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A Circle of Quiet
Sixth sermon in the series: What the Church Has Forgotten, AA Remembers
Text: Isaiah 26:3-4; Psalm 46:10; Romans 12:1-2
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
August 29, 1982
Transcription of the spoken sermon
"Be still, and know that I am God..." Psalm 46:10
"Thou dost keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he
trusts in Thee. Trust in the Lord for ever, for the Lord God is an everlasting
rock." Isaiah 26:3-4
"...present your bodies as a living sacrifice, ...which is your spiritual
worship...be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove
what is the will of God..." Romans 12:1-2
Madeleine L'Engle writes,
...often I need to get away completely, if only for a few minutes. My special
place is a small brook in a green glade, a circle of quiet from which there is
no visible sign of human beings. There's a natural stone bridge over the
brook, and I sit there, dangling my legs and looking through the foliage at
the sky reflected in the water, and things slowly come back into
perspective….The brook wanders through a tunnel of foliage, and the birds
sing more sweetly there than anywhere else; or perhaps it is just that when
I am at the brook I have time to be aware of them, and I move slowly into a
kind of peace that is marvelous….If I sit a while, then my impatience,
crossness, frustration, are…annihilated, and my sense of humor returns.
(A Circle of Quiet, p. 4)
She wrote that in a book entitled, A Circle Of Quiet. From that passage she named
the book after it was finished and the title is a happy choice. It describes the book
which, in journal fashion, records Madeleine L'Engle's deepest thoughts and
intuitions, the kind of reflections that come to one who has developed a circle of
quiet in her life.
I borrow the phrase “a circle of quiet” for this message, which deals with the
importance of solitude, meditation and prayer in the nurturing and sustaining
of the new life in Christ, a truly spiritual existence.
© Grand Valley State University
�A Circle of Quiet
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
Once again, what the Church has forgotten, AA remembers. In the wonderful
logic of the Twelve Step Program for recovering alcoholics, AA recommends a
daily practice of meditation and prayer. I am jumping over steps eight and nine
which have to do with making restitution for whatever wrongs one has done,
where amends can be made without doing further injury, and step ten which
encourages a continued moral inventory such as we have earlier discussed in step
four. I turn now to Step 11, which deals with the discipline of a devotional life:
We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious
contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of
His will for us and the power to carry that out.
Such a practice is not new to us in the Church. Perhaps it is not fair even to say
that the Church has forgotten it. I think, however, we would not be far wrong if
we said that for most of us in the Church it is a practice not practiced. Here again
perhaps the recovering alcoholic is more fortunate than those of us that do not
share his particular problem. His problem is such that, once having been rescued
from his plight, he knows he can continue on the road to health and wholeness
only by the daily appropriation of the power and peace of God. That is why we
speak of a recovering alcoholic, not a recovered alcoholic. He is never cured; he
lives one day at a time – indeed, moment by moment.
The Power - God, as he understands Him - has set him free from the tragic
slavery that held him bound. But that freedom is nurtured one day at a time and
the secret is a day-by-day conscious cultivation of the power and peace of God.
I hope you know by now that this series is not primarily for recovering alcoholics,
nor is it for the purpose of advertising AA, although I am happy to do so. I have
stressed throughout that the alcoholic is not unique. He has a particular problem
but then, we all do of one sort or another. The Steps of the AA program are
simply borrowed from the Scripture and translated into the language of one
particular group of people. But the steps follow diagnosis and remedy of the
human condition found in the Scripture and they go on to counsel how that new
life must be nurtured and sustained.
What the recovering alcoholic knows to be absolutely essential, too many of us
believe to be optional.
He cannot make it without daily prayer and meditation. None of us can, but
because we don't necessarily fall on our face without it, we think we can get by.
But we are only fooling ourselves, or, I should say, cheating ourselves out of the
richest dimension of human experience - the practice of the presence of God.
Let me suggest to you today that every life needs a circle of quiet. Let me
encourage you to set about developing for yourself the habit of devotion, a time
for solitude, meditation, prayer.
© Grand Valley State University
�A Circle of Quiet
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
AA provides practical helps for the development of the discipline of devotion.
There are several publications which are very helpful. What I suppose one could
call the AA Bible is a little pocket-sized book entitled Twenty Four Hours A Day.
There is a brief paragraph on some aspect of life, a meditation and a prayer. For
today's date, for example, this is what is written:
We cannot get along without prayer and meditation. On awakening, let us
think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the
day. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking. Our thought lives
will be placed on a much higher plane when we start the day with prayer
and meditation. We conclude this period of meditation with a prayer that
we will be shown through the day what our next step is to be. The basis of
all our prayer is: Thy will be done in me and through me today. Am I
sincere in my desire to do God's will today?
In another AA publication, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Step Eleven is
discussed in a very practical way. Recognizing that for many a daily practice of
meditation and prayer may be totally new, simple hints are given as to how to
begin. The suggestion is made that one take the Prayer of St. Francis, "Lord,
make me an instrument of Thy peace..." and let it soak into one's consciousness.
Read it. Read it over. Read it slowly, thinking about every phrase, savoring every
word.
This, of course, is but one example of how devotional material can be used to get
us started. The literature available is immense and the devotional suggestions
many. The aim of all our striving must be the practice of the presence of God, the
developing of conscious contact, communion with God.
For us who would nurture and nourish our spiritual life, our life in Christ, the
greatest source of devotion, the greatest aid we have is the Bible, and the practice
of daily Bible reading is indispensable for one who would have his life conformed
to the image of Christ.
The Old Testament lesson is Psalm 46, one of the most familiar and best loved of
the Psalms, which are the favorite source of devotional reading in Scripture.
Psalm 46 celebrates the safety and security of God's people because of His
presence with them. Perhaps it was written to celebrate the preservation of
Jerusalem from the Assyrian hosts. But the historical situation is not important.
In itself, it breathes of the security that comes to God's people because of His
presence with them.
The Lord of hosts is with us; The God of Jacob is our refuge.
How many times have not these words brought calm and peace to those in peril,
confusion and fear?
Be still and know that I am God.
© Grand Valley State University
�A Circle of Quiet
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
What steadiness comes to one who repeats those words and with those words
comes into the conscious presence of God?
