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Mystery Experienced
From the series: Aspects of God
Text: Numbers 33:23; Hebrews 1:2-3; John 14:16-17
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
June 14, 1998
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Our religions are the consequence of creative human imagining in response to
God’s revealing. God’s revealing, if it is revealing, indeed, meets in us now and
then with awareness, awareness of the wholly Other, and of the Holy Other, of
God, of the sacred, of the holy. The human experience has been that now and
again, to this one or that one, there is some breakthrough, some awareness, some
experience of that which is beyond human capability to grasp. Yet the experience,
the awareness will always result in a stumbling, stammering attempt to give
expression to that which was experience. And so, we have our human religions
with our statements, expressions, articulations of the truth as best we can bring it
to expression in light of our experience.
Last week, celebrating Pentecost one week late, we said that the experience of the
risen Christ, the living Lord, the foundational event of Christian faith was not the
experience of the word in flesh, but rather, the experience of Spirit, the Spirit of
Christ or the Spirit of God, the wind, the movement, the enlivening, creative
movement that gives us an awareness of that intimate relationship with God,
even though we can never adequately bring to expression that experience, but
rather do so in human language, always limited, stammering and stuttering
because we have been overwhelmed if we have met the living God.
The Sunday after Pentecost, which really was last week but celebrated here this
week, therefore tries to gather the experience of the Christian year, the cycle, on
this particular Sunday. Four Sundays before Christmas we begin with the Advent
season, the One who came is coming, the birth of Christ at Christmas, Epiphany,
Lent, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost and the gift of the Spirit, and then on that next
Sunday we say we believe in one God - God the Father, God the Son and God the
Holy Spirit, one God blessed forever, in traditional liturgical language. We speak
of God as Triune because we want to affirm that God is one. But, the experience
of God is trifold, and on this Sunday we simply point to that Christian
understanding of God as God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,
one God.
© Grand Valley State University
�Mystery Experienced
Richard A. Rhem
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The early Church, the immediate followers of Jesus, did not sit down to construct
a mysterious doctrine by which to bewitch and confuse us. And the early Church
did not sit down to construct some mysterious idea of God that would confuse
generations ever after. They did what all people do who have religious experience
- they simply began to express what they had experienced. And the immediate
followers of Jesus, in the wake of his crucifixion and resurrection, were Jewish
people and they had no idea at all that they were talking about some other God
than the God of Israel. They were now not switching their loyalties; they were not
now conceiving of some other deity; they were not now leaving that covenant,
faithful God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob whose law came to expression with
Moses, who had been spoken of by the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah and all the rest.
These were faithful Jewish people who were still dealing with the same God, but a
God now Who had been experienced, strangely enough, in the life of that Jesus
whom they had known. And then this Jesus was crucified but, in the wake of that,
nonetheless, they experienced his presence, as I said a moment ago, not in the
flesh. "The word was made flesh and dwelt among us." But, that was one thing.
This other Easter experience was something else. It was God in the Spirit, Jesus
in the Spirit. How do you give expression to that kind of mysterious, baffling
experience? And yet, how can you be silent if you have had that kind of intimate
experience of God?
The writers of the Hebrews said in many and various ways to our forbears, "God
made God’s self known. But in these last days, God has spoken to us by a son
who, he said, is the express image of God." The word used there is icon, and if you
have had any experience in the lush sanctuaries of Eastern Orthodox churches,
you have seen icons, those paintings of the head of Christ or some symbolism of
the Trinity or some saint. Eastern Orthodox piety and devotion has been
conditioned to have its consciousness raised and its spirit elevated through the
contemplation of the icon. Those of us that don’t know anything about it mock it
and say, "Well, that’s idolatry. Even the Heidelberg Catechism said God will not
be worshiped through pictures or dumb idols." Yet, there are those who, in
contemplation of that icon, find themselves lifted into the presence of God; it’s a
way of devotion or pious expression. The writer to the Hebrews says that Jesus
was the icon of God, the express image of God. He couldn’t have said anything
any more elevated of Jesus than to say that this Jesus in the flesh, the word made
flesh dwelling among us, this one was the very picture, the image, the expression
of God in human flesh.
