put all those things together and it is not just business as usual,
but there are some very long-term movements and forces and tides within history
which have created a kind of openness and possibility today, which just haven't
been here in a long time. I think that this is a rather interesting time and it has
peril and it has opportunity. And it's not just some result of an immediate
situation, but I think the gathering of long-term things that have been going on
for a couple of hundred years. The Enlightenment on the European continent, the
Age of Reason which was the continuation of the Renaissance (the Reformation
period was kind of an interruption of that flow), but the whole coming to the
devotion of the human person, of the human mind, of reason, and of throwing off
of authorities of all sorts: Church, Bible, whatever. The authoritarian day is past.
We haven't learned that much in the Church yet. But Authoritarianism is over. In
the world at large I really believe Authoritarianism is over. So that is the socialpolitical context.
Take the scientific world. If you read Steven Hawking, this brilliant English
Quantum physicist, in A Brief History of Time and Space, you find that we live
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on what is the threshold of that discovery of what they call the Theory of
Everything, the theory for which Einstein was questing – that little formula that
would reveal the ultimate core of reality and develop it. In the Christian Science
Monitor of some time ago there was a series, Making the Quantum Leap: A FivePart Series, a fantastic series written in newspaper format, Christian Science
newspaper format, so it's still a little hefty. But even I can almost understand
some of it and it is amazing. I, in my next incarnation, hope to be either a
conductor of a symphony or a physicist. I've always been fascinated by the close
tie between physics and theology. Now, I regret to say that generally the
breakthroughs in physics have been registered in theology rather than the other
way. I'd like to get that reversed some day, but that probably won't ever happen.
But Newton was a Christian thinker, a physicist. And he did his best to maintain
his Christian faith alongside his understanding of the physical universe. But his
system, his understanding of the cosmos actually left no room for God. No, Sir
Isaac never gave up on God, and I'm sure that God never gave up on Sir Isaac.
But, as a matter of fact, the ordered universe of Newtonian physics had no room
for God; it had no room for prayer; it had no room for miracle or any of that.
Now, the amazing thing is that Newtonian physics has been blown sky high.
And Quantum Physics, the understanding of the structure of reality, whether in
its cosmological expanse or in the understanding of the tiniest little molecule and
atom, neuron and electron, speaks of eruption, of the eruption of the new, the
possibility of randomness. It's an open ball game. Einstein hated it. Einstein
hated it! He fought the Quantum Physicist Neils Bohr. Einstein said, "God doesn't
play dice with the universe." He didn't want any randomness. But, nonetheless,
that's where we are today, and it's impressive when you do see a person on the
moon or when a satellite brings a picture from around the world, or your
computer chip does everything you ever wanted done.
The world of religion, the resurgence of fundamentalism in various forms. I read
a statement by Charles Colson the other day. In his new book, Kingdoms in
Conflict, he says, "Not since the Crusades have religious passions and prejudices
posed such a worldwide threat." That's the world we live in today. I think he's
right. Not since the Crusades. If not through a religious zealot or confused idealist
whose finger is on the nuclear trigger, then certainly by destroying the tolerance
and trust essential for maintaining peace and concord among people.
Martin Marty, in a discussion of the aggressiveness and the orneriness of religion
in the world in its manifestation, raised the question, "Is it not possible to be both
civil and committed?" Is it not possible to be both civil and committed? Now, you
see, that is kind of a trick, to be both civil and committed. But too often
commitment has resulted in fanaticism and has wrought all kinds of havoc in the
history of the world. And too often civility has been the result of lack of any real
commitment or passion. To hold those two together is so important.
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Well, that's the world we live in and it is a wonderful fascinating world in which
to be alive. I think that it is a world that has openings for those of us who are
concerned about spiritual reality and human transformation like never before.
Now, let me get more specific with Progoff. Why? What has all this to do with Ira
Progoff? Well, I don't know a great deal about Ira Progoff. But I have heard him
on tape, I've read some of his works and I was first put on to him by a couple of
very respected friends in ministry some years ago, and I know that he has had
wide acceptance in the Catholic church, more so than in the Protestant Church.
But a couple of my friends in the Reformed Church have been part of some of his
activity and have spoken very highly of him.
Ira Progoff is of Jewish origin. He is perhaps best characterized as a JudeoChristian-Buddho spiritual sage. He has milked all of these traditions for
insights, which he has put together with his understanding of depth psychology.
Now, I really am not going to say very much about depth psychology because,
well, I'm going to say everything I know, but that's not very much. I know that
Progoff – having been a student of Carl Jung, Jung having been a student of
Freud but breaking away from Freud – is one who created in his understanding
room again for God, but not a God "out there," which incidentally isn't even in
vogue in the best theology today, but a God in the depths of the unconscious
where there is a kind of meeting of all kinds of consciousness down in some deep
reservoir in the depth of reality.
A depth psychologist believes that the consciousness of the person is the tip of the
iceberg. And I think that that has been rather well documented in terms of the
tremendous structure of the unconscious. And I think images do evolve out of an
unconscious depth. But I don't know much about that. Anyway, that is Progoff's
orientation. He is a spiritual person. He's a deeply spiritual person. He's a
mystical person, in the line of the mystics, I would say. If you want to label him in
terms of Protestant or Jewish theology, he's probably closest to Paul Tillich, a
Christian theologian now dead, and to Martin Buber, whose famous I and Thou
book has made such a great impact in our century.
How Progoff speaks of religion – as I utilize Progoff's understanding of religion –
it is a functional understanding of religion. He is dealing with the function that
religion performs in human life and human society. It is more a question of
functionality than it is a question of truth. Progoff would not want to referee
between the truth claims of Eastern religions or Judaism or Islam or Christianity.
But, he would see in them all a kind of commonality of function, and I believe
that it is perfectly legitimate to look at it that way. Now, that's not all I'm
concerned about, because finally I think that the truth question will obtrude
itself. It certainly will for me. And I am always struggling with the truth question
in Christian faith, in religious expression. But, nonetheless, there can be a very
positive and helpful understanding of the place of religion in the function it
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performs in the person and in society as a whole. And when Progoff speaks about
religion and the religions, he is speaking functionally.
He would see its function as enabling persons to position themselves in
relationship to the transpersonal reality in order that they may experience
guidance and structuring for their outer life. Religion ought to help me to
position myself over against reality that is beyond myself in order that in my
everyday life and living I may have guidance, orientation, to be at home with
myself and at home with the world. Now, if religion does that for a person, it has
done a great, great deal. Progoff would see the various religions as particular
forms and structures, all of which are performing that kind of common function:
to enable me to live as a human being, with other human beings, to enable me to
live as a person over against transpersonal reality.
Sometimes when he speaks, I think of the AA program where you have a Higher
Power. I have encountered, from time to time, a few Christian people who have
been uneasy with that, as though to speak of the Higher Power is to deny either
the uniqueness of Jesus Christ or the God we see in Jesus Christ. Now, it doesn't
bother me at all. I had an old gentleman in here one day coming off the AA
program and, so help me, a man in his 60s who had absolutely no conception of
God. I had a yellow pad like this and I had a pen, you know, and I'm generally
nervous and I was making signs and I was trying to kind of speak about God and
him down here and I put a big cross between as kind of a bridge and I made this
silly diagram and we talked together and he said, "Somebody said, well, the
Higher Power: just visualize a telephone pole." Well, I made this little thing and
we talked some more and when it was all over I was quite moved as he said to me,
rather moved himself, "May I take that with me?" And I thought to myself, what
hunger. You can call that God or you can put whatever face you want to on it and
I don't think Progoff will argue with you. He will say, "Is it helping you to live
well?"
Now, I do think it is valid for us to take whatever resources we have to help
people to live well. So, Progoff is kind of a mystic who believes that there is a huge
cosmic process that has been about, which is evolving. He reminds me somewhat
of the French Catholic thinker, Teilhard de Chardin, whose works, of course, the
Vatican banned, but then the best things that come from Catholics get banned for
a while. But, de Chardin is an original thinker who sees kind of the Omega point
off there and he sees this whole cosmic process evolving toward that point. And
Progoff believes that it is in the likes of us, in our individual spirits, that Spirit
comes to expression, and that Reality enters the world – it emerges, as it were,
out of the depths – through the individual spirit of a person. His concern is that
we enable persons to become, to be the bearers of Spirit and the expression of
Spirit, and that, as Spirit is able to flow through our spirit and come to some
kind of tangible form, Reality actually enlarges itself and the whole process
continues to go on.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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He sees a crisis in the present time because he believes that traditional patterns,
beliefs, doctrines and rituals have lost their grip on people, or people have lost
their grip on traditional symbols and forms. Symbols and forms, be they doctrinal
formulation, sacramental acts, or whatever, can function to put us in touch with
the transpersonal as long as we believe in them. When we don’t believe in them,
they can't do it for us anymore. Now, when you stand in Western Michigan with
all of our churches and with a large Christian community and in a rather
conservative part of the world, it may sound a bit apocalyptic to speak about
secular culture and about people uprooted, cut off from their roots. But, we have
to keep reminding ourselves that this is not all there is, and when he speaks
perhaps with more of a world purview and he speaks out of the context of New
York City and Los Angeles, he probably feels that and senses that more than we
do. Nonetheless, we have to recognize that the world as a whole is not becoming
– now speaking as a Christian and an advocate of the Christian Gospel – the
world as a whole is not becoming more, but is becoming less Christian. We are
becoming a minority. And it is a fact that those traditional patterns and beliefs
and rituals have for large portions of the world population lost their power. But,
the need still remains for that which will put the individual and the larger society
in touch with the transperson, or with God, if you will. And so, the need in our
day is to find the way in which that can happen.
Now, being a depth psychologist, Progoff believes that we will find that truth by
going into the depth dimension, and that God (I'll say God), is perceived, the
knowledge of God is accessible, not through rational formulation, but through
intuitive perception, that it comes not by rational instruction which has been the
hallmark of Reformed tradition, but that it comes through apprehension,
through images, and symbols, that it erupts, that it is not mastered rationally
and discovered.
Now, you know, I have to say, just coming as I have through the season of
Epiphany, I have found myself wrestling with that question week after week.
When you really get some insight, when you really have a "high" experience,
when you really capture something, when there's been a breakthrough for you,
how do you express it? Isn't it, "Suddenly it dawned upon me?" Isn’t it often after
a churning and wrestling and in a moment of insight, and doesn't it often come to
us whole? As I was wrestling with this whole matter of how God reveals God's
self, I was so aware of the fact that it is one thing to say that the light's on; it's
another thing to say, "I see the light." So that we can talk all we want to in
theological and doctrinal terms about the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, about
the light shining and all that, but when Progoff speaks about going into the depth
dimension, I have to say that there is something to the fact that God's unveiling of
God's self will happen within us. It must finally be a subjective apprehension, no
matter how much we may clamor for the fact that it is objective and real. You
know, we often equate objectivity with the real. Oh yes, it's certainly real. But
until I believe it, until it grasps me and I say, "Wow," it has not really come full
cycle.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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And so, Progoff’s point for a community such as ours – this is what he would
think:
In a crisis of a culture that has lost its moorings, whose symbols have
largely become empty symbols, he would say, first of all, the church should
give social support to the person, enabling that person to work on his or
her own inner life. If in our day our young people are being told, "Just say
no," Progoff says to the Church, "Just say yes." When there's someone,
some funny person in the congregation, a little odd, a little strange, doesn't
fit the stereotype, talks about the inner journey, why he says, "Just say
yes." Encourage them. Be a place that encourages people to get on with
that work on the inner life.