The Psalms are full of such comfort and strength and not only the Psalms. I
added another example of the promises of God's words from Isaiah:
Thou dost keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he
trusts in Thee. Trust in the Lord for ever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.
Isaiah 26:3-4
That statement was inscribed on a plaque and hung in our living room when I
was growing up. It promises precisely what AA knows the recovering alcoholic
needs. It promises what each and every one of us needs. It promises peace to the
mind concentrated on God. It calls us simply to trust in God, the Rock of Ages.
Christian hymnology has taken up texts such as these and enabled us to sing our
faith. Martin Luther's great hymn, "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" is based on
Psalm 46. Augustus Toplady based the familiar "Rock of Ages" on Isaiah 26:4,
where "everlasting rock" is literally "rock of ages."
Rock of ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee.
These two hymns are directly based on words of Scripture and the hymnal is a
great source of Christian devotion, providing much substance for meditation and
prayer.
The Old Testament texts I offer as examples of what one finds in rich supply in
the Scriptures, great statements that, once imbibed and appropriated, bring
peace and calm to the heart. But I selected the New Testament text as the biblical
parallel to Step Eleven, the call to spiritual worship, which leads to the
transformation of life.
Paul urges,
Therefore my brothers, I implore you by God's mercy to offer your very lives to
him; a living sacrifice, dedicated and fit for his acceptance, the worship offered by
mind and heart. Adopt yourselves no longer to the pattern of this present world,
but let your mind be remade and your whole nature thus transformed. Then you
will be able to discern the will of God, and to know what is good, acceptable, and
perfect. Romans 12:1,2
The Apostle with his "therefore" moves in this great statement of Christian faith
to the practical application of Christian truth in the everyday life of the believer.
He appeals on the basis of all that has been set forth as the foundational truth of
Christian faith for a life wholly offered up to God. The sacrificial system of the old
cultic worship is now superseded. Jesus, the Lamb of God, has been offered over
for all -the perfect sacrifice. No longer do we come with sacrificial offerings as the
token of our lives offered in worship. Rather, as new creations in the Risen Christ,
© Grand Valley State University
�A Circle of Quiet
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
we offer ourselves in the totality of our lives to God. Our worship is the offering of
our whole being, the worship of mind and heart in the practical affairs of our
every day.
A change has taken place; a transformation. The mind is remade. The whole
nature transformed. Now all of life's energy is focused on learning to know and
do the will of God.
In his paraphrase, Phillips renders Paul's words thus...
Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold, but let God remold
your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God
for you is good, meets all his demands and moves toward the goal of true
maturity.
I submit to you that no statement could better reflect what AA suggests is the goal
of human existence than this word from Paul. Step Eleven counsels prayer and
meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand Him
and the focus of prayer is the knowledge of His will and the power to carry that
out. Living out God's will for our lives by the power of God is an excellent
statement of maturity, of full human existence.
If one would read the rest of this twelfth chapter as a prelude to every day, one
would find its shaping impact on one's life and this, of course, is the purpose of a
life of prayer and meditation, the purpose of practicing the presence of God.
Let me speak personally for a moment. Over the years I have spoken on the
subject of prayer and spiritual formation. I did so because it is a subject that from
time to time should be addressed in the course of one's preaching. I have tried to
do so honestly, never claiming to have cultivated the art of Christian devotion
with great skill, nor to have achieved great success in the practice of devotion. In
fact, what stands most vividly in my mind about my attempts to speak to this area
of Christian life is that I was most helpful because I admitted my own failure,
neglect and inconsistency in the life of prayer and meditation. After an experience
of regular prayer with a prayer list, a weary morning appointment and a sense of
heavy obligation during my years in seminary, I backed off any kind of regular
devotional practice. I think there was some negative reaction on my part as well
as recognizing, in a more positive vein, that the devotional life cannot flourish
under legalistic constraint. After all, I reasoned, one can pray any time, anywhere.
And it is true. Yet I think it is also true that one does not pray "without ceasing,"
any time, anywhere unless one has some more purposeful, disciplined pursuit of
prayer and meditation.
I have had another barrier to meaningful devotion. I have wrestled with the
theology of prayer and have too much made prayer a matter of the head than the
heart.
© Grand Valley State University
�A Circle of Quiet
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
Now as I speak to you on the subject of practicing the presence of God, of a circle
of quiet in your life, I can speak of that circle of quiet out of the experience of a
circle of quiet in my own life. I want to share with you what I have found rich and
meaningful. I sense finally in my own life the real joy and richness of a daily
experience of solitude, prayer and meditation.
I simply recommend it to you - not on the basis of legal constraint or religious
duty, but rather as a way to be human, whole, at peace with self, others, the world
and God.
Step Eleven puts the central concern of such prayer and reflection into sharp
focus Show me thy will and give me the power to do it.
There, too, I have battled with God. I have not always wanted to say,
"Nevertheless, Thy will be done." Yet when we really sense the grace of God, the
graciousness of God, then what better can we desire than His will? What better
can we ask than His power? His will fulfilled in our lives through His power. Is
that not life's highest possibility? And that will is made known to us in the circle
of quiet; that power flows through us as we move out of the circle of quiet into the
demands of our ordinary days.
He will speak gently to us all.
Be still and know that I am God.
© 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
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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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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Series
What the Church Has Forgotten, AA Remembers
Scripture Text
Isaiah 26:3-4, Psalm 46:10, Romans 12:1-2
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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KII-01_RA-0-19820829
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1982-08-29
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A Circle of Quiet
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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
Relation
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Text
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on August 29, 1982 entitled "A Circle of Quiet", as part of the series "What the Church Has Forgotten, AA Remembers", at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 26:3-4, Psalm 46:10, Romans 12:1-2.
Alcoholics Anonymous
Meditation
Prayer
Transformation
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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
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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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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
text/pdf
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Event
Advent IV
Series
Memory and Hope
Scripture Text
Micah 5:1-5, Luke 4:16-30
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
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1999-12-20
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A Larger Hope
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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 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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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
�An Ancient Dreamer
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
�
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0337713fce117840ceb0a68d511a22ce
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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English
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Sound
Text
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
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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
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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-0-19971207
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1997-12-07
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An Ancient Dreamer
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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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Text
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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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b518fb1c6341b19e29b6d4cbbb0ad6de
PDF Text
Text
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 ..."