I return again and again to old John 14, but it’s so revealing of that early
Christian community, trying to give expression to its experience. Now, don’t
think of the disciples sitting around together at a campfire with Jesus in the
midst. This Gospel writer was writing some sixty years later and probably
reflecting the oral tradition of the stories and the conversations and all of that,
and he said, "How can I say that this Jesus, as a matter of fact, was the unveiling
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Richard A. Rhem
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of God?" And so, he pictures them in these middle chapters in John’s Gospel as a
conversation with Jesus where Jesus is getting them ready for his departure "Let not your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me,"
etc., etc.
"In my Father’s house there are many rooms. If it were not so, I would
have told you. I go to prepare a place for you," all of that nice language, and then Phillip who in the fourth Gospel plays the role
of dunce, raises the questions that we all have but feel too self-conscious to raise.
He says, "Oh, Jesus, I’ve really been wanting to say this all along. Just show us
the Father and we will be satisfied."
It’s what we all sigh at one time or another, don’t we? "God, if you’d just show
yourself. If somehow or other I could just get a handle on it, just a glimpse,
perhaps. Just a tickle in my pinkie."
Jesus says, "I’ve been with you so long and you still don’t know. If you’ve seen
me, you’ve seen the Father." This, now, is not what Jesus said. This is what they
said he would have said if he had said what they know to be true. Do you get the
difference? This was their experience, in his face there was God.
We tell the story and we’re going to keep telling the story because somehow or
other the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was there in that
flesh, his face, the human face of God. And so, they who had known Jesus in the
flesh knew him to be crucified, experienced him yet to be alive in the Spirit,
talked about God and they talked about Jesus as the face of God, and they talked
about the Spirit as the Spirit of God, and they had the "stuff" out of which
subsequent generations in subsequent centuries put together using Greek
philosophical concepts to say that God Who is Mystery has been known in
concrete human flesh and continues to be experienced spiritually through a focus
on Jesus who seems to bring up the depths of the mystery.
Today I want to say that Mystery, the aspect of God is Mystery, but Mystery
experienced, and Israel always knew that they didn’t know God in the depths of
God’s mystery. And the Christian tradition which took the God of Israel and put
the face of Jesus on the God of Israel and experienced the Spirit of God through
the mediation of Jesus, the early Church tacked that nuanced adjustment and
understanding of God onto the images and metaphors of Israel, and the images
and metaphors of God for Israel were Ruler, King, more intimately Father. But,
essentially Israel thought in terms of God as the Ruler "out there," "up there,"
engaged in their history and yet beyond their history, and they thought of God as
getting directly involved in human events, although as an imperial ruler removed.
That conception of God we speak of classically as "Theism." Judaism is theistic.
Islam is theistic. Christianity has traditionally been theistic. A theistic
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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understanding of God, even though we say it is a triune God, having been present
in the flesh of Jesus and continuing to be present in the Spirit; nonetheless, God
is "out of here," "up there," beyond us, traditionally. And our Christian
understanding of God got attached to that kind of imagery, and the difficulty with
that imagery is that it doesn’t connect easily with what we know about the cosmic
reality of which our lives are a part.
The Episcopal Bishop, John Shelby Spong, Bishop of Newark, has just written a
book, Why Christianity Must Change or Die. Bishop Spong is courageous, if
nothing else, and he dares to challenge that theistic image of God, saying that
image of God is no longer adequate to express how we experience our world. He
says theism has to go. Well, it will go kicking and screaming; it will go with great,
great difficulty. I’ve been trying and trying for some time to divest my head of
theistic understanding and I can’t do it yet, but I’m working at it. I got a letter
Friday from Bishop Spong who said that in 1999 he has one full weekend
available and he’ll give it to us. November 12, 13 and 14 of 1999, Bishop Spong
will come here to help us to disengage from classical, traditional theistic
conceptions of God. So, mark it down now. He will follow in the fall of ‘99, when
in the spring of ‘99, we’ll have Marcus Borg here so that we can meet Jesus again
for the first time. And maybe as we continue to work at this we might be involved
in that advanced guerilla warfare that’s trying to find out how to say God in light
of everything else we experience, because you can just import the old images and
metaphors as long as you don’t want that God to be intimately involved in your
day-to-day experience.