He says, secondly, let the Church be the social institution and the culture
where work on the inner life can take place. And I like the word he uses
here: "Let the church be a sanctuary where that can happen." You know,
we really ought to be about that, and we really ought to get on with it. I
think about that every Sunday when I see the large assemblage of people,
and then I realize how superficial is my little touch. When they leave for
the rest of the week, what's happening? Are we as a community creating a
sanctuary where people can do more than come in on Sunday morning and
at worst complete the Sunday obligation, at best get a little Sunday
morning high, and hopefully in it all, worship God?
Thirdly, he says, let the Church provide the means and the program
whereby this can be encouraged. And I guess that bringing a seminar like
this here would be a tangible, concrete means by which to expose and offer
to people ways in which to do that.
He remarks about the fact that youth, many of the younger generation, have
taken over Eastern religions lock, stock and barrel. You know, it's faddish, it's
trendy, and those waves happen. It does indicate, however, a real spiritual hunger
and a search and a quest. And he also says, "Look, our generation cannot really
successfully just go back lock, stock and barrel and pick this thing up. I mean, the
new and the different is fascinating, and we understand all that dynamic, but he
says it's not for them to go back and get ancient Buddhist meditation techniques,
but the challenge to us is to find the ways in which they can be put in touch with
God, with the transpersonal reality, in the garments of the 20th century. Find
the methodology. Find the modes, the means by which this can happen, which I
think is the same kind of thing which I said earlier tonight when I said I felt it was
incumbent upon me to translate the Gospel into today's idiom, because that
needs constant translation so that it always comes to expression in the
conceptuality and the language of the particular context in which it is being
proclaimed. Otherwise, it is simply the reiteration of formulas out of the past and
that's fundamentalism – just the literal reiteration of formulas out of the past is
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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fundamentalism. You don't think about that. You just give obeisance to formulas,
slogans, models, and then you're not really in touch.
So, in his book The Dynamics of Hope, Progoff deals at quite some length with
the experience of Tolstoy who went through a period of tremendous anguish in
his life after being very successful. He was on top of the world socially, culturally,
a great literary success, and he came to a time of a sense of the meaninglessness
of it all. And he tells in some detail Tolstoy's experience and he speaks in The
Dynamics of Hope, of the Utopian person, and that is the person who has this
kind of prophetic sense, who is willing to anguish and struggle, but always in
hope, and out of the anguish and the struggle eventuates the new realm of
experience and insight, which is the prelude to another struggle and anguish,
which eventuates in a new breakthrough, because he sees our human experience
as being an ongoing pilgrimage and process and, for creativity to be released,
there is a need for this constant movement between the struggle and anxiety and
always, however, with the hope undergirding it and breaking through to a new
plateau and a new discovery. Let me just read a couple of paragraphs.
"I began to understand,” Tolstoy reports, “that in the answers given by
faith was to be found the deepest source of human wisdom. That I had no
reasonable right to reject them on the ground of reason, and that these
principle answers alone solve the problems of life. I understood them, but
that did not make it any easier for me.” The fact, in other words, that his
reason was now giving assent to an act of faith of some sort, did not bring
such an act of faith any closer. It did not even make it any more possible.
All that this new intellectual realization achieved, in fact, was to intensify
the internal pressure and to build up an even greater tension around the
vacuum of meaning which he felt in himself. How could he find a faith that
he would not merely be in favor of believing? But one that he would
actually be able to feel as a reality? It would be good if he could accept
some structured body of doctrine that had been worked out in generations
past by an established church. That would not be a fact for him. He would
not feel the reality of such a faith. And so, no matter how much he might
try to convince himself rationally that he ought to place his faith there, the
persistent question about the validity of life would not be silenced.
But, he goes on and he struggles and then he tells about the dream that Tolstoy
had and the peace and the resolution that he came to. I'm not going to do more
with that, but this is a very fine introduction to Progoff’s understanding of the
journey of the individual, and it is his conviction that it is necessary for an
individual to feel his life story and to be able to have a sense of continuity
through the various stages and that in the creative unfoldment of a life there
will be those periods of dark and light.
I was thinking about his understanding of the human experience in contrast to,
for example, someone within the Reformed Church. I shouldn't even say that
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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because it's not Reformed, but there is this friend of mine who I know rather well
and who probably most of you would know, as well, Bob Schuller and the Hour of
Power. Bob Schuller with his possibility thinking, which was built on Norman
Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking, has done a tremendous amount
for many, many people. He has recognized the importance of self-esteem and he
has brought a positive and hopeful accent, and many people who didn't believe
that they had it in them have found that, after all, they had it in them. My
problem with Schuller is that I feel that sometimes he almost becomes shrill and I
want to say to him sometimes that success isn't always the consequence of
faithfulness or responsibility or effort, and so I always felt that there was
something lacking. There was a depth dimension in the Gospel, if you will, that I
felt never came to expression with Bob Schuller's formulations. I thought to
myself, interestingly, how much closer Progoff is to an understanding of human
personality and the experience of darkness and light, of guilt and forgiveness, of
bondage and freedom. And then, really, not just a once for all thing, although we
believe in a great once for all transformation, but as the ongoing unfoldment of
life, this constant swinging between the poles.
I can understand that in terms of my understanding – my biblical orientation.
Walter Brueggemann in an excellent study of the Psalms speaks about how you
can categorize the Psalms as Psalms of Orientation where creation is good, God's
in his heaven, all's right with the world, everything's ducky; Psalms of
Disorientation, where nothing is right and everything's unraveling; and then
there are Psalms of New Orientation. Brueggemann's point is that life is not
often lived in only orientation or disorientation. Life is generally lived moving
from orientation, disorientation and new orientation, and out of the study of the
Psalms you have that same kind of expression. Our life is a dynamic movement,
and we do move through periods of openness, joy and light; we do move through
valleys and through arid periods and dry periods; and it seems to me that is more
true to human experience as I understand it than in some of the pop psychology
and what I think is kind of a vulgarized psychology taken over by some of the
religious stuff that is on the market.
Finally, in his book The Symbolic and the Real, Progoff has, toward the end of the
book, that which really spoke to me and what turned me on in the first place to
his thinking and his whole approach to things. Let me just read you a couple of
paragraphs here. His point, again – I said this earlier and I'm going to say this
once again – his point is that to be in touch with reality or to be in touch with God
is not the consequence of coming to the end of a well-constructed syllogism. It is
the intuition that comes with the apprehension of symbol and image; it is a
moment of illumination; it's revelation. So he says:
As the symbol unfolds, reality enters the world and becomes present. A
new atmosphere is established, and this is much more than a new climate
of thought. It is reality increasing its presence among humankind by
means of symbolic events that are enacted upon the depth dimension of
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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the psyche. In another style of language, this type of event is often
described as a breakthrough of spirit, into human experience. It has,
indeed, all of the traditional attributes of spirit, for it possesses power and
meaning and the healing quality of inward peace. It expresses itself,
however, not in the fixed forms of dogma, but in the living fluidity of
symbolic acts. (p. 214)
And then he speaks about revelation in the Old Testament:
One context in which this new perspective is especially important is our
attitude toward the Bible. In the biblical tradition there has been the view
that when the Old Testament was finished and was certified in its standard
version, that was the end of God's appearance to man. After that, man was
not to expect a breakthrough of spirit in the world. At least not until the
coming of the Messiah. All that was required of people then was that they
keep the formulas and the stories so that they would keep alive the
remembrance of the great moments of contact with the Divine which had
taken place in history and were now restricted to the past. The traditional
understanding was that since the voice of God stopped speaking when the
Old Testament was closed, it would be best if people stopped listening for
the voice of God in the world and concentrated on fulfilling the
commandments.
When the experiences recorded in the New Testament transpired, this
view was reconsidered and was opened anew. Then it was felt that God
had indeed made a new entry into the world. Necessarily so, since He had
needed to make a new covenant between Himself and man. With the
ending of the experiences in the New Testament, however, the same
tendency to restrain the human spirit and enclose it in fixed molds
recurred. Again, it was believed that the spirit of God would no longer
enter the world in a prophetic breakthrough. It would not because it was
no longer felt to be necessary. The Truth had been given. After that it
would be sufficient if people would imitate Christ and concentrate on
entering the dimension of the sacred by repeating the festive formulas
accrued by ecclesiastical authorities. (pp. 222-223)
And then he says,
One of the very greatest and most basic difficulties of Western history is
expressed in this fact that we have drawn from our traditions of belief that
major openings of the Spirit are not possible any longer because they
stopped when the Bible was officially sealed. We need to become capable
of reopening the Bible as a living contact side by side with other styles of
experience and sources of the spirit in the modern psyche. The two
testaments which comprise the Bible are openings. They surely were not
intended to be closings in man’s relation to the infinite. (p. 224)
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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I think he's right. I think a great problem with the Church is the fact that, in order
to manage the revelation given, it was historically necessary to close the canon. It
was a historical necessity. But then, to refuse to understand that the Spirit of God
continues to speak was to allow the Church to become rigid and to allow a
conception of orthodoxy. And I must say to you, this is my confession, one that I
close with, that to me the idea of orthodoxy is an arrogant presumption. That's
probably why I'm a heretic.
Now, I think from my perspective, my understanding of things, there's richness
here and that it is a great resource. I will be participating with my own labels,
with the God reflected in the face of Jesus. I will understand this in terms of my
own theological understanding. But I see the possibility of a very fruitful
instrument here which again I think holds great promise for the healing of
persons and, through the healing of persons, the humanization of society, which I
think is what we're all about.
Now, I think I've talked sufficiently long so that you should be sufficiently tired,
so you probably wouldn't even want to raise a question. But, if you would, I would
be happy to take it.
Frank: I agree you're a heretic. I think you're making heretics out of all of us, but
I think I'm beginning to enjoy it. When you sent that first letter about Ira Progoff
I immediately rose up in my traditional background and sent you a letter back
saying you probably were off base, and that we couldn't tolerate this new kind of
thinking. But, I guess it just exemplifies the fact that most of us are completely
uneducated. For forty years I have been studying anatomy and physiology and
biochemistry and medicine, pharmacology, thinking that all of medical science
depended on how much I — I suddenly realize how much an uneducated
nincompoop I am and I sure appreciate your bringing these things into the open
so that we could all learn from them and get carried along with your enthusiasm.