© Grand Valley State University
�Authentication
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
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.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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b4b6e0baea28ecb433a7688c419f3f6e
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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.)
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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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
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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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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f415604d4c1fd565eea9041ffb903bd6.pdf
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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
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Richard A. Rhem
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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
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Richard A. Rhem
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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
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Richard A. Rhem
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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
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Richard A. Rhem
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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
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Richard A. Rhem
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References:
David Ray Griffin. Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism: A Process
Philosophy of Religion. Cornell Studies in the Philosophy of Religion, 2000.
© Grand Valley State University
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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
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
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.
Dublin Core
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KII-01_RA-0-20021013
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2002-10-13
Title
A name given to the resource
Creation: Stardust to Human to...
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
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 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
-
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4a3faedb739404c4559afe13101d7b09
PDF Text
Text
Embraced By the Light
Easter Sunday
Text: I Corinthians 15:54, 57; Psalms 116:8; Mark 16:6
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
April 3, 1994
Transcription of the spoken sermon
It’s good to celebrate the resurrection. This is not really a day for preaching. It’s a
day for witnessing to a wonderful truth. It’s a day for praising and praying and
singing and dancing. And the service is laced with all of that, and eventually we
will come to receive the tangible sign of God’s everlasting love as we take bread
and cup: an invitation to you to come to this table, for the Lord is risen, He is
risen indeed. And we celebrate in bread and cup that ongoing life of Christ that is
ours.
This is a day in which we celebrate the fact that we now and forever are
Embraced By The Light. The title of the message was intended to hook you if you
had been aware of this book Embraced By The Light, by Betty J. Eadie. This book
has sold in the thousands and, when I realized that it had become a phenomena
in our day, I thought, what better to do on Easter than simply to celebrate what is
celebrated in this book—the story of a near death experience and eternity being
packed into those few moments in which insights were learned and intuitions
were satisfied and fulfilled as Betty Eadie testifies to her grand tour of heaven,
her encounter with Jesus Christ, even her encounter with God.
Well, Embraced By The Light happens to be a phenomena in our day. The other
day I got an article, which Nancy cut out for me. It was from the Detroit Free
Press of a couple weeks ago entitled, “Spiritual Books Touch Many Readers”. She
knew that I was going to refer to that book, and this article speaks about that
book and Where Angels Walk and The Celestine Prophecy, and it goes on to
describe what has got to be a trend and probably a fad of rather large proportions
in our day of people who are witnessing to the fact that there is something deep
down in us that wants to know what lies beyond, whether there is something
more, or whether this is all there is. In last Sunday’s New York Times book
review, as I opened up to the back, I recognized that in terms of the hard cover
books that are out there, there is a fiction book The Celestine Prophecy, about an
ancient manuscript found in Peru that provides insight into achieving a fulfilling
life. That’s a novel. It’s number two in the fiction column. But in the non-fiction
column, number three is How We Die, a physician and surgeon reflecting on life’s
© 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University
�Embraced by the Light
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
final chapter. Number one is Embraced By The Light. Forty-six weeks on the list.
Then, once the hard covers are out and you go to the paperbacks, some books just
keep selling. Here in the paperback best seller’s non-fiction is number one: Care
of the Soul, by Thomas Moore, whose latest book is on the other list number four
or five, Soul Mates . Number two, The Road Less Traveled, by Scott Peck with
which many of you are familiar, 542 weeks on the best seller list. How would you
like the royalties on that one? Number four, Where Angels Walk, by Joan
Wester-Anderson, stories about angelic interventions in human affairs.
Now folks, this is not The Christian Century or Christianity Today, this is The
New York Times Book Review list, and it evidences to the fact that there is a
widespread yearning in the human heart to pierce the veil and to determine an
answer to that primal question within us. Is this all there is? Or, is there
something more? There is a whole world out there beyond the parameters of the
organized church and institutional religion, people who perhaps long since have
given up on religion per se, but who cannot finally deny that question that in our
day has erupted again with a fury. What lies beyond the veil? Is there something
more? Or, is this all there is?
I began to look at that literature again; some of it I’ve had around for a long time.
It was 1970 when Elizabeth Kiebler-Ross the Swiss psychiatrist wrote her book on
death and dying, the consequence of interviewing terminally ill patients to see the
stages through which they went as they came to terms with the fact that they
would die. It was 1975 when another psychiatrist Raymond Moody wrote the
book Life After Life , documenting 150 cases of near death experiences, these out
of the body experiences, as Embraced By The Light tells Mary Eadie’s experience.
Then, I remembered that in 1983 at the University of Michigan I had listened to
the Catholic theologian, Hans Küng talk about “Eternal life?”—question mark—
with all of these questions: death?, and hell?, and heaven?, purgatory and
judgment?, etc. He begins with this near death experience and he examines that
and he’s writing an account from somewhere and it sounds a little bit like it could
have come out of Embraced By The Light , and I’m thinking where is Küng
getting this story, only to find, as I concluded the paragraphs that recount this
experience, that it was written by none other than the Greek philosopher Plato,
twenty-five hundred years ago in Book X of The Republic. As Küng points out,
you can document this from Indian philosophy and in religious writings from
ancient Egypt across the world, across the generations, universally—there is this
question. Is this all there is? Or is there something more?
Well, Easter is the day in which in the Christian church we bear witness to our
conviction that this is not all there is. But, rather, that the best is yet to be. On the
dawn of Easter morning when Christ arose, he became for us a light that
illumines our life backwards and forwards. And the resurrection of Jesus Christ is
the heart of the Christian Gospel. We worship not only on Easter morning but
every first day of the week in celebration of that event. Every Sunday is a little
© 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University
�Embraced by the Light
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Easter. It is the very heart and center of the Christian message. In Mark’s account
simply, “He is not here. He is risen.” St. Paul says, “Death is swallowed up in
victory. Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus
Christ.”
I don’t know whether the Psalmist had a near death experience or not. I am sure
they didn’t call it ‘clinically dead’ at that time, but he speaks about being
“enwrapped in the snares of the hades, of Sheol . . . the pangs of hell that hold
upon me,” he says. And then he praises God and says, “You have saved my eyes
from tears. My soul from death. My feet from falling.” So the Psalm is a Psalm of
praise in which he begins, “I love the Lord.” Well, who loves the Lord? The person
who has been touched deeply in the depths of their being, the person who has had
some life-transforming experience.