As I said a moment ago, Israel knew that it didn’t know God. I think this is the
point of that old story, Moses in Exodus 33 saying to God, "I know you’re angry
with this people, but you know, if you’re not going, I’m not going." God says,
"Relax, I’m going." Moses said, "Otherwise, how will the other peoples of the
world know that we’re distinct?"
You see, Moses was into exclusivism a long time ago. He wanted to be distinct.
Don’t we all? We all like to be special. He said, "Well, one more thing, then - I’ll
go if you go. You say that you’ll go, but show me your glory."
God said, "Aha, Moses. I gave you my name, the Lord, Yahweh. I Am what I Am. I
will be where I will be. I will be there for you. I told you my name, but my glory
you cannot see. Moses, if I came bare before you, it would blow you away, it
would destroy you. You humankind, you cannot countenance, you couldn’t stand,
you couldn’t take in a raw exposure to my glory. Moses, come here and stand on a
rock next to me. What I’m going to do, Moses, is I’m going to pass all of my
goodness before you and I’m going to put you in a cleft of the rock, I’m going to
put my hand over you and all of my glory will pass by, and when it’s passed, I’ll
take my hand away and you can see my backside. Don’t even think about trying to
see my face. Don’t even think about trying to take in the mystery. But, I’ll hide
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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you in a cleft of the rock and pass by, and you’ll get a glimpse after I’ve passed
by."
Some of you who are older remember an old hymn, "He Hideth My Soul in the
Cleft of the Rock" - "He hideth my soul in a dry, thirsty land and hideth my soul
in the depths of his love and covers me there with his hand." The experience of
God is that, in the experience of the terrors of life, we know that there’s a cleft in
the rock and God’s hand protectively covering because more than that we
couldn’t handle. And we can relax in the cleft of the rock with the hand of God
over us, knowing that, as we stammer to try to say something about that
experience, God will be just fine. God is not put in jeopardy when we start
messing with the images and metaphors. If we should someday in the year 2005,
after laboriously for seven or eight years working at this problem, if we don’t blow
ourselves apart, and if we could do it rationally, if we could do it with a sense of
security, with one another in dialogue, if we could keep talking about how can we
say God in the 21st century, then maybe in another half dozen years or so we may
stumble on a way of saying that will be much more in line with the world into
which you graduates are all going.
But, this is my prayer for you - No matter how the images, no matter how the
metaphors are going to change, that you’d still be able to sing something
comparable to "God hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock, in the depths of God’s
love, places God’s hand on me there." Because it’s Mystery. Those that know an
awful lot about the definition of God don’t know it all. And those who don’t know
are on the threshold of wisdom, opening to the possibility of fresh experience.
There were two fleas buried deeply in a forest of hair on a beasty. One said to the
other, "Do you think there really is anything called Dog?"
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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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.
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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
Pentecost II
Series
Aspects of God
Scripture Text
Exodus 33:23, Hebrews 1:2-3, John 25: 16-17
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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1998-06-14
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Mystery Experienced
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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>
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/
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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 June 14, 1998 entitled "Mystery Experienced", as part of the series "Aspects of God", on the occasion of Pentecost II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Exodus 33:23, Hebrews 1:2-3, John 25: 16-17.
Mystery
Nature of Religion
Trinitarian
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PDF Text
Text
Jesus in a Reverse Angle Lens
From Credo: A Series For Eastertide
Text: Acts 2:32, 36; Mark 10:18
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Eastertide, April 17, 1994
Transcription of the spoken sermon
This Jesus, God raised up..." Acts 2:32
"... God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified." Acts 2:36
"Jesus said to him, 'Why do you call me good?' No one is good but God alone." Mark 10:18
"Credo," "I believe." It is a Latin word, which takes to itself its subject and gives
expression to the experience of faith, faith not in a proposition or even a person,
but rather faith as trust in someone. That is the nature of faith as it has come to
expression in the Christian tradition, as it has been experienced in the Christian
tradition, I believe.
Last week I tried to distinguish between a set of beliefs, such as we have in a
creedal formulation, and the experience of faith. I felt that many of you said,
"yes" to what was said last week and felt that distinction was meaningful. While
the content of our faith is not unimportant, for it is that upon which we reflect
and it gives us that which we can teach and pass along, what we really long for is
the experience of faith.