RAR: Well, thank you, Frank. I want to say that the questions, the concerns you
raised were very legitimate concerns. Frank. I was really comforted to find
explicitly Progoff recognizing the dangers of that kind of trendy movement, of the
sensitivity movements and groups, and those things of the 60s or 70s where
people were undressed and then left defenseless, and he definitely set himself
over against that kind of thing. And the legitimacy of his Journal Workshop has
been tested. He's kind of a quiet person; he shuns the idea of guru. Doesn't even
want to be called a sage. He's a very humble pilgrim who is sort of feeling his way
along. But, your concerns were very, very well taken, and I was almost positive
immediately that that's not where he was, but I was happy to find it confirmed,
that he also distanced himself from that kind of thing. So, I appreciate the
concerns you raised.
I read today the Seminary Times of last fall, a book by James Ashbrook, whom I
do not know. He's a seminary professor. He was at Colgate Rochester; he's moved
since then. Making Sense of God. And it is a book entitled Brain and Belief where
© Grand Valley State University
�Introduction to Progoff
Richard A. Rhem
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for a couple decades he has done serious research on the brain, as a theologian,
trying to find the relationship of the function of the brain to spiritual perception.
It is an absolutely fascinating article. And there is a rather serious critique of it, as
well, in which, you know, it's such a pioneering kind of thing that the guy says, "I
don't know how to critique it." But it's just fascinating. In fact, I'm going to give it
to you to take home with you and you can tell me about it when I get back from
vacation. But you know there are such interesting things happening today and
there is an openness today. I think across the board: to structure of reality, to
what we mean when we say God, and I do think that it is an exciting time in
which to be alive. It's a perilous time, too, because people are also falling for all
kinds of... someone accused me of being New Age. Now, I've never read anything
New Age. I don't know what New Age is. But, I know this - that anytime that
there is a genuine breakthrough and movement, there are going to be all kinds of
counterfeits and all kinds of peripheral things going on and there will be faddy,
trendy things. That's true. But, nonetheless, that shouldn't scare us.
Ira Progoff. The Dynamics of Hope: Perspectives of Process in Anxiety and
Creativity, Imagery and Dreams. Dialogue House Library, 1985.
Ira Progoff. The Symbolic and the Real: A New Psychological Approach To The
Fuller Experience of Personal Existence. Peter Smith Publisher, Inc., 1983.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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Interfaith worship
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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1981-2014
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Midweek Lecture
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Ira Progoff, The Dynamics of Hope: Perspective of Process in Anxiety & Creativity, Imagery and Dreams, 1985, Ira Progoff, The Symbolic and the Real: A New Psychological Approach to the Fuller Experience of Personal Existence, 1983
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Introduction to Dr. Ira Progoff
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Richard A. Rhem
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eng
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Talk created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on January 30, 1989 entitled "Introduction to Dr. Ira Progoff", on the occasion of Midweek Lecture, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Tags: Progoff, Transformation, Hope, Spiritual Journey, Symbol, Emergence, Insight, Spirit, Interfaith, Consciousness, Nature of Religion, Community of Faith, Global Community,Revelation, Nature of Religion, Psychology . Scripture references: Ira Progoff, The Dynamics of Hope: Perspective of Process in Anxiety & Creativity, Imagery and Dreams, 1985, Ira Progoff, The Symbolic and the Real: A New Psychological Approach to the Fuller Experience of Personal Existence, 1983.
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application/pdf
Community of Faith
Consciousness
Emergence
Global Community
Hope
Insight
Interfaith
Nature of Religion
Progoff
Psychology
Revelation
Spirit
Spiritual Journey
Symbol
Transformation
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/eb351f7cea6991603848064950eb1d5e.mp3
748737cd5e115e3b493aa3f52337cb10
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f2b622f6178f76a7bbb7b1b6e61e3c50.pdf
df2bc77806ef822271ff1db9c161fec0
PDF Text
Text
The Impossible Possibility
Easter Sunday
Genesis 11:27-30, 12:1-3; Romans 4:16-21; Matthew 28:1-10
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
April 20, 2003
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Whatever the final epitaph over my ministry turns out to be, regarding where I
have brought this community, you will have to agree that I have brought you the
finest scholars and the leading voices on the biblical and theological issues most
critical to an intelligent understanding of the Christian faith and the role and
function of religion as we have attempted to re-imagine the faith - John Dominic
Crossan, Marcus Borg, Amy Jill Levine, John Shelby Spong, Huston Smith, N. T.
Wright, David Ray Griffin, to name a few. And next weekend - Dr. Charles
Kimball.
If on Good Friday evening you were watching Peter Jennings on ABC News, you
know that Charles Kimball was one of the expert witnesses that he called. What
had happened was that Franklin Graham had conducted a service on Good Friday
for the Pentagon, and this created some criticism and some legitimate fear, for
Franklin Graham has spoken about Islam as an evil religion and Mohammed as
an evil leader, and has declared that Allah is not God. To have Franklin Graham
lead a service at the Pentagon probably put the fear of God into some hearts,
thinking, "Dear God, here we go with the Crusades again." Fortunately, Franklin
Graham is not going to lead a Crusade of sword into Iraq, but he does have his
troops poised at the border. The Samaritan's Purse, a relief organization that he
heads is ready to move into Iraq in order to make a witness for Jesus, thank God,
not with a sword, but with a cup of cold water, which is far better. But, the lack of
sensitivity created quite a stir, as well it might. And so, Charles Kimball, Wake
Forest University Professor of Comparative Religion, with his extensive
knowledge of the Middle East, having been there over 35 times over the last 25
years, an expert in Islam and himself a Christian theologian, was asked by Peter
Jennings about his reaction to that Pentagon service, which he indicated he
thought was, to say the least, unwise.
Then, if you continued your television watching, at 8:30 on CNN there was a
segment on the Bible and Iraq and there was a Muslim scholar who was asked
about the country in terms of their also being the children of Abraham, and once
again Charles Kimball was asked about this ancient civilization whose city Ur of
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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the Chaldeans appeared in the scripture lesson this morning, and he was asked
particularly by the host about the claim of some that what is going on in the
Middle East now may be moving us toward the end of history and the final battle,
the Battle of Armageddon. So, once again, Charles Kimball was the person
selected to give commentary on that which is happening in our world today, so I
feel very privileged that at this time we have such a person coming into our midst
to help us to understand and discern what is going on in our world in terms of the
function and role of religion.
But, then I opened the Grand Rapids Press Religion section yesterday and there
kneeling in Westminster Cathedral was N. T. Wright, who was here last May, you
will remember. He was here with Marcus Borg and the two of them have written
a book together, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions. Tom Wright was written up
in the Grand Rapids Press yesterday because he has just published a book on the
resurrection, and he is probably the preeminent Christian scholar in the world
today and certainly in the New Testament biblical studies and theological
analysis. He is a brilliant scholar, a wonderful human being, and he has just been
promoted in the Church of England to be the Bishop of Durham, and I am told
the Bishop of Durham seat is the fourth highest seat in the Church of England.
So, once again, we have this man on the loose who has been in our midst who is
talking about the resurrection to us and the book that he has just written, 817
pages, could you believe, in which he does extensive research and thorough
analysis and with brilliant mind and elegant writing, talks about the resurrection
of Jesus.
You may remember when Marcus Borg and Tom Wright were here together. They
preached last Pentecost, and I had suggested to you that I didn't care which one
you followed, you could be right with Borg or wrong with Wright, it was up to
you. But, after that interesting weekend, certainly you got the sense that Marcus
Borg and Tom Wright had a different understanding of the Easter miracle, a
different understanding of that resurrection reality, although both took it very
seriously. There was an excerpt from Tom Wright's book in the most recent
Christian Century, and having read that, I read once again the authentic Tom
Wright as he set forth a traditional view of the resurrection which was precisely
the view with which I came here in 1960 fresh out of seminary (emphasizing
fresh). In his portrayal of this in the article, which is an excerpt from the book, we
have again the standard Christian understanding. Tom Wright is very clear about
the fact that Easter is a significant event, it is a cosmic event, it is world-shaping
event, it is far more than simply the fact that I shall have life after death. It is far
more than the fact that my sins are forgiven. Tom Wright is very clear about the
fact that what happened at Easter was the establishment of the beachhead of God
in this world and it was a world-shaping, world-determining event. But, he said it
all hinges on the tomb being empty.
And that is where I disagree with him. He insists that if the tomb was not empty,
if that body had not come out of the grave, then the whole thing is questionable.
© Grand Valley State University
�The Impossible Possibility
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Again, that is where I disagree with him because I want to say to him, "Tom, I
don't need a body coming out of a tomb. I don't need a confirmation miracle on
the part of God to see that what happened in Jesus was a life-changing, worldtransforming event." I want to say to him, "It's not about a corpse. It's not about
an empty tomb. It's about the presence of the risen one. It's about the fact that
this Jesus lived and the way he lived and the words he spoke and the deeds he
performed." I want to say to Tom, "Easter is about remembering Jesus and
celebrating the fact that Jesus crucified lives, that Jesus crucified is God
incarnate, and God crucified is God alive and well in this world." I don't need a
miracle. I don't need to see a body rise. All I have to do is look at Jesus. All I have
to do is linger with Jesus. All I have to do is let my being imbibe Jesus, the way he
was, the way he lived, the road less traveled that he followed.
Didn't you sense it again this Lenten season in which we were going through all of
the darkness in our world? Didn't you sense it Thursday night in the garden, the
anguish of the garden as he prayed and wept? Didn't you sense it on Good Friday
in the darkness? Easter is not to get out of the darkness. Easter is not to get away
from the cross. Easter is not to get away from the tragedy of this world. Easter is
not Easter lilies and bells and Hallelujahs. Easter is remembering Jesus, the
Jesus whose life was the incarnation of God, the Jesus in whom the eternal
infinite intention of God found flesh. Easter is about remembering Jesus whose
face shows us the heart of God. I don't need an empty tomb. I need Jesus, the
Jesus of Good Friday and the Jesus of Maundy Thursday, and the Jesus who set
his face to go to Jerusalem. I need the Jesus who spoke truth to power, the Jesus
who took children on his lap. The Jesus who respected women. I need the Jesus
full of compassion whose heart went out to the harassed people of his day. That's
enough for me.
Oh, the disciples were despairing and they were afraid at the crucifixion. Of
course, they were. They didn't know what to think and their hopes were dashed
and they went off to Galilee and they went fishing. But, eventually, inevitably,
they knew his presence still. They knew the presence of the risen Lord. They said,
"Jesus lives." They said, "Jesus is with us." There were moments of epiphany.