The Apostle Paul says, “I show you a mystery, and it is a mystery, it is a mystery
about which none of us know in terms of scientific verification. It’s not for
verifying. But the person who has had a deep experience finds themselves
transformed. I had wished that Betty Eadie had been a bit more modest. She
learned an awful lot in those moments. My goodness, what she learned! However,
she doesn’t know, and I don’t know, and you don’t know, but her life was
changed. Thank God, she used her experience in order to call people to kindness,
to say that ultimately all is love, and apart from love there is nothing.
Embraced By The Light, yes indeed! That’s the Easter message. That’s what we
celebrate today— the gospel of Jesus Christ is the Good News about life beyond
life, and both are important, and both perhaps should receive equal emphasis.
Life beyond life—this is the life—and the best is yet to be. That’s the story of
Easter. And as I reflect on that I recognize that the Church has this marvelous
message that the center of it is the Gospel, and that means Good News. Then I
realize that the whole world out there is so hungry, yearning for some answer,
some peek through the veil. And I say to myself, “If we have the Good News, and
if the world is longing for that news, why have we become so much the place of
bad news in the minds of so many of the human family? If the world is asking the
question and the heart of our faith is the answer, why . . . why has the Church
been identified with legalisms and moralisms and oughts and shoulds and musts?
Why has the Church been identified with the imposition of guilt and the
exploitation of that guilt with threat, with the fear of judgment and the possibility
of hell? Why? If Easter is our day, if it is the heart of our message, if this is the
question that finally will not be dissolved in the human mind and heart, then
must we not become once again a place of Good News?
A few years ago I coined a phrase for Christ Community, calling it “An alternative
to church as usual.” I’m wondering if we have to be even more radical than that?
The Christian tradition is a grand tradition, but with all of the baggage of the
Church that we get brushed with, perhaps it should be the “Unchurch,” like the
“Uncola,” so that we could separate ourselves from all of that that is so dark, so
© 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University
�Embraced by the Light
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
dismal, so miserable. I mean, the world longs to know this, but somehow or
other, the way we have packaged it, the message isn’t getting through. And what a
message it is. Look at Jesus. Look at that life. Just look at that life. We’ve gone
seriously through that life again in this Lenten season. What a life! What a man!
What integrity, what strength, what grace, what love! What a life! I can
understand that the writer of the fourth Gospel would say, “This is the way, this is
the truth, this is the life. No one will come to the Father except that way, with that
truth and that kind of a life.”
What a life . . . and what a death. Look at the shadow side of the whole human
condition, which comes to expression in the crucifixion of such a life. Then today,
what a story: He lives, not because of him, not because of any human possibility,
but because God will not give up, because God will not abandon creation, because
God will not let us go. There is life beyond life because it’s God’s gift, and God will
never quit.
This past week I visited the nursing homes where a number of our people live in
various states and conditions. I must say to you this morning, if you are young
and able bodied, doing well, prospects good, go ahead and deny the question or
nibble around the edges of a bit of cynicism, but if you would walk the halls of the
nursing homes with me, up and down the halls with me, you would see
concentrated in that place — what is the end of this human experience,
physically, biologically, physiologically. The question would press in upon you
and you would say then too, “Is this all there is? Is there nothing more?
My word to our dear people in nursing homes this week was simply this: This is
not the final stop. This is not the last chapter. Thank God Easter is coming, and
the best is yet to be. And, by God, I believe it! I believe it! Credo. That Latin word
that says I believe. I don’t know, but by God, I believe it!
© 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University
�
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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.
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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
Identifier
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KII-01
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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
Easter Sunday
Scripture Text
I Corinthians 15:54, 57, Psalms 116:8, Mark 16:6
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
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KII-01_RA-0-19940403
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1994-04-03
Title
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Embraced by the Light
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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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
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
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 3, 1994 entitled "Embraced by the Light", on the occasion of Easter Sunday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: I Corinthians 15:54, 57, Psalms 116:8, Mark 16:6.
Easter
Love at the core of reality
Spiritual Quest
Transformation
-
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8667306d8f5594aebda32d40a40b3cd5
PDF Text
Text
Family Values: Jesus’ Style
Mother’s Day
Text: Mark 3:35; John 21:16-17
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Easter V, May 9, 1993
Transcription of the spoken sermon
“Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” Mark 3:35
“Do you love me? …Tend my sheep…Feed my sheep.” John 21:16-17
The family is an endangered species. You hear about it all over the place. What
ever has happened to the family? This statement for example: “Much of the very
mechanism of our modern life is destructive of the family.” That statement is a
quote from the National Congregational Council Report, 1892. They were saying
it 100 years ago, and they are saying it today. There are prophets of doom all over
the place who are telling us that society is unraveling, social relationships are full
of brokenness and pain, and the family cannot possibly endure the pressure.
Actually we are being barraged with bad news about the family, and in his book
Culture Wars, James Davison Hunter says that, in those social issues that are
tearing the fabric of American society apart, the family is the very central focus.
The things that center around the politicization and the debate about the family
are at the very center of those issues that seem to be at the core of what is causing
so much ferment and so much disruption in the social order. The Congregational
Report said, “the very mechanism of modern life is destructive of family,” 100
years ago. And so in our day there are incredible pressures and forces at work,
creating new situations daily and with every passing decade. The pressures on the
family are not to be gainsaid.
Nonetheless I want to bring to you this morning a message of hope about my
conviction for the potential that lies before us for creating in our day a more
humane world and a greater sense of community which accords dignity and
worth to every individual. All of the ruckus in our day about the destruction of the
family is coming largely from the religious right. Now I don’t like labels. I know
it’s too easy to lump people into a category and to label it and to do away with
them. But I don’t know how else to say what I need to say this morning without
saying some things rather clearly that will help you to get the context of my
comments. We live in a day when (again, I have to use a labeling word)
© Grand Valley State University
�Family Values: Jesus’ Style
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
“conservative” means those who have become rigid in their righteous views. Now,
I use this word narrowly. In its broader sense I am a conservative. Every
enlightened and educated person needs to have a conservative edge to him or her
because a conservative is one who would preserve the best values of the past. So I
don’t like to give up the word conservative to a single definition. But it is used to
describe what, in the Christian movement, in the Christian Church today, is a
very vocal and a very militant right wing. Sometimes we speak of
fundamentalists. Their approach to scripture is literal. Morality is very tight,
reflecting a pattern of long ago.