This week I picked up a little volume by a New Testament scholar whom I have
mentioned from time to time. His name is Marcus Borg. He is a part of the Jesus
Seminar, which is getting so much publicity these days in news reports,
magazines, and newspapers. Borg had written an earlier book, Jesus, A New
Vision, which was very helpful to me and to some of our thinking a year or two
ago during the Eastertide season or Lenten season. But in this more recent book
entitled Meeting Jesus Again For The First Time, he tells his own spiritual
autobiography. It is often easier to get our heads around a story than it is a series
of propositions, and Marcus Borg tells about his own story growing up in the
church in the Midwest, a good Lutheran boy. He speaks of the hymns, Sunday
school, all of those things. Then adolescence, some doubts, college, and a little
time off from church. But then seminary, and the critical studies of the gospel. In
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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those studies comes the recognition that the gospels did not simply give us a news
journalist's account of Jesus. They didn't give us a photograph; rather they gave
us a portrait, or in his word," a sketch," of Jesus.
Borg came to see that the gospels were faith documents. They were theological
documents, which not only remembered the historical Jesus but also reflected
upon the transformation of the community's understanding of Jesus after Easter.
That experience of the Christian community after Easter was the transforming
experience where the crucified one was experienced as living. That experience of
the crucified one living caused them to look back on the life they remembered,
and the life they remembered became colored through the experience of Easter.
His account of his own history is preferred when he was asked by an Episcopal
men's Bible study group to talk to them about Jesus and the word was "make it
personal". Sounds like what some of you might say to me when you say, preach to
me and make it personal. Borg tells about making a little note to himself," me and
Jesus". It causes him to reflect on his own pilgrimage.
The thing he began to see is that there was a moment in his life when he moved
out of faith, as it were. There was a time when he intellectually could not believe
anymore even though he kept studying all the stuff. But then there was a time in
his life when he came to a kind of spiritual experience, a mystical experience
almost, a sense of awe, of wonder – the kind of spiritual experience that is
described by not only Christian people, but Jewish people, and really crossculturally, and even across the generations. The kind of "aha" moment, when it is
as though the heavens open and one is encountered by, well let us say, God.
After that experience, that encounter, that kind of mystical experience, he
returned to his study of the gospels and he began to see a new image of Jesus.
What he had learned to that point in his critical studies of the gospels, the things
that we talk about here all the time, the fact that there was a pre-Easter Jesus,
that very human individual who lived and walked and ate with his disciples and
talked to multitudes, and a very concrete, historical person, the Jesus that the
church remembered the Jesus that is spoken about in the gospels. But he had
come to see also that post-Easter Jesus or the Christ of faith, the Jesus who, after
Easter, in the reflection of the community, took on more and more awesome
character – a process after Easter that moved this Nazarine Jew, Jesus, through
the lens of Easter into Jesus Christ. This Jesus, eventually in the fourth century,
is spoken of as true God, true man, of one nature with God. This post-Easter
process eventuated in the understanding of the Trinitarian God: God the Father,
God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.
Borg’s new image of Jesus was a man who was filled with the spirit, who was a
bearer of the spirit, a mediator of the spirit, one of those persons who seems so
transparent to God that his very being and presence seems to radiate God, God's
Spirit.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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Marcus Borg, who had believed naively in the Jesus of, "Jesus loves me this I
know for the Bible tells me so,” Marcus Borg, who had gone through the critical
fires of examinations, scholarly study and had been impressed with Jesus as a
social, political figure but who couldn't do anything with all of the Jesus/God
talk, suddenly through his own spiritual experience came to see Jesus as a person
who was a bearer of the spirit, a spirit person, as he says. And as he speaks about
Jesus at this point in his scholarly and professional life, it's obvious that there's
another layer. This man has also encountered Jesus as the One who is the bearer
of the spirit of God and who points to God, God who is spirit.
I tell you that story because it's rather interesting to me that last week we spoke
about that distinction between having a set of beliefs, and the experience of
belief; then I come across this Jesus Seminar scholar who likewise has all of the
scholarly understanding of the critical study of the gospel, but now points also to
an experience, an awakening, a new awareness, and sees Jesus as one of those
people who was filled with God's spirit and mediated God's spirit, to those who
followed him, and who continued to be present to them. And that, Borg says, is
what Easter is all about.