There were those strange encounters. There were breakfasts on the beach. There
was a fish dinner in one of their homes. He came into the midst of a room where
the doors were locked. He walked with two on the road to Emmaus and they
didn't know him until he broke bread and their eyes were opened and their hearts
burned, and they said, "My God! My God, he's alive!" Easter is not to get away
from the darkness. Easter is not to forget about Lent. Easter is not somehow or
other to plaster all the world's darkness with joy and light, whistling a happy tune
to make ourselves believe that it is other than it is. I don't need a miracle. I need
Jesus - the way he was, the way he lived. I need to remember him. I need to
remember him.
Last evening in our Easter Eve Vesper Service, I experienced communion as
powerfully as I have ever experienced it. It has for a decade been a wonderful
© Grand Valley State University
�The Impossible Possibility
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
Easter celebration to come to this table, to take bread and cup, to say, "The Lord
is risen. The body of Christ." But, I come to this Easter and realize the celebration
of the Lord's Supper is the most critical thing we can do on Easter because it is
remembering Jesus. It is remembering the way he was. It is remembering the life
he lived. It is remembering him, the words he spoke, the demeanor of his life. To
remember there was God. To remember that is the life, that is the way, that is the
truth. Of course, no one will ever come to God apart from that one, apart from
that way of being, for the God reflected in the fact of Jesus is not the God of
almighty power who snaps his finger and rolls a stone away.
That God is the vulnerable God, the crucified God, that God is the God of
persuasive love who stands by in our own world reeling on its way with all of the
tragedy and all of the bloodshed and all of the violence and all the war, waiting,
waiting, waiting and Jesus, that one human being, not only human being, but one
human being representative of what all human beings would be to fulfill the
intention of God. That Jesus, that human being, that divine intention in flesh,
that is the only hope of the world, and therefore, we come to this table.
Last night in the dramatic presentation, after the drama of the cross and the
empty tomb, Jesus came, and he had a cup and he had bread. Peter and John
came and knelt here and two of the women knelt here and he said to them, "Do
you remember the way I lived?"
They said, "We remember, Lord."
He said, "Do you remember the words I spoke?"
They said, "We remember."
And he said to them, "Do you remember the last night when I took bread and
cup?"
And they remembered.
Then he took the bread and the cup and he gave it to them and he said,
"Whenever you see those who are excluded, embraced, remember me. Whenever
you see one speak truth to power, remember me. Whenever you feel compassion
flow within you, remember me. Whenever you see the possibility for hope for a
new world, remember me." And each time they said, "We remember. We
remember. We remember.”
You see, I don't need an empty tomb. I don't need a corpse coming out of a grave.
I need to remember. I need to remember that impossible possibility, for there
has appeared that one who is the incarnation of the divine intention from all
eternity and it has appeared here and it lives with us still and beckons to us still,
the God of vulnerability beckoning us with the lure of love, to remember and to
be as he was in this world.
© Grand Valley State University
�The Impossible Possibility
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
Oh, I know this old world reels on its way and you may say it's hopeless, and
sometimes I feel it is hopeless, and I have gone through this Lenten season with a
heavy heart full of despair, I have to confess it to you. I didn't even really want
Easter to come. But, then I remember old Abraham. What do you think he
thought when God said, "Leave your home and family and go to a place that I will
show you and I will make you a father of many nations. Your seed will be like the
stars in the heaven and the sands of the sea." And Abraham, an old man with an
old wife, but that is not all. Genesis 11:30, one of the most significant and
poignant statements in all of the Bible, tells us Sarah was barren. You see, when
God would do a new thing, when God would create a new people in order to
create a new world, God begins in human barrenness, because we have to do here
not with human possibility, but with the eternal God whose divine intention has
found flesh, for, Abraham and Sarah had a son, who had a son, who had sons
from whom came a people from which people came Jesus.
Jesus is the only hope of the world. Jesus is the way and the truth and the life.
There is no other possibility. The old world goes on its way and we still go on that
way. We still make war in order to find peace. And all the time, God is crucified
and Jesus pleads with us, "Remember. Remember. Remember me."
Come to this table. Remember Jesus. That is an Easter celebration.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
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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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Easter Sunday
Scripture Text
Luke 1:37, Romans 4:18
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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2003-04-20
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The Impossible Possibility
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Richard A. Rhem
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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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 April 20, 2003 entitled "The Impossible Possibility", on the occasion of Easter Sunday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Luke 1:37, Romans 4:18.
Transformation
Way of Jesus
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/93e68fcdb6ec047cfb8fadf44d2aee0b.mp3
1cc834c7219d39f1fdd52869871a7264
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f415604d4c1fd565eea9041ffb903bd6.pdf
d0e9eb37637fbce034791d641599d164
PDF Text
Text
Creation: Stardust to Human to…
From the series: Once Upon a Time…
Text: Genesis 1:1-5, 26-27; Ephesians 4:1-16
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
October 13, 2002
Transcription of the spoken sermon
[Beginning remarks to the community about last week’s David Ray Griffin
lectures on his book, Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism: A Process
Philosophy of Religion during the Center for Religion and Life weekend]
I do this morning want to say something that will enable you … to know that you
had in your midst this outstanding scholar whose scholarship is not an
intellectual curiosity as an end in itself, but very practically in order to learn how
to say God today and how to understand that Infinite Mystery, that Divine
Presence, the sacred and the holy in a world such as we understand our reality
today.
For, really, our storybook, our ancient text, the Bible, comes from an ancient
people and ancient languages that understood the world altogether differently
than we did. They had no knowledge of the physical universe as we do, and so
their image of God, their imaginings of God were quite other than those which we
would have if we would try to think of God in the light of the cosmos as we
understand it and in the light of our human experience.
Probably most people don't even think about that - how to speak of God, to think
of God, how to live a human existence, given the world as it is. Probably most
don't even think about that until maybe they pray passionately for the life of a
child and the child dies. Or, plead with God for something else which never
comes to fruition, and then get to wondering about the suffering in the world and
maybe something as horrible as the Holocaust. And then maybe, in moments of
solitude, there would come a question - Where is God? Who is God? Is God at all?
David Ray Griffin's work is to try to give us an opening on that eternal
transcendent dimension which is not other than our world, but is a part of our
world.
This morning I intended anyway to begin a new series of messages. When I set
these series far in advance, eventually as the time comes, I can twist them any
way. So, I am going to keep with the series title, Once Upon a Time ..., because I
© Grand Valley State University
�Creation: Stardust to Human to…
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
want to call to your mind immediately that the things we are going to talk about,
and we are going to go to the book of Genesis for these messages, are stories.
"Once upon a time...," for the ancient religious storytellers were dealing with
those ultimate questions and that ultimate reality - Why is there something
rather than nothing? What does it mean to be human? Who am I? Whence have I
come and whither am I going and what does it all mean? Those ultimate
questions lived before the rather fearsome reality of a mystery that can never be
penetrated. Those early human religious figures, dreamers, poets told stories, and
we have a story, too, and our story is precisely that. So, once upon a time...
Once upon a time, there were Hebrew dreamers and poets and prophets who
believed that all that is was the consequence of a word of the creator God who
called it all into being. And that creative act was by a God who was not a part of
the created order, but stood above it and continued to guide it and providentially
to move it and here and there, now and again, to intervene in it and to interrupt
its processes, if necessary. That belief in a supernatural being we speak of as
theism, God "out there," tweaking the creation which that God called into being.
That was the ancient picture, the old story, and we read it again a moment ago.
But, in this particular message, I entitle it "Creation: Stardust to Human to..."
because we have come to know that we are a part of a cosmic process of 15 billion
years. Whether it is 15 or 14 or 16, we won't argue. But, we have come to know
that all that is part and parcel of the same thing, that this cosmic process has
been evolving and unfolding with new emergence over billions of years, and that
the stuff that we are is the stuff of the universe, that we human beings are made
of star-stuff, the explosion of those marvelous stars that sprinkle the inky
darkness of the night, that explode and seed the planets and the galaxies with the
elements that are the elements of life. And all reality is uniformly a part of that
explosive explosion of elements and, amazing miracle of miracles, those elements
at some point came alive. Was it an amoeba or an algae or a moss? I don't know,
but it was life, that point of life with no one there to witness it. And then, greater
miracle of all, that life again, over billions of years, eventuating in conscious life,
self-consciousness, consciousness of the other, community, human community.
And here we are.
Someone has said if you took that 15 billion years and collapsed it into one year
so that you had the whole 15 billion years with all of the markers that can be
marked as to what developed when and so forth, all of human recorded history
would have arrived in the last 15 seconds of the last minute. The last 15 seconds of
the last minute. That's who we are - we are Johnny-come-latelies, we are
newcomers. We are a recent emergent in this whole cosmic process, and there is
nothing about us that is any different than that which was part of the process 12
billion years ago, 14,15 billion years ago, and it is absolutely an amazing thing. In
an expanse of time we cannot take in, in an expanse of space that is simply
beyond our comprehension, there is one process going on: billions of galaxies and
billions of stars, and this little planet earth in the midst of the solar system, in the
© Grand Valley State University
�Creation: Stardust to Human to…
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
midst of a galaxy just a speck, just a spinning mud heap, just a pile of rocks, and
here we are human beings, conscious, reflecting on it all. That's amazing! That is
really a miracle.
David Ray Griffin is simply one of those thinkers who thinks about all of that, and
he has taken in what all of the sciences tell us about that reality, and the
philosopher who has informed his work, Alfred North Whitehead, is one who
said, at the beginning of this century, the problem with the modern period is that
it has separated matter and mind, or matter and spirit, and a consequence of that
in the modern period has been a kind of an absolute materialism with no one
knowing what to do with spirit or even denying its existence.
But, Alfred North Whitehead has said, the thing is that that matter is inspirited.
The whole thing is permeated, is shot through with spirit, with consciousness,
and it is on that kind of radically "new" conception of reality, although we can go
all the way back to Plato 600 years before Christ to find echoes of that as well,
that he is trying to say: in this totality of which we are a part, God is fully
present in it all, and there is a creative spirit nudging and moving, but not
coercing or forcing, but beckoning, persuading.
The lure of love, if you will, seems to be the way of the cosmos and, among
human beings that we are, thinking, conscious, aware, one day one was born and
those who encountered him said, "That's it. That must be the divine intention for
the human." In the beginning was that divine intention and all things came into
being through that one, and in the fullness of time that divine intention became
flesh, human, and no one has ever seen God, but that one, that one reveals who
God is. That is our story because we say, concretely, there was a human being. To
look upon that one was to look upon the face of God. And so incarnation or
embodiment: this spirit that inspirits everything becomes concrete in the human
form.
The mistake the Church made was to say it happened once for all in him. The fact
is that it happened in him in order that we might know that it happens in
everyone at all times, that it is the human that is the embodiment of the divine,
that that infinite spirit has become concretized in the human being, and that
human being in Jesus. Those who saw him said, "That is human."
"Stardust to human," human paradigmatically, preeminently in Jesus who is our
pattern. And then my title says, also, three dots, "Stardust to Human to ..." To
what? Are we the apex of it all? Are we the summit of it all? Are we the end of it
all? Or, is there something more? Is there another stage?