“Family Values” has become a code word for these people who have a very
definite idea of what the family ought to be as ordained by God. But as James
Hunter Davison says in this book Culture Wars, what is at stake is a certain
idealized form of the nineteenth-century middle class family, a male-dominated
nuclear family that both sentimentalized childhood and motherhood, and at the
same time celebrated domestic life as a utopian retreat from the harsh realities of
industrialized society. What the religious right is focused on is a model of the 19th
century, that has certainly continued into this century, but which is in itself a
relatively new (250 years or so old) view of a traditional family.
In the culture wars phenomena of our day we have a great polarization in society,
the polarization of those calling for new forms and shapes of human community,
and those who would go back to the so called traditional or nuclear family.
Researchers tell us today that in what many conceive of as the traditional family,
where the father goes to work and there is a male dominated home and the
mother stays home and cares for the children, and children experience the
nurture of two parents, that that is the experience of only 4-7% of our population.
Yet today we have a great cry and hand-wringing about the unraveling and
disintegration of the family and the fabric of society. I want to say to you that I
think a lot of the fear that sometimes borders on hysteria is the consequence of
the excessive media saturation that we have, much of which is very right wing,
particularly in the case of television, Christian broadcasting. I don’t spend much
time with TV and I spend even less on Christian broadcasting. Some of you may
be offended by this, but I have got to tell you I think that much of the appeal of
these TV personalities draws fives and tens of dollars out of sincere humble and
relatively poor people who are concerned about these issues. But just as
disconcerting is the reality that they are also supported by the thousands and
hundreds of thousands of dollars of some of the wealthy who would support them
in order to reinforce the status quo of a day gone by. I don’t think this world is
being made more humane through the efforts of Christian television. I think
Christian broadcasting networks, Trinity Broadcasting, or whatever you want to
call it, whatever you want to watch, is a source of divisiveness in society. I think
that it creates hostility. It works on people’s negative emotions. It creates fear in
the human heart, leading to despair, and is one of the great agents in the culture
© Grand Valley State University
�Family Values: Jesus’ Style
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
wars that politicize society and create much of the tension that we have in our
society today. (Amen spoken from audience.)
I was delighted when I got to New York last week at my Perspectives meeting to
find that the May issue, which I hadn’t received yet, has an opening article by
David Meyers. David, a very respected social psychologist at Hope College was
here a few weeks ago talking about his book, In Pursuit of Happiness. The title of
his topic in Perspectives was “Let’s Focus on the Family.” Now you’ll probably
catch that the code words “Focus on the Family” is the title of the program
authored by James Dobson. Some years ago we showed a series of films with that
title by James Dobson, here on Sunday evenings. They were very good. They had
a lot of good stuff in them.
But what has happened to the whole Focus on the Family movement, the Dobson
movement, is that it has become, I think, a movement that has broadened out
beyond the families to the whole cultural war agenda. Homosexuality, the
abortion issue, I could give you the statistics from David Meyers to show that
what has happened to “Focus on the Family” is that it is no longer a focus on the
family. Meyers is pleading with the right and the left, now that the election is
over, to begin to truly focus on the issues of family, because while I think that the
hysteria and the hand-wringing is all out of proportion, there is no doubt that the
family is critical to the well being of society and the family needs our deep
concern and deep commitment.
David Meyers states in this article, for example, these troubling facts: child abuse
reports have soared from well under a million cases annually to nearly three
million. The divorce rate has doubled. The happiness in surviving marriages has
slightly declined. Teen sexual activity has doubled with accompanying increases
in sexually transmitted diseases. The 5% of babies born to unwed mothers in
1960 has quintupled to more than 27%. Increasingly everywhere in America
children are having children. In 1960 one in ten children did not live with two
parents. Today nearly three in ten do not. Now that’s just a collage by David
Meyers and we could get other statistics and other dimensions of this from many
sources, so don’t hear me saying this morning that there is not a concern for the
wellbeing of the family. Don’t hear me saying that we do not need to redouble our
efforts for the nurture of the family and the support of the family as an
institution.
All of that is true, but I want to say to you as a Christian community that there is
a kind of hysterical frenzied hand-wringing cry full of despair and hopelessness
which I think is like acid undercutting the morale of the body politic, the social
structure, rather than bringing to it a kind of positive nurture and insight that we
as the family of God experience together and need to share with our world. There
is such a division and such a polarization in our society, fueled by intensive
fundamentalist media saturation, so that I think people fail to gain an historical
perspective and sometimes lose their civility and their decency. And with that
© Grand Valley State University
�Family Values: Jesus’ Style
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
they lose also then the creative positive power to make a difference and to effect
human transformation, the kind of human transformation that’s going on in
Griffith School with their “Circle of Friends,” where children are learning how to
care for one another.
No, dear friends, the family isn’t going to fail. People are going to learn to live in
every new social situation in covenant and in faithfulness. People are going to
continue to find ways to live in marriages, to raise and to nurture children, and to
build human community. In a book that I picked up this week, What Ever
Happened to the Family there is a discussion of 1930 to 1990, only 60 years, but
in that survey of those 60 years, it is amazing that there are any of us that are still
normal, and sometimes I question us as well. Think about it. 1930 to 1990. The
great depression into the 40s with the Second World War and world convolution,
into the 50s with the kind of euphoria following the war and that era of peace and
well-being that was also an era of permissiveness and fear of parenting in many
respects. The eruption of the 60s, the whole civil rights movement, moving into
the narcissism and “me” generation of the 70s and into the 80s, and to the
present. We have not only fewer traditional families, nuclear families, we have
blended families and we have perpetual families. We have all kinds of new
arrangements, new forms of family and community. And it is not surprising when
you think about the tremendous ferment in the world in the last half century.
Hear me. The form of the family will change. The form of the family has always
changed. There is no static period in human history. Every time there is a social
eruption there is resultant change. And in the meantime there has always been
social evolution so that new forms have evolved and people have simply learned
to live in new arrangements. Sometimes it’s been good, sometimes not so good.