Easter is about the fact that the One who is crucified was found by his followers
yet to be with them, still to be powerfully with them, or as Dominic Crossan says:
(I don't know if this is true or not but it makes a lot of sense to me.) You know
there were followers of the kingdom movement, followers of Jesus up in Galilee
who didn't know what happened down in Jerusalem. I mean you take the
transportation, the communications, and that kind of thing – it wasn't like you
could tune into CNN and find out that at three o'clock in the afternoon Jesus of
Nazarus was crucified outside of the city. Crossan said, No, these followers of the
Jesus movement were talking about Jesus, and God, and doing the miracles, and
the healings, and all of these things. The movement was still moving. And
suddenly they realized when someone came up north and told them, "Jesus is
dead." "Well, when did he die?" "A month ago." Oh, no, they respond. It can't be,
because nothing happened on that day. We kept on moving. The movement kept
moving. Jesus the power, the spirit, everything is the same. It didn't end.
And Dominic Crossan said Easter, was simply the realization of Jesus' followers
that he could not be dead but must somehow be present with them. Because the
very same spiritual power and presence of God that he seemed to mediate in his
life was still being mediated to them. They knew Jesus, they knew spirit, they
knew God in the same way they had known and experienced God and Spirit when
they were breaking bread with Jesus in the flesh.
"So what!" you say to me. Well, I'll just tell you how it helps me, It helps me to
make some sense of the gospels themselves. In the gospels, just take the gospel
according to Mark for example, three specific times Jesus says to his disciples, he
was going to go to Jerusalem, he was going to die, and was going to rise on the
third day. I think there are three times in the gospel of Mark where it says that.
© Grand Valley State University
�Jesus in a Reverse Angle Lens
Richard A. Rhem
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Well you read that and you say, "Well, obviously Jesus was God, Jesus knew
everything, Jesus knew what was going to happen." Now you come to
Gethsemane, and there you have Jesus pleading with God to take the cup from
him. And then you go to the cross and you have Jesus saying, "My God, My God,
Why?" And you have the disciples full of fear, hightailing it for Galilee. Now I
mean, they may have been dull, but can you tell me if this impressive teacher sat
you down on three different occasions and said to you, "Look, we're going to
Jerusalem. I'm going to die. I'm going to rise again the third day", would you have
been acting as though what happened was devastating and made no sense to you?
You see, those kinds of things cause those who really study in depth to say,
"Something doesn't fit."
Or for example, the text of the morning: A young ruler comes to Jesus and he
says, "What must I do to have eternal life, good Master?" Jesus said, "Why do you
call me good?" Now it might seem Jesus was calling him up short saying, "Come
on, get off it, get real." But as a matter of fact Jesus is really saying "There's only
one good and that is God."
I hear that as saying Jesus distanced himself from God in his human nature and
his human consciousness. I think it clearly means Jesus never presumed to be
God. "Good Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" "Why do you call me
good? There is only one good, that's God." How does such a saying still remain in
Mark?
Matthew's got a story, Mark a story, Luke a story, John a story, and sometimes
there's some stuff that was so much a part of the tradition that it got into the
written record even though it really seems to be at war with some other things
that were in the written record.
Now Mark is the earliest gospel written, we believe. And so he is probably
recording close to the actual words just like it was there. Only one is good, that's
God. But that created a real problem for Matthew. Matthew's dependent upon
Mark's written record and he's got the same story. But listen to Matthew's
version, written after Mark. In Matthew, someone came to Jesus and said,
'Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?" And he said to him,
"Why do you ask me about what is good?" No problem in Matthew's gospel. The
guy says, "What good thing must I do?" Jesus said, "Why do you ask me about
what is good?"
Now the original story in Mark is Jesus saying, "Why do you call me good, God is
good." Matthew doesn't want to communicate that. Now here Matthew garbles
Mark's story because Matthew knows that that little story is going to cause some
confusion. Someone's going to say, "what do you mean?" Jesus, Son of God
saying here only one is good, that is God. We have to face honestly what is
happening here.
© Grand Valley State University
�Jesus in a Reverse Angle Lens
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
When I really study these things, there is all kinds of stuff like that. So when I see
someone like Borg working through, distinguishing between the pre-Easter Jesus
and the post-Easter Jesus and acknowledging or understanding that through the
event of Easter, the pre-Easter Jesus took on a different coloring, that helps me.