Let me tell you where we are today. We who have lately come on the scene, we
“last 15 seconds” human pride, let me tell you where we are today. The nation
stands on the brink of war, and great religious leaders, the Pope, the Dalai Lama,
and others, the Catholic Conference of Bishops, the National Council of Churches,
heads of denominations - all across the board, except the Southern Baptists and
© Grand Valley State University
�Creation: Stardust to Human to…
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
Jerry Falwell, but otherwise quite uniformly across the board all have said war is
not the answer, war is not the solution, go slowly, go cautiously. Nobody is
listening. I know that we religious leaders really don't deserve any real attention
because what do we know? The face in a book, dealing with sweet communities of
people, what do we know about the real world? I almost find it a little humorous
when I think about the universality of the spiritual counsel and the total
disregard. It wasn't always that way. But, if you want to know the impact of the
spiritual community in today's world, you have a parable before you. Nobody
gives a rip about what the Church is saying. But, I have a little stripe of cynicism
in me, so I don't always trust myself.
I have been saying that this whole thing is really, finally, about oil. And then,
praise be to God, yesterday's Grand Rapids Press headline was: "Seidman Bullish
on War." William Seidman, local boy who has made good, at age 81 now comes
back to Grand Rapids to speak to some business leaders about matters similar to
insider trading, only this is the inside information to a few folks. It's at the
Peninsular Club, a nice place to eat. I'll bet you President Bush could shoot him,
because he has let the cat out of the bag. "Seidman Bullish on War" - that's an
obscene headline. The article says that he claims that defeating Saddam Hussein
and controlling Iraqi oil is at least as important as eliminating weapons of mass
destruction. Now, you are getting it from an insider who says that it is political
rhetoric about the weapons of mass destruction and the locus of evil that
therefore needs to be wiped out. He is really telling us you're just being played
because it is not about mass destruction weapons. It is about oil. He goes on to
say that it would never deepen the bear market (that's a misleading reading of the
market - war, that is). "Oil prices fluctuating is a very large drag on the economy,
ours and the world's, said Seidman. If we are in Iraq, nobody can use oil as a
weapon. I think probably the most bullish thing I can think of today is winning
the war. We are planning to set up a MacArthur-like government," referring to
Japan after World War II," getting control of that oil, thereby gaining sway with
neighboring Saudi Arabia's oil production will make a vast difference to the
economy in all sorts of areas, but particularly the price of oil. Having the two
major oil producers not part of any radical Muslim or any other unfriendly
government," he said, "would be a huge additional factor in the world's
economy." And then, and this is the clincher, he said he's not surprised that the
Bush administration is not the one heralding a return to profitability by way of
war. Oh, really? The administration is not saying that by way of war we could
return to profitability? No, he's not surprised they are not doing that. Neither am
I. But, he says, "I deny it specifically on behalf of the government," he said,
joking. That's obscene.
Now you have the whole religious world trying to whisper in somebody's ear, and
nobody's listening. But, you have an insider coming back to say finally, folks, the
talk is about eliminating weapons of mass destruction, but finally it's about oil,
because finally it is about the economy, because finally it is about beating the
bear market and returning to profitability. And you know what? It might work. I
© Grand Valley State University
�Creation: Stardust to Human to…
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
may yet be able to retire. It could work. We could go in there and maybe if we're
successful, maybe we'll knock the stuffing out of Saddam and maybe we'll be able
to establish our own puppet government there and maybe, over years, maybe,
maybe, maybe ... But, you see what we're doing? We are the superpower and we
can act unilaterally. We can have our way in the world. Do you want to be with us
or against us? Well, we don't believe in what you are doing. Do you want to
support us or not? We'll go to the United Nations and we will use the United
Nations if it works, but if it doesn't work, we'll do it alone. And we might pull it
off. But, don't you see that if we pull it off one more time, we will not have solved
anything except the present generation's prosperity?
What about the rest of the Muslim world? Why are we the victims of terrorism? Is
terrorism not the technique of those who have no power? And is there any power
in the world that could protect against terrorism? So there is the irony that here
we are, wealthy, powerful, top of our game, and we live with fear. We live with as
much fear as a nation as the people around Washington D.C. are living in fear of a
sniper right now. That is the kind of irrationality that cannot be defended against.
Yet, we can go in there and we can square things around, and we can dominate
and we can hold on powerfully enough, long enough, perhaps, to pull it off for the
likes of us for another generation, but, eventually, don't we know eventually it is
only justice and compassion that can ever solve the anguish and the agony of the
world? Don't we realize the cynicism of this world that talks about being born
again and about Jesus, only to go to war, when Jesus said blessed are the
peacemakers and the merciful and the gentle? Don't we know what a mockery it
is to be called a Christian nation when we are no more ready, even though we are
the superpower that would have it within us to change the game, that we will
continue one more time to use our power and, if need be, violence and war? And
the secret is out. … I'll bet they could kill him for letting the cat out of the bag and
confirming what some of us have worried about all the time.
The passion of David Ray Griffin's life right now is global democracy. He is
working now on a book in which he suggests, if there were an objective, neutral
observer who was good, who had all of the facts and who could adjudicate the
human situation, wouldn't that be good? And after all of his philosophical and
theological explorations, it is the God reflected in the Jesus of the Sermon on the
Mount for whom he sees room in this cosmic process of 15 billion years. What we
need is not a little tweaking of the system. What we need is a transformation of
human consciousness.
What do you think? I'm just blowing bubbles, huh? I'm just blowing smoke. I'm
just another idealistic romanticist. I'm just another preacher. But, unless there is
a transformation of human consciousness that gains a critical mass that
revolutionizes the way we are human with each other, we will keep on in our
tribal ways and we will keep killing each other and we will continue to be afraid.
© Grand Valley State University
�Creation: Stardust to Human to…
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
References:
David Ray Griffin. Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism: A Process
Philosophy of Religion. Cornell Studies in the Philosophy of Religion, 2000.
© 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>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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Sound
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
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Event
Pentecost XXI
Series
Once Upon a Time_
Scripture Text
Genesis 1:1-5, 26-27, Ephesians 4:1-16
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Barbara Brown Taylor. The Luminous Web: Essays on Science and Religion, 2000.
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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KII-01_RA-0-20021013
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2002-10-13
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Creation: Stardust to Human to...
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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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Sound
Text
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on October 13, 2002 entitled "Creation: Stardust to Human to...", as part of the series "Once Upon a Time_", on the occasion of Pentecost XXI, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Genesis 1:1-5, 26-27, Ephesians 4:1-16.
Cosmic Evolution
Lure of Love
Transformation
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f142ce0c49cf11ec3397789f207754c2.mp3
3e838d2c5ed35dd3e1ae43db9bbb76e1
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/faa2ff819626dc6961d94d97b38d90ac.pdf
38f85dfca1a2eed1b486890f39d2bdd3
PDF Text
Text
Whose Truth Are You Living?
Eastertide V
Scripture: Philippians 3:4-11; 4:10-14; Matthew 28:1-10
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
April 28, 2002
Transcription of the spoken sermon
On Easter I gave you the analogy of the caterpillar and the butterfly, the butterfly,
of course, the prime symbol for Easter and for resurrection. I mentioned that the
caterpillar takes from the egg certain cells and those cells have within them the
blueprint for the legs and the wings of the butterfly, and at a certain point in the
development of the caterpillar, those cells begin to create disks within the
creature which are perceived by the immune system of that creature as being
alien and foreign and therefore are attacked, but eventually they overcome. The
zoologist calls those cells imaginal cells, a wonderful name, imaginal cells. They
imagine within themselves what that caterpillar can become, and when they
finally overcome the resistance of the immune system, the caterpillar is
transformed into a butterfly that, in all of its beauty, flies away in freedom. That
analogy, of course, is received on Easter Sunday as an analogy of that
transformation that occurs at the point of our death. Certainly it is a beautiful
analogy for that possibility, that transformation about which I remain agnostic,
because who knows what kind of transformation that might be?
This morning I want to point out what I really intended to point out but probably
didn't have the time or didn't have the presence of mind to do, and that is that as
the Easter message title was "Just Imagine the Real Miracle of Easter," I want to
point out that that analogy is apropos, as well, for the possibility in our present
existence to come to new insight, to come to transforming understanding, to
come to a new way of being, to be given the gift of eyes to see and ears to hear,
and to see the same things we've always seen, only to see them in a new way such
that it is transformative of our life and of our being. So, I raise the question this
morning in order to get at that - "Whose Truth Are You Living?"
An intentional question - whose truth are you living? Not "Whose Truth Do You
Believe?" but whose truth are you living? In other words, what is the vision that
has informed your life? What is at the center of your passion, what creates the life
map, the sense of orientation for your ordinary days and for those crisis periods
that come now and again? What is that at the center, the core of your being?
Whose truth are you living?
© Grand Valley State University
�Whose Truth Are You Living?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
That question is a question intended to illicit an answer from you which, if I were
so lucky, would be "my truth." Whose truth are you living? Tell me you're living
your truth. Perhaps that seems a bit presumptuous. Maybe that even feels
arrogant to you. Live my truth? My truth? Who am I, after all? My truth? I'm a
part of a long tradition.
Perhaps in answer to my question, rather than saying, "My truth," you might say,
"I'm Christian," or "I'm Muslim." Or you might get more particular, you might
say, "As a Christian, I'm Protestant." If you're really picky, you might say, "I'm a
Lutheran or a Methodist or a Presbyterian." In other words, we define ourselves
often in terms of a group with which we are affiliated. We gain our identity
through that group-think which has formed and shaped us, the community of
which we are a part, and if you would say to me this morning some answer like
that, not "My truth," but "The Christian tradition," then I think you would be in
good company, most likely with the vast majority of folk who would so define
themselves in terms of some such community affiliation. I must say that is not all
bad because if you would have answered me, "I live by my truth," you would only
have come to your truth through one of the great traditions.
Our truth does not emerge in a vacuum. We are shaped and formed, and that is
why, in a community like this, we nurture our children and we shape our youth.
We have a responsibility to pass on a tradition which has been a positive
tradition, a positive power and shaping force in our lives. It has given us order. It
has given us some sense of the meaning of life, of the direction of life. It has
spoken to us of God and of humankind and of history and culture, and it has
helped us to find our way in the passages of life. So, don't hear me denigrate the
tradition and the respective traditions, and even the narrowing down of those
traditions into creedal forms and confessional groups, for all of us, finally, will
have to come in that way if we would come to our own personal place to stand to
say, "I stand in my truth. This is my vision. I have seen something and I live by it
and its illumination floods my life."