The pendulum swings back and forth. But don’t believe anybody that tells you
that this is the worst of all possible times.
There are also wonderful signs of new possibility in our day. We have the
possibility in our world today with changing forms so obvious of using our
creativity to build a more humane world. Goodness sakes, aren’t we aware, isn’t it
impossible not to be aware in our world today of so many things that were hidden
to our forbearers? Don’t we know today that we are called upon to treat every
person with dignity and respect? Don’t we know today that the nineteenth
century nuclear family that was male dominated was oppressive to women even
when women didn’t know they were being oppressed? Don’t we know today that
the whole issue of abortion is about human rights? Don’t we know today that
sexism is as blatant a sin as racism, which continues even into our day? Don’t we
know today that sexual orientation is not a choice and a preference, but a given
and that such people need to be accorded human dignity and worth?
Don’t we know today that the possibility for human relationship and human
community is as multiple as there are types of people? Is not the diversity of the
human family an indication of a God who loves diversity and loves with
© Grand Valley State University
�Family Values: Jesus’ Style
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
prodigality? Don’t we know today that we could be on the threshold of a world
that may be unraveling in order that it may be woven into a more beautiful
pattern?
I have a friend who loves to say, “It is necessary to let things chaoticize.” We don’t
like things to chaoticize. We want things orderly and predictable and
manageable, but as a matter of fact it is the chaoticization of those structures and
forms that create the openings where the new light can come through. But we can
find new arrangements and new possibilities where we are people of good will
who will treat one another with dignity and with value. That is the possibility. The
forms will change because they will give way to the accelerating pressures of our
contemporary world. But you can’t go home, friends, you can never turn the clock
back, and the Christian family has no right to wring its hands in despair and sit
down in hopelessness and weep.
It is for us to model out a new community, because while the form of the family
changes the function of the family remains the same. It is the function of the
family to create the space for human connectedness where we learn to love and
where we are loved, where we are cared for and we learn to care, where we see
modeled out compassion and become compassionate. The family must be the one
place in this world where love is unconditional, enabling us to be released to love
unconditionally.
The form of the family will change. Let it go. The function of the family will
always be the same: the creation of human connectedness where I know I belong,
where I know I am loved, where I am accepted just because I am, where I am
cared for, where I in turn learn to love, to care, to mend and to heal, to do unto
others as has been done to me in the community, the form of the family that is
mine.
But beyond the biological family, the family of God. We here, in this Christian
community, we can be the extended family. It was in the 50s with all our
prosperity and our economic acceleration and the growth of corporations and the
moving of people all over the country in that time of prosperity that we lost the
extended family. And again, you never go home. But we have the possibility in the
church to be family to one another, to experience community here, to know our
connectedness, to be cared for and to care, to feel the compassionate love and
support of another and to compassionately love and support.
I don’t think Jesus probably ever celebrated Mother’s Day. You know mothers are
wonderful and Jesus had a Jewish mother, which is really special, I guess. There
was a day when he got out on a limb somewhere and they said to Mary, “Have
you read the newspaper report?” She said, “Don’t tell me!” She said to Jesus’
brothers, “Go get him. Let’s bring him home.” Doesn’t every mother want her son
or her daughter to be decent, somewhere down the middle, not too far to the right
or to the left? I know that as long as my mother was alive I stayed pretty close to
the middle. (Laughter) I mean, it’s just a matter of respect, you know? But Jesus
© Grand Valley State University
�Family Values: Jesus’ Style
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
was out there turning the world upside down and Mary came to where he was
preaching and she couldn’t even penetrate the crowd, so she sent him a message:
“Dear Son, I have come for you. Your Mother.” Not “Hi Son, This is Mom.” This
was signed “Your Mother.” It must have been hard for her to receive a note back:
“Dear Mother, who is my mother? Who is my sister? Who is my brother? Those
who do the will of God, those are family to me.” Not in any way to denigrate the
ties that are biological, but in the Christian community we know of ties that bind
us more firmly, with a greater bonding: the ties of the family of God – those who
do the will of God, those who love and seek to create a loving community.
I think that’s “Family Values: Jesus’ Style,” because what God is about, dear
friends, is to make better lovers of us all. Thank God.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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Dublin Core
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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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
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
Mothers' Day, Eastertide V
Scripture Text
Mark 3:35, John 21: 16-17
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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KII-01_RA-0-19930509
Date
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1993-05-09
Title
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Family Values, Jesus' Style
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<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/
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Text
Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on May 9, 1993 entitled "Family Values, Jesus' Style", on the occasion of Mothers' Day, Eastertide V, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Mark 3:35, John 21: 16-17.
Community of Faith
Diversity
Transformation
Unconditional Love
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/312834ffa6f260cb9ec4ec06581145e9.pdf
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
�Founding Vision: Floundering
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
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
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/cfe6d754b8c5005eec11dc17a364a063.mp3
8c295f0573846872560174d493fb9adf
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
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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
Independence Day Weekend, Pentecost IV
Scripture Text
Isaiah 58:12, Romans 12:2
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-0-19950702
Date
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1995-07-02
Title
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Founding Vision: Floundering
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
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 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
God’s Love: A ‘Yes’ That Conquers Our ‘No’
From the Lenten sermon series: Love Story
Text: Corinthians 15:21, 22, 28
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Easter Sunday, April 15, 1990
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Has our Lenten experience convinced us that the universal human response to
God is “No”? Have we faced the issue squarely? Have we come to see that the
crucifixion of Jesus was not an aberration, an exception to the rule of the way of
human history? Have we come to see that there is more of Caiaphas and the
dignitaries of the Sanhedrin in us, in our religious institutional selves, than of
Jesus? Have we come to see that there is more of Pilate in us, in our national
identity as Americans, than of Jesus? Have we come to see the human situation is
hopeless?
I hope so.
That is not just pulpit talk intended to beat you down. It is an honest conclusion
reached on the basis of the whole tragic tale of human history. Power politics,
coercion, oppression, injustice resulting in human suffering, helplessness, fear,
despair, the violence of terrorism perpetrated by those who have nothing to lose.
That is the human story.