Nonetheless, it is possible to move beyond that group identity to a personal vision
which can be absolutely transforming and liberating, and maybe if I said it
against its opposite, it will make some sense. Recently someone put in my hands
a magazine called Islam, and this very nice glossy magazine had on the cover,
"Discovering the Truth: What Islam Stands For," and when I went to the lead
article, it gives some of the history of Mohammed. It was during one of those
times in a cave that God sent his first revelation to Mohammed. Mohammed was
now the final messenger of God and would be used to deliver the universal
message to all humankind. The Archangel Gabriel came to Mohammed and
commanded, "Read." Mohammed, terrified, replied, "I'm not a reader," for he
could neither read nor write, as literacy where he lived was rare. The angel took
hold of him, squeezed him with incredible force, released him and repeated the
command, "Read." Mohammed repeated himself and once again the angel
squeezed him until Mohammed thought he could bear it no longer. After the
© Grand Valley State University
�Whose Truth Are You Living?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
third time, Mohammed felt the intense ringing of bells and heard Gabriel recite
the literal word of God, words so powerful that it felt like they were inscribed on
his heart, "Read, in the name of your Lord who created you." He ran from the
cave in terror, trying to escape the intense and frightening experience, but
everywhere he looked on the horizon, he saw Gabriel. He could not escape, but he
had already been chosen. Over a period of twenty-three years, the revelation
continued to come.
It is a magazine like Christianity Today or a house organ like The Banner of the
Christian Reformed Church or The Church Herald of the Reformed Church. It is
very nicely done and it presents the truth of Islam while it says "Discover the
Truth: What Islam Stands For." And then it gives accounts like this and I was
reminded as I read it of much Christian literature that assumes again, quite
naturally, this is the truth. Gabriel did visit Mary, the virgin Mary. Do you believe
that? If you believe that, do you believe this? If you believe this, then there is a
revelation beyond what is here, a final revelation, a final testament. The
respective religions claim to have the truth and so I say, "I'm a Muslim," or "I'm a
Christian," then my truth is defined for me. There is a dogma, there is a teaching.
It is all there in creedal expression and confessional statement, in ritual form. All
of the accoutrements of the religious experience of the respective traditions, all of
them assume a kind of literality about their truthfulness and its congruence with
reality as it is. So, if you belong to such a group, you don't have to have your own
truth. You could have group-think.
Now, once again to set this over against what I want to get at this morning. I
often have people say to me, "We don't believe that!" Oh, don't we? Who is we?
We don't believe that, or we believe so and so. We do? As a group, as a
community. Have we all thought it through? Have we all come to a personal
appropriation of that community expression? Hardly. We find our identity in that
group connection, just like we find our identity in the U.S. of A. or the Red Wings
who won again last night. We get our identity out of that kind of group affiliation
and we simply become a part of it, and I want to suggest to you this morning that
there is the possibility of a transformation when one can move beyond that
group-think, beyond that traditional statement, to one's own truth, to one's own
vision. There is the possibility of finding one's being transformed here and now,
coming to that epiphany saying, "Oh, I see!" To have eyes to see and ears to hear
the same old thing in a brand new way, which can be transformative.
Paul was such a person. You may say, "Oh, yes, Paul. Thank you very much, I'm
not Paul. I'm never going to be knocked off my horse by a blinding light from
heaven. I'm just ordinary. Don't push me too much."
But, think of Paul. Of course, Paul was a religious genius. I think Paul was one of
those special vessels, one whose epiphany becomes epiphanic for a whole
community of people who probably more than Jesus is responsible for the shape
of the Christian faith and Christian tradition. Paul, and I read his little
© Grand Valley State University
�Whose Truth Are You Living?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
autobiographical piece, was deeply traditioned. He had the right connections, the
right parents, the right bloodlines, the right sacramental ritual discipline, the
right affiliation in terms of Pharisee concern for the serious observance of the
law, engaged and zealous, so he confesses, "I persecuted the Church." In terms of
being responsible to that tradition that he had embraced, blameless. He sets all
that forth because he says, "I set it all to the side, because of this transforming
vision that I had."
I simply lift Paul up as one who was so deeply traditioned, but by the grace of God
was able to move out of the hedgerows and the binding narrowness of a strong
tradition into a grand and glorious freedom that enabled him to soar. Paul
experienced the transformation such that it knocked his socks off, and perhaps
that is rare, but I hold him up as an example of what can happen and to make the
point that all of that tradition, all of that structure, all of that ritual, all of those
creedal statements and confessional expressions - all of it is the scaffolding
through which and by which the building is erected. And all of it is good and all of
it is valuable and all of it is of worth, because you can't erect the building from
ground up without all of that paraphernalia, and neither can you come to your
truth, to your personal vision, to that which you'd die for because it enables you
to live. You cannot come to that, either, without the help and the aid of all of the
agencies of the religious experience. All of those things are simply the means to
the end of the vision of God that sets you free. That is the transforming thing of
Paul. It was not a matter of Paul, the Jew, becoming a Christian. There wasn't
even Christianity at the time. Paul was born a Jew and died a Jew as Jesus was
born a Jew and died a Jew.
This was not a conversion from one religion to another. This was a conversion
about the understanding of religion, that religion is not a burden to be borne, not
a routine to be followed, an obligation to be executed, but religion, all of it, is to
be entered into and practiced in order that we might be set free from religion, in
order that we might play fast and loose with it, in order that we might live lightly
with it, valuing it for what it is and continuing to make it available in order that it
might continue to be the agent of nurture and formation, but then, to recognize
that it can be shuck off in order that one can have wings to soar.
A pastor is crazy to tell his people that. The philosopher George Santayana wrote
this marvelous statement:
Ultimate insights (now, that's what we are talking about) have a tendency
to undermine the orthodox approaches by which they have been reached.
Wow! Did you get that? Ultimate insights have a tendency to undermine the
orthodox approaches by which they have been reached. The saint pulls his ladder
up with him into his private heaven. I get the vision. I see it. I'm thankful for all of
the accoutrements of that structure, the community that has brought me to the
point where I can fly, and then I pull my ladder up into my private heaven and I
don't tell you about it, because otherwise you might think you don't need me
© Grand Valley State University
�Whose Truth Are You Living?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
anymore. The community of the faithful on whose sturdy, dogmatic shoulders he
has climbed must not be deprived of the means of following his example. In other
words, I have to be very careful to talk to you about my truth and to suggest for
you your truth, because it is the sturdy shoulders of the dogmatic formulas upon
which I have climbed to my vision, and if I undermine the sturdy shoulders of the
dogmatic tradition, how will you join me in your private heaven?
Now, of course, I only do this because I can trust you with it. I only do this
because you are a mature community. I only do this because somewhere there
has to be a community that is honest about the fact that all religious practice is
valuable and relative, important and non- essential, and all of it is for the end and
the aim of a vision of God that transforms human life and allows community to
be a community of peace and reconciliation.
Some years ago, The Economist magazine had a special edition on God, and there
was a statement in it which I never forgot. It went like this:
The trouble with the world is that there are people who believe they
understand God perfectly and they meet other people who think the same
way, only differently.
Is that a picture of our world today? While it is necessary, in the nurture and the
formation of children and youth, and adults, to create the possibility for the
probing of reality, of God, of grace, of meaning through structures that have
stood the test of time, it is also high time that as a Church we get honest. I
suppose part of it is all of this terrible struggle in the Catholic Church right now,
and all of this language about the Holy Father and all of the folderol about the
robes and braids and miters, and I see all of that and I think, "Religion
institutionalized is a sickness."
But, I don't know how else to create the possibility of you coming to your own
truth unless we continue to think, probe, worship, engage in our ritual, and then
trust that now and again, here and there, someone will say, "Ah, I see! I see! I
see!" And one or two a year makes it all worthwhile
© Grand Valley State University
�
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
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
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English
Type
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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
Eastertide IV
Scripture Text
Philippians 3:4-11, 4:10-14, Matthew 28:1-10
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-20020428
Date
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2002-04-28
Title
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Whose Truth Are You Living?
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
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eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on April 28, 2002 entitled "Whose Truth Are You Living?", on the occasion of Eastertide IV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Philippians 3:4-11, 4:10-14, Matthew 28:1-10.
Eastertide
Transformation
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/57d8d4e08dd866182f5ee8f075fcd352.pdf
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PDF Text
Text
Two Understandings – When Friends Disagree
Eastertide II
Scripture: Galatians 2:11-14; Luke 24:28-43
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
April 7, 2002
Transcription of the spoken sermon
It must be obvious to everyone that this world needs to learn to engage in
conversation and dialogue to be honest with each other and to listen to each
other, in order that we might live in peace. Our world is breaking apart because
we can't speak to each other or hear each other.
I am using this occasion, the week after Easter, to think about the resurrection
from two perspectives, because in May we are having two scholars come our way
who differ on their understanding of the resurrection. And they are coming in
order to stimulate conversation among the faith community of western Michigan,
to be a model for a manner in which such conversation can take place.
Marcus Borg, who has been here a couple of times and is a real friend of this
congregation, will be joined by N. T. Wright, who is an excellent scholar and who
happens to be a very good friend of Marcus. N. T. Wright is the Canon of
Westminster Abbey. If you watch the funeral on Tuesday of the Queen Mum, I
am wondering whether N. T. Wright may be a part of that, since he is the Canon
of that great cathedral in London. They were in school together at Oxford and
became friends, respecting each other, holding each other in high esteem, and yet
differing in their perspectives. They become a good model for a way in which
religious people can differ with one another and yet not break community, and
converse with one another and seek to deepen the understanding one of another
and to enhance that understanding.
N. T. Wright is a rather traditional, evangelical scholar. He is an excellent scholar,
but his position is traditional and evangelical, it is what probably you grew up
with, what I grew up with, the kind of position that I preached for many, many
years. Marcus Borg represents a position, an understanding of the resurrection or
a biblical interpretation which takes into account the developments of modernity
and critical studies of scripture. Anytime you have a difference in your
understanding of the resurrection or any question, you can be sure it goes back to
a difference in understanding of biblical interpretation.
© Grand Valley State University
�Two Understandings: When Friends Disagree
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
The book that Marcus and Tom Wright wrote together, The Meaning of Jesus:
Two Visions, has chapters, each of them contributing a chapter, on, for example,
The Resurrection, the Virgin Birth, Is Jesus God?, What Difference Does It
Make?, and so forth. It is a very interesting dialogue they carry on between them.
When I read N. T. Wright, I read my past. When I read Marcus Borg, I read
someone who has taken account of the critical studies of scripture and the whole
drift of the post- Enlightenment world that seeks to understand phenomena apart
from the miraculous or the interventions of some supernatural incursion into this
world.
And so, obviously for me, I understand, I stand with Marcus Borg, but I respect
N. T. Wright as probably as fine a spokesperson as one could have of that
traditional point of view. Just to have them speaking together and expressing
their differing perspectives brings before us a model of conversation and
understanding that I think is very positive, for it is possible to differ with another
without writing the other off or living in alienation and separation. We don't do
that very well in the religious world. God knows we've not done that very well in
the church. Congregations have been split; denominations have been formed over
lesser differences than the differences between N. T. Wright and Marcus Borg on
the resurrection.
To hear them, to watch them, to observe them relating to one another, in this
case, in the pages of this book, becomes a lesson, a model, for how we can engage
one another and respect one another, learn from one another, and continue in
relationship, even though we understand that we differ in our perspectives and in
our interpretations.
As I said, N. T. Wright has a traditional view of the resurrection. If you would
read the chapter in the book, The Meaning of Jesus, that he writes on the
resurrection, you would find him insisting on some kind of bodily physicality as a
sign or as a mark of resurrection. He is a very bright man and he understands the
issues clearly, and he is careful, and so he is careful to indicate that he is not
talking about the resuscitation of a corpse, obviously. Nonetheless, he wants to
insist on the necessity of the empty tomb; for N. T. Wright, if the tomb is not
empty, there is no Easter. There has been no resurrection.
Now, Marcus Borg, on the other hand, says the empty tomb is a matter of
indifference. He doesn't care if it is empty or not. If the bones, the skeletal
remains of Jesus should be found, through DNA tracing sometime, Marcus
wouldn't care, because, for him, the resurrection is not about a corpse coming to
life, but a life in God, a spiritual existence that is still experienced as a presence
among those who knew Jesus and followed him. Marcus loves to go to what is
also my favorite resurrection story, the Emmaus Road, two men journeying from
Jerusalem on Easter. They are sad of heart because of the events of Good Friday,
and they are joined by a stranger whom they do not recognize. As readers, we
know that it is Jesus. He says, "Why are you sad of heart?" They say, "Well, where
© Grand Valley State University
�Two Understandings: When Friends Disagree
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
have you been?" And then he begins to speak to them about the scriptures, to
interpret the scriptural tradition that what has happened is exactly what would
have been expected in the prophetic books, and so forth. They come to the village
and it is getting toward evening, and he makes as though he would go on, and
they say, "Come in to us," and so he comes into their home, he acts as the host, he
blesses the bread and breaks it and gives it to them, and "poof," he is gone. But in
the breaking of the bread, they recognize him, and they say, "Now that we think
of it, did not our hearts burn within us as he spoke to us along the way?"
It is a beautiful story, reminding us, of course, of the experience of the Eucharist.
Luke is writing this Gospel story some 50 years after the events. There is a
congregation, a community to whom he is writing, a community, obviously, that
shares the Eucharist. What Luke is saying to them is that the presence of the
living Lord is experienced in the community in the breaking of bread. The
sacramental nature of the Church is the medium by which the risen Christ is
experienced in the community. There is no body there. They don't recognize this
person. Obviously, this isn't the corpse coming out of the grave. It is a symbolic
metaphor. It is a beautiful, beautiful story. If only Luke would not have given us
the next paragraph, because now they run back to Jerusalem and meet with the
disciples and a few others on Easter night, and they say, "The Lord was made
known to us," and they learn that Peter also had an experience, and now they are
gathered there and "poof," there he is again. But, now N. T. Wright is smiling all
over the place because now this risen one seems to want to underscore a certain
physicality. Even though he came "poof” into the room, nonetheless, he says,
"Handle me." And then he says, "Do you have anything to eat?" So now we are
dealing with the kind of physicality that is other than that of the Emmaus Road
story.
Well, Marcus Borg would say that is a later edition that indicates a time when
faith was being tested and there was a tendency to speak about a ghost-like
existence, but lacking reality, and so there was a kind of concreteness that was
shadowed forth in this story in order to say, "Look, this thing is real this
substance here."
Well, the biblical scholars can talk back and forth, and some of you are in one
paragraph and some of you are in another, and that is perfectly all right. That is
the way it should be. But, as a matter of fact, both Tom and Marcus would say
that Easter is the originating event of the Church and that Easter, in its summary,
is Jesus lives and Jesus is Lord, that the experience of Jesus post-crucifixion, the
experience, whether it was in some kind of story, some kind of appearance such
as Luke records here in Emmaus, or in Jerusalem, or whether, whatever it is,
there was a community of people that gathered post-crucifixion that said, "Jesus
lives." And believing that Jesus was alive, that Jesus had not simply died and was
gone, they said Jesus was right. This was God's vindication of the way of Jesus, of
the life of Jesus, of that which Jesus embodied, of that which came to expression
in Jesus.
© Grand Valley State University
�Two Understandings: When Friends Disagree
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
And so, what difference does it make whether the tomb is filled with the remains
of Jesus, or the tomb is empty, If there is a community of people that are united
in the fact that what was embodied in Jesus is a way of life and grace?
I cited last week that paragraph about how the caterpillar is transformed into the
butterfly. The caterpillar carried with it from the egg certain cells. The zoologist
calls them imaginal cells. Imaginal. I love it. Those are the cells that have the
blueprint of the butterfly. Those cells have the genes for legs and for wings, and
that old caterpillar, scrounging around on the ground, suddenly finds something
happening to its physical being that at first is attacked by the caterpillar's
immune system as something foreign but, eventually the new take over and there
emerges the butterfly, because that caterpillar was not made to crawl, but to fly. It
was not made to be a fuzzy worm, but a multi-colored butterfly in the sky. Now, if
the transformation takes place, what does it matter what the process is? If the
reality is there, then what is the big deal about the historical details that surround
it, for one a literal story of a body coming out of a tomb, for another, a spiritual
transformation, but for both, a transforming presence that is a sign that in this
cosmic journey of ours there is a bias toward life, creativity. If one comes to that
conclusion, then one can allow that another may come by it in another way. Why
start a new church? Why walk out on the sermon? Why begin a new
denomination?
Now I don't mean to say that distinctions are not important and differences
cannot be significant. Paul, for example, a Jew who was convinced that the way of
Jesus was dangerous, was undercutting the traditions of Israel and therefore had
to be stamped out. Paul has an experience, a vision. He is blinded. He
contemplates. He is turned around 180 degrees, and he becomes the apostle to
the Gentiles. Paul who was on the way to stamp out the Way becomes the one
who says in his transforming experience, “This must be God's move to include the
nations, the Gentiles." Paul never became anything else than a Jew and Paul
never rejected his Jewish religious faith. Paul was a Jew; Jesus was a Jew and
they, understood the God of Israel to be the only God there was, but what Paul
saw now was the possibility of all people coming into the relationship and the
covenant community of this people of Israel. As Paul said, "You know what? They
don't have to become Jews. The grace of God is sufficient. They can come directly
to God without coming by way of Moses with circumcision and dietary laws and
all of that. For Paul, that was a transforming experience. That was a total change
of paradigm. It didn't have to be another religion. It was simply the same God of
Israel embracing all by grace.
Well, what about the rest of Jesus' Jewish disciples? What about Peter, for
example? Well, Peter had an experience, too, at the house of Cornelius. He has a
vision, "Go preach in Cornelius’ house, the Roman centurion." He is preaching
and the Holy Spirit falls upon that house and he says, “O my God, now what?"
Now, they got it, too, but Peter was not the man that Paul was, with all due
© Grand Valley State University
�Two Understandings: When Friends Disagree
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
respect to the Roman Catholic Church. Paul saw through. Paul glimpsed grace.
Paul saw something new.
Peter granted it, but it wasn't the passion of his life. And so, now they are out in
the mission field, out in Galatia, in the community that had started as a result of
Paul's preaching, and these are Gentile people now. It is not kosher. The table is
not kosher. That's okay with Peter. Peter intellectually knows the truth. It doesn't
matter. It's a religious thing. Religious things don't matter. They're optional. You
choose them, or they choose you, and you follow them and that is fine. But, they
are not absolutes. It’s not as though a lightning bolt is going to hit you. And so,
Peter has ham and buns in Galatia. But then, somebody comes from Mother
Church in Jerusalem, some of James' people, and Peter sidles past the table with
the ham and buns, and he moves over to the kosher table. Paul says, "Peter,
you’re wrong. You're not wrong to stay kosher. Stay kosher, if that is your choice.
But, don't eat one way one day and another way another day because the food is
there. Have integrity and authenticity in your person.
And so Paul confronts a friend, not about whether he is right or wrong, but about
the consistency of behavior. And so, I believe, in the church, as well. It is not as
though we need to agree on a lot of things, but the thing we need to be able to do
in the community of faith is to talk about it and to move for integrity of
understanding and action, so that where our perspectives differ, fine. That's okay.
But, is there enough that unites us that is common that we can celebrate together
so that we don't break community? If it is to be authentic community, then we
are also able to confront issues and be honest one with another in order that it
may be an authentic community, because you see, the human experience is the
experience of being rooted in history and, therefore, marked by limited
understanding. And that limited understanding means that there are no
absolutes. There may be an absolute, but every human perspective is relative, and
every human understanding is a partial and tentative understanding on the way,
hopefully, to fuller understanding. And so it is in the church. Peter could have
stayed Jewish. Israel is ongoing. Israel lives today. There would not have been
any problem with Peter continuing his Jewish faith. Paul's point to him was don't
equivocate between the two. Don't be hypocritical. Be honest in your faith and in
your behavior.
Friends can differ, and those differences can be argued and can be grounded and
founded and legitimate. There is no one to say it is this way and no other way is
possible. But, when we get an insight, as Paul did, when there is a breakthrough,
we ought to be able to bring it to expression and talk about it. For example,
western values in our world - can we talk about them? What about that which
looms on the horizon, the possibility of civilizational clash? Are we able to
express our values in the most articulate and persuasive way possible, without
having to kill one another?
© Grand Valley State University
�Two Understandings: When Friends Disagree
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
What about in the Church, for example? In the question of sexual orientation, we
begin to understand some things. We understand things about the human
creature. We understand the diversity of creation. We understand that this is not
a matter of choice, but is a given. Then, what is the Church to do? To go on with
its bias and its prejudice? Damning and separating people and cutting them out?
Of course not. And if the Church does that as an institution, it has to be
addressed. The point has to be made so we can be engaged in conversation and
dialogue, not to break community, but in order to make community honest and
authentic and open.
There is no party line here and I value the diversity of understanding and
perspective. Don't expect the pulpit to dot every i and cross every t and be able to
embrace it all. I have a point of view and I have a responsibility to make it as clear
as I can, and I will. But I promise you, as well, that I'll listen and we can continue
to talk about these things together. If you'd like a shot at it, come on Wednesday
night. We can have a good free-for-all about six weeks in a row with differing
perspectives authored by two friends who come at it differently, but in the
exchange, help all of us to come to a clearer understanding of where we are and
why.
God knows the world needs conversation, or we will kill each other.
References:
Marcus J. Borg and N. T. Wright. The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions.
HarperCollins Publishers, 1999.
© 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
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
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
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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
Eastertide I
Scripture Text
Ecclesiastes 3:3-8, Galatians 2:11-14, Luke 24:28-42
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Marcus J. Borg, N.T. Wright. The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, 1999.
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-0-20020407
Date
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2002-04-07
Title
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Two Understanding When Friends Disagree
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Rights
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
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on April 7, 2002 entitled "Two Understanding When Friends Disagree", on the occasion of Eastertide I, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Ecclesiastes 3:3-8, Galatians 2:11-14, Luke 24:28-42.