In the biblical narrative, Israel’s history is not just one history among others; it is
a special history because Israel was a specially chosen people living in the light of
God’s revelation - a representative people on behalf of all people. God’s purpose
in calling Abraham and Sarah and from them forming a special people, was not to
leave the rest in their alienation and darkness, but, rather, that Israel might be a
light to the nations and that all nations might come to Mount Zion to learn God’s
Law - the Torah - the way of life.
But it was not to be. The story of God’s special relationship with Israel – the
Covenant of Grace – was the story of a broken covenant and that history ended in
deadlock, impasse. It was obvious that Israel would not be the historical
demonstration of God’s Kingdom as God intended.
© Grand Valley State University
�God’s Love: A Yes That Conquers Our No
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
During our Lenten biblical journey we have reviewed the one story of the Bible.
In Genesis 1-11, the first section of biblical narrative dealing with the great
universal themes of creation, humankind, judgment and grace, we saw at least
once that God brought judgment and started over.
Remember the story of Noah and the Flood? Did not God begin again with
righteous Noah? But it was to no avail.
And then, as I just mentioned, the call to Abraham was a new beginning, a new
strategy, through the one to win the many. But the result was dismal.
Finally, when it seemed hopeless, God loved the world so much that God gave a
Son - Jesus. John’s Gospel has given us our series’ theme - God loved the world
so much that God gave... From the first letter of John we heard those simple and
profound words,
“God is love. And God’s love was disclosed to us in this, that God sent his
only son into the world to bring us life.”
We followed the story of Jesus which reached its climax this week past. He
entered Jerusalem amid the clamor of the Passover pilgrim crowd, hoping he
would be the national liberator, and Friday we remembered his death by
crucifixion. He had come in God’s name; he had proclaimed God’s Kingdom; he
had fully followed the will of God as he understood it, even when it was leading
inevitably to his death. He did not swerve from the course, although he pursued it
with fear and trembling.
And he died.
Jesus, the revelation of God, the one righteous person ever to live, the disclosure
of God’s radical love, crucified. Love is vulnerable and crucified in history
because history is not about love; it is about power and coercion and oppression.
Jesus was crucified.
But, that death, rather than the tragic end to a noble vision, was perceived and
proclaimed as the supreme demonstration of God’s love and in that death God’s
love is seen in all its radicality. The death of Jesus has become the proclamation
of the most radical love possible - God’s love for the ungodly, for God’s enemies.
God demonstrated His love for us in that while we were yet sinners,
Christ died for us.
But, the death of Jesus as the supreme disclosure of God’s love redeeming the
world was not evident on Good Friday. Darkness covered the earth as Jesus died,
symbolic darkness – for the crucifixion of Jesus by Jerusalem and Rome, by
Caiaphas, the High Priest, and Pilate, the Roman official, representing the whole
© Grand Valley State University
�God’s Love: A Yes That Conquers Our No
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
world, was the final human “No” to God, to God’s way, to God’s Kingdom, to
God’s love.
If Jesus had died and only died,
if the biblical story had ended in darkness on Golgotha amid the jeering
crowd, the heart-broken disciples and women,
the anguished groaning of the victims,
then the story would be simply one more episode in human history
of goodness rejected and righteousness crucified,
of a visionary tragically cut down.
But the story did not end on Friday. After an interlude of numbness during which
the disciples cowered in fear and the faithful women awaited opportunity to do
their final loving service, God, the Source and Grace of Life, raised Jesus the
crucified to life. To the resounding human “No” God gave an even more
resounding “Yes,” and the destiny of the world was changed from darkness to
light, from death to life.
Paul put it this way as he reflected on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus in
light of the whole biblical story:
It was through one man that sin entered the world, and through sin
death, and this death pervaded the whole human race... But God’s act of
grace is out of all proportion to Adam’s wrongdoing. For if the
wrongdoing of that one man brought death upon so many, its effect is
vastly exceeded by the grace of God and the gift that came to so many by
the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ (Romans 5:12-15)
Or, to bring it to the proclamation of the event we celebrate today, the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, we hear the words of St. Paul in our
text taken from the Epistle, reading,
... Christ was raised to life – the first fruits of the harvest of the dead. For
since it was a man who brought death into the world, a man also brought
resurrection of the dead. As in Adam all men die, so in Christ we will be
brought to life.
Then follows Paul’s vision of what is presently occurring, Jesus, the risen,
reigning Lord, putting down the enemies of God’s Kingdom. Finally Paul affirms
this triumphant faith:
God will be everything to everyone.
Paul’s discussion of the resurrection of Jesus in I Corinthians 15 is long and
involved and I will not attempt to give a detailed analysis of it, but rather simply
concentrate on this one brief paragraph. The 20th verse is the clear, unequivocal
statement.
© Grand Valley State University
�God’s Love: A Yes That Conquers Our No
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
But, in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead.
This is the central affirmation of Christian faith. This is what makes Christian
faith gospel – good news. That God raised Jesus from the dead is the ground of
our hope. It is the ground of our hope for the redemption of the world – for a new
world, a new day free of all that saddens us, hinders us, defeats us. In a word,
the resurrection of Jesus gives us hope in our hopelessness.
Let me run the scenario past you one more time. Established political power and
institutional religions combined to crucify Jesus who lived out in concrete human
existence the love of God. And, as we have seen from week to week throughout
the season of Lent, what happened in Jerusalem on Good Friday has happened
over and over again in human history and it is happening still today.
What will be Lithuania’s fate?
We entered this season with Allan Boesak in this pulpit in the euphoria of
breakthroughs in South Africa. Will our hopes be realized? Will our prayers be
answered for justice and peace in that land?
Will Iraq threaten the Middle East with a new wave of terror with germ warfare?
As I raise this question, and they could be multiplied, is it not obvious that as
much as we pray for peace and justice and work for the humanization of this
world, our hope must be grounded in something or Someone beyond the roller
coaster of history, beyond the fickleness of popular movements, beyond the selfserving egotism of world leaders? Must we not trust something more substantial
than the present popularity of a world leader, the cleverness of human planning,
the good will and faith of nations to treaties, world organizations such as the
United Nations? Is it not obvious that any arrangement that rests alone on
human capacity or human decency is no solid ground for human hope?