Eastertide
Inclusivism
Transformation
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a3d167580a2b4fbd3b891cede40ca63f.mp3
61c56323c15b6aef64c25f5f9214ef16
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ee907204a827dc5a7bf8dae933aa7d57.pdf
11cb31aea340c82b2fbd85a5c04dd612
PDF Text
Text
Just Imagine: The Real Miracle of Easter
Easter Sunday, The Festival of the Resurrection
Scripture: I Corinthians 15:35-37, 42-50; John 20:11-18
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
March 31, 2002
Transcription of the spoken sermon
We have come a long way in a few weeks. If you have been journeying with us,
with Jesus on the Road Less Traveled, we have been in some dark environments,
and we have felt the heaviness increasing until Thursday evening, the night in
which he was betrayed, and Friday noon, the crucifixion. It has been a long way,
and in a post-9/11 world, we have felt it more poignantly, perhaps, than at any
time that I can remember. In the darkness, as it concluded, the end of the
journey, we heard the mixed messages, "My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?”, "Father, into thy hand I commend my spirit," and now here we
are on Easter Sunday morning once again, amid the flowers in all of their beauty,
and the flickering candles, the magnificent music, and this setting of Easter
worship.
Is it too bright too soon? Do you ever feel that? Just too bright too soon to move
out of that darkness into the splendor of this moment - is it simply too quick a
transition? One of our families who faithfully worshiped throughout Lent and
entered very, very thoughtfully into that journey with Jesus told me they came
Thursday night but wouldn't be here this morning because they simply couldn't
move that quickly out of the darkness and into the light. I respect that. I feel that
somewhat myself. For, what are we celebrating this morning? What has brought
us from that somber and sobering darkness into this beautiful moment? What is
Easter, after all? What is it all about?
A simple answer which the Church has given down through the centuries, of
course, is that obvious answer. Jesus died in order that I might live. Jesus died to
open heaven's gate. He lives and now we, too, shall live. Easter is about
resurrection. Easter is about that movement from life through death to life
eternal. And certainly, that is no insignificant movement and that is no
insignificant realization, particularly if, as we celebrated here yesterday, we
experience the life of one loved and lost a while. Not an insignificant affirmation
if one receives a terminal diagnosis and knows that one's days are numbered. And
so, in no way do I want to say that promise of Easter, that Christian hope is
without deep meaning and great significance.
© Grand Valley State University
�Just Imagine: The Real Miracle of Easter
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
But, think with me for a moment about that. Is that really what Easter is all
about? Is Easter really all about the assurance to Richard Rhem that, at the point
of his death, he need fear no darkness, for the light will dawn? I mean, what
about all of the history that we have been traversing together? What about the
journey of Jesus into the darkness of his day which seems to be replicated all too
well in the post-September 11 world when Jerusalem is burning, when Hindu and
Muslim are massacring each other, when the globe trembles with the anguish
that has it in its grip. Is it really enough to say that Easter is about my personal,
ultimate, eternal life? We've done that in the Church, of course. We have made
that promise, and again it is not insignificant, but do you feel my question? Isn't
there something more? Aren't we brushed into a broader canvas? Isn't there
another story going on?
My own personal existence is one thing, but what about the whole cosmic
movement of 15 billion years? What about the course of human history? What
about this creature that we are who comes to consciousness and to awareness and
who gives society and culture and civilizations? What about the vast canvas of
human history? What about the awesomeness of creation? What about the
human possibility, the human experiment? Isn't there more to it than whether or
not I live and die and live again? Isn't that a narrow focus compared to the
broader question? Haven't we missed what Jesus was all about?
Let me suggest to you this morning that perhaps Easter is about human
transformation. Maybe Easter is about social transformation. Maybe Easter is
about a dawning awareness of something new. Maybe Easter is about the
transformation of the world. Maybe all of that in which Jesus was engaged and all
of the struggle and the anguish of the human community is reflective of
something deeper and something more, and maybe the followers of Jesus in the
wake of his death had something dawn upon them that said, "My God! He lives!"
Resurrection and the nature of it has been debated and discussed from the
beginning. Peter read the lessons, Paul's long 15th chapter of I Corinthians. The
Corinthians were Greeks, somewhat philosophically inclined, and there were
those who were saying there was no resurrection, and Paul said, if there is no
resurrection, I have no message to preach, your faith is vain, our preaching is
empty, nothing has happened then if there is no resurrection. But, when he got to
try to explain what in the world resurrection was, Paul didn't know any more
than you do. Did you hear the torturous way he was arguing about that
resurrection? In fact, he starts off that one paragraph by saying, "You fool!"
That’s the kind of thing we do with one another when we're not sure, raise our
voice, get shrill. Paul didn't know what he was talking about, of course. He
certainly wasn't talking about corpuscles. He wasn't talking about a physical
body. I thought some years ago I mentioned that Easter certainly wasn't about
the resuscitation of a corpse. I really thought everybody understood that by now,
but not everybody did. It ruined a few Easters, I think.
© Grand Valley State University
�Just Imagine: The Real Miracle of Easter
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
But, you know, if you just hear Paul, he says flesh and blood cannot inherit the
kingdom of God. What is buried is perishable; what comes forth is imperishable.
He talks about a physical body and a spiritual body and, frankly, Paul is going
around in circles because it's not about corpuscles for Paul, because Paul was on
his horse and on his way to Damascus and the light knocked him off his horse
and he had a vision of the ascended Lord and there were no corpuscles there. He
had to go into the city and sit there in the darkness for a while and think about it.
And what happened to Paul after his resurrection experience was a
transformation, an absolute transformation and he was turned around in his
tracks. He began to think differently and he became passionate about something
of which he could never have dreamed.
John's Gospel, written some six decades after the event, John who is dealing with
people who have no possibility of any kind of encounter with the corpuscular
Christ, tells the story of Mary and she recognizes Jesus. And of course, in the
story, she wants to grab him and he says, "Don't hold me, Mary." Well, John is
simply saying, isn't he, that this thing is not about bodies? Or, Thomas who
missed the Easter Sunday night service, shame on him. And when he's told about
the fact that Jesus was there, he says, "I don't believe it. I won't believe it unless I
can put my finger in the wounded hand." And then the next Sunday night he was
in church and, without coming through a door, no corpuscles there, Jesus - a
hand, a wounded hand without corpuscles, can you believe it? There you are,
Thomas. Well, Thomas doesn't need to touch the hand, because Thomas
suddenly sees something and he says, "My Lord and my God."
It is about transformation of understanding, about seeing something, and John
writing six decades after the event has to deal with people whose only hope is to
be able to believe it without handling it. As a matter of fact, it's not about
handling it. It is about finally understanding it, it is finally to see what came to
expression when the word became flesh. What was embodied in that life? That is
the point - what came to expression, what was the story, what was that initial
impulse of the Jesus story that led to the Jesus movement that caused people
after his crucifixion to say, "The Lord is risen." Wasn't it that they began to see
that in this human one, this human being, God was revealed? So, God is revealed
as human. So, human beings are called to be human. And in these past weeks I
have suggested that we, contrary to what we assume, are not human, we're
advanced primates. But then someone suggested to me that that is a slander on
the monkey world. Monkeys don't behave as poorly as we do. But, you get the
point.
The point is that Jesus embodied something - some truth and beauty and grace
flowed through that flesh, and they saw it, and he was crucified, and they were
crushed, and they said, "Oh, but he lives!" What lives is what he embodied. What
lives is that which he represented. What lives is what he incarnated. God lives.
God's intention lives.
© Grand Valley State University
�Just Imagine: The Real Miracle of Easter
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
Easter is about human transformation. Easter is about seeing something. Easter
is "Aha! I understand." Easter is Jesus getting through.
Sometime or other in the past I put aside this little sheet, thinking some Easter
I'd need a message. I came across it recently going through a lot of old materials,
and it talks about an imaginal cell, from imagination. An imaginal cell. It is about
caterpillars and butterflies. You know, the butterfly is the symbol of Easter par
excellence, the transformation. Well, this paragraph talks about imaginal cells.
Let us compare our situation with a metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a
butterfly.
When the caterpillar weaves its cocoon, imaginal disks begin to appear.
These disks embody the blueprint of the butterfly yet to come. All of the
disks are a natural part of the caterpillar's evolution. Its immune system
recognizes them as foreign and tries to destroy them. But, as the disks
arrive faster and begin to link up, the caterpillar's immune system breaks
down and its body begins to disintegrate. And when the disks mature and
become imaginal cells, they form themselves into a new pattern, thus
transforming the disintegrating body of the caterpillar into the butterfly.
The breakdown of the caterpillar's old system is essential for the
breakthrough of the new butterfly. Yet, in reality, the caterpillar neither
dies nor disintegrates, for from the beginning its hidden purpose was to
transform and be reborn as a butterfly.
What a magnificent analogy. What a beautiful picture. Imaginal cells. Someone
named them imaginal cells. I'd love to know the zoologist who did that. I'd love to
know why he/she called them imaginal cells. Those are cells that, coming out of
the egg, the caterpillar carries with it, and they lie dormant in the caterpillar for a
period of time until they begin to make their move and then eventually, in the
transformation, they become the imaginal cells. Are they not the cells, perhaps,
that imagined the butterfly? And imagining the butterfly, eventually the butterfly
becomes the reality of the caterpillar.
Imagination, you know, is one of the great human faculties, and we have
denigrated it by saying, "Oh, it’s only your imagination." Nonsense. Those who
study the human person say the imagination may be that very place where the
Spirit of God has the opportunity of imprinting the human mind. The
imagination can take human language and create a whole new reality, because
when we tell our stories, we create a new reality. Reality is language embodied,
and the imagination is that faculty by which we can dream of something that has
never been.
And what if all of the anguish and all of the travail of the present - what if Hindu
and Muslim at each other's throat, what if the Arab world in all of its anger and
its terror against us, what if Palestinian and Israeli, what if all of the shaking of
the foundations in this present day is the travail and the birth pangs of a whole
new world of which we have not yet dreamed? What if Easter is that indomitable
© Grand Valley State University
�Just Imagine: The Real Miracle of Easter
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
human hope, because of that creative spirit within us that keeps pushing us to
imagine another way of being, a different reality, a transformed world? What if
Easter is about the dawning awareness of that which has never been, except in
the intention of God? What if Easter is about something we've not yet dreamed of
and even now is underway?
Just imagine! That's the miracle of Easter.
© 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
Easter Sunday
Scripture Text
I Corinthians 15:50, John 20:17, 29
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-20020331
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2002-03-31
Title
A name given to the resource
Just Imagine - The Real Miracle of Easter
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 March 31, 2002 entitled "Just Imagine - The Real Miracle of Easter", on the occasion of Easter Sunday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: I Corinthians 15:50, John 20:17, 29.
Easter
Inclusivism
Transformation