If you have followed me through the Lenten Season, you might conclude that I
am a pessimist; that I do not belong to the positive thinkers’ club. And you would
be right. I have done my best honestly to mirror the human situation, the real
historical condition and I can only conclude that the human situation in and of
itself is hopeless.
But, I am not without hope. I am rather filled with hope. But only because my
hope is in God. And my hope is in God because God raised Jesus from the dead.
When we said our final “No” to God Who visited us in Jesus, we undercut any
possibility of hope in any purely human project. And precisely at the point of our
final “No”, God uttered a resounding and irreversible “Yes”.
© Grand Valley State University
�God’s Love: A Yes That Conquers Our No
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
God’s “Yes” conquered our “No” because God raised to life the one our “No” had
crucified. And just as God conquered death in giving Jesus life from the dead, so
God’s “Yes” proves stronger than our “No.”
As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive.
What of our world, then? What can we expect as the drama of history goes on its
perilous way? We cannot set any dates. We cannot predict the immediate
outcome of the tensions in South Africa, the Middle East, Latin America. We
cannot foresee the consequences of the democratization of Eastern Europe or the
apparent unraveling of the Soviet Union. We pray for wellbeing. We know that, as
quickly as barriers fall and walls are torn down, new crises could develop. But we
also know that outside Jerusalem when Church and State – representative of the
whole world – crucified Jesus, God raised him up as a sign that God will not give
up on this world. With the writer of Revelation, therefore, we look for and pray
for and hope for the day when
The Kingdom of this world will become the Kingdom of our God and of
His Christ and the angelic hosts sing in chorus,
“Hallelujah! The Lord God omnipotent reigns!”
We live that vision - in hope.
But, as we gather to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, it is not only the broad
world scene, not only the matters of cosmic dimension that press upon us,
important as those are. As we gather, we are a people who all have a story that is
being written.
For some of us it is the pain of one we love that we carry in our hearts. A daughter
calls, crying convulsively because her heart has been broken, her love betrayed
and a parent’s heart is crushed wishing somehow that he could take that pain
from her and make it all right. In the abyss of hurt and brokenness, when there
are no words to assuage the pain, wherein does one find hope to go on?
The nation was inspired by the courage and grace of Ryan White who this week
died of the AIDS virus contracted through a blood transfusion. In his dying, the
nation was galvanized in grief. And what do we say? Was that life worth the
living? Certainly. Was that life fruitful in its impact? Surely, more so in his brief
life than most of us who will live to an old age. But, is that all? Is Ryan dead and
any remainder of his life will be through the remembrance of those on whose
lives he had an impact? Is that all there is?
The question is much more poignant for some of you, for since Easter last you
have stood by the casket of one dearly loved and sorely missed. Is there now only
the memory and the void? Is dead simply dead?
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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Some of us have received a serious medical diagnosis since last we gathered in
Easter joy. All of us carry within our bodies cells potentially lethal, but for some
of us at this time they are latent; for some, they are ravaging. What does one say
when one’s mortality is not simply part of the general universal reality of all
humankind, but when one is faced with one’s own personal, lonely encounter
with death? Life is a precious gift and fiercely clung to. Is there some way to relax
one’s grip or, better, to grasp with hope something made of surer stuff?
Each of us is writing her own storyline and few there be that escape the
interweaving of that tragic thread which is so ubiquitous in the human tapestry,
so dominant in the plot of our personal stories.
Wherein then lies the ground of hope? How can one escape cynicism, despair,
futility? How does one cope when faced with betrayal, brokenness, loss and the
last enemy, death itself?
For Christian faith, that ground of hope is in the God Who raised Jesus from the
dead. For Christian faith, the ground of hope is the God Who, in the text from St.
Paul,
will be everything to everyone,
because that God refuses to give up on this world; that God will never give up on
you. That God’s “Yes” was spoken on Easter morning in response to the final
human “No” spoken on Good Friday.
Who is this God?
This is the God Who loved the world so much that He gave His only son – not to
condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. This is the
God Who is love and Who disclosed the radical nature of that love in sending
Jesus who lived out that love so that in his life one sees into the very heart of God,
the God Who was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, going to the limit in
that while we were yet enemies, Jesus died for the ungodly, thus disclosing the
radical, unconquerable love of God.
God is love and God is writing a story, too; it is a love story, a story of an amazing
love that simply will not be turned away, a love that will never let up, a love that
will never let you go. Whoever you are, wherever you are coming from –
returned on Easter from a long dropout,
cynical in general, but find the music and flowers inviting,
despairing, almost going under,
hoping against hope,
seeking, longing to believe –
© Grand Valley State University
�God’s Love: A Yes That Conquers Our No
Richard A. Rhem
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God loves you and God would write you into the script of the love story He is
writing. God offers you life, having promised through Jesus Christ forgiveness,
peace, joy and the assurance that you will be kept by God’s power now and
forever.
God has spoken a “Yes” that conquers our “No.”
I invite you to say “Yes” to the God Who has said “Yes” to you through Jesus
Christ our Lord.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
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Rhem, Richard A.
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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
text/pdf
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Event
Easter Sunday
Series
Love Story
Scripture Text
I Corinthians 15:21, 22, 28
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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KII-01_RA-0-19900415
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1990-04-15
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God's Love: A "Yes" That Conquers Our "No"
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<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/
Language
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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 April 15, 1990 entitled "God's Love: A "Yes" That Conquers Our "No"", as part of the series "Love Story", on the occasion of Easter Sunday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: I Corinthians 15:21, 22, 28.
Easter Sunday
Forgiveness
Love
Resurrection
Transformation
Universal Grace
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/9fdb9833f36189fe96eb39dc8ec59522.pdf
94d3025b83b946b010d82d3b02d5ee05
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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Richard A. Rhem
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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
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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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
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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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.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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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
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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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.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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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
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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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
�Introduction to Progoff
Richard A. Rhem
Page14
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
Page16
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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Dublin Core
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
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Event
Midweek Lecture
Location
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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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RA-3-19890130
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1989-01-30
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Title
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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.
Format
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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
-
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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
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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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.”
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
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.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
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
© Grand Valley State University
�So Simple Once You See It
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
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.
© 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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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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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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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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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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Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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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
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
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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
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
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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
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
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
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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 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