Now I can understand. I can see the process. Example: In the book of Acts, on the
day of Pentecost (that we read a moment ago), Peter's sermon concludes with the
thirty-sixth verse: “Therefore, let the entire house of Israel know with certainty
that God is made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
God has made this crucified Jesus Lord and Christ or Messiah.
It would seem that through the crucifixion and the resurrection Jesus became by
God's designation, Lord,(the honoristic title of the Hellenistic Greek world) and
Christ, the one the Jews were looking for. But if you go to the next chapter, the
New Testament scholar, J.AT. Robinson, points out that after the healing of the
lame man at the temple, Peter's speech there seems to reflect a little different
conception.
In the third chapter, the nineteenth verse: “Repent, therefore, and turn to God so
that your sins may be wiped out so that times of refreshing may come from the
presence of the Lord and that he may send the Messiah, appointed for you. That
is Jesus, who must remain in heaven until the time of universal restoration that
God announced long ago through the holy prophets.”
Here it would seem that Jesus has been appointed by God to be the Messiah but
he has not yet come as the Messiah. He cannot come as Messiah until Israel
repents. And so the call, the appeal, here in this speech of Peter is repent. If you'll
repent this Jesus whom God has appointed Christ will come and there will be the
universal restoration of all things. There will be Shalom on earth.
Well, why wouldn't that be a natural kind of understanding? That's probably
reflective of what they sensed from Jesus himself. Jesus didn't go around
spouting the fact that he was the Messiah. Jesus was preparing the way for the
coming of the Kingdom of God, which he believed, along with all of his
contemporaries, was just around the comer.
Now I say it helps me to make sense of this stuff. I can see the process at work. I
can see that they were struggling as much then as I struggle now to make sense of
all this business. And so what I see as I approach the story of Jesus after Easter is
that I have in the New Testament a memory of the historical Jesus, the Nazarene,
the man reflected through the lens of Easter.
I call the sermon, "Jesus In A Reverse Angle Lens." It's the wrong season. It
should be pro-football season, particularly when they do the instant replay. I
don't know the technology of a reverse angle lens but you know how it goes. The
quarterback throws the ball and the tight end goes down, and he catches the ball,
and his foot comes down. Is it on the line, or over the line? Are both feet in or
only one? In the replay they're able to show the ball caught. And then you see the
© Grand Valley State University
�Jesus in a Reverse Angle Lens
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
ball going back, eventually, to the quarterback whose arm starts here and
eventually goes back here. And if you follow the reverse angle long enough you
get to where he's taking the ball from the center. I don't understand that
technology but it is looking at the end event and trying to understand it by going
back and watching the process. Now that's what we have in the gospel records of
Jesus. There is a memory of the historical Jesus plus the experience of the postEaster community of the presence of the risen Christ.
Finally, what difference does that make? That enables me still to believe in Jesus.
I can see him now as my brother who was filled with the Spirit of God, who was a
bearer of the Spirit, who was so potently the bearer of the Spirit that those who
met him experienced God. And following his death they continued to experience
him alive as the bearer of God to them. Therefore, they began to speak of him
with grand titles and to exalt him higher, and higher, and higher, into the whole
creedal tradition of the church. As a matter of fact, he was God's man in whose
face I see God and meet the Spirit.
I was thinking about the day last Tuesday in Muskegon where Rabbi Hartman
and Martin Marty dialogued for the day about "Religion That Heals, and Religion
That Kills". If you are with David Hartman, the Jewish rabbi for long, you know
you are with a man in whom the Spirit dwells. It struck me that when the rich
young ruler came to Jesus to say, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" what
Jesus told him is exactly what Hartman would tell someone today, "Keep the
Torah."
Jesus was a good Jewish Rabbi, in whom God's spirit was so regnant that those
who met him knew that they were in the presence of God. The whole creedal
tradition of the church is trying to say precisely that, and if you dare come back
one more week, I will approach that high Christology of John's gospel, which was
John's attempt to say simply that in the human existence of this man God was
present, and this man said the God that was present in him was available to us
all.
Jesus was a Spirit person and the New Testament is the consequence of those
who encountered God as spirit in Jesus, giving witness to the fact that there was
life in his name, that God is available to us as Spirit. Thank God for that.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ba9e0b525f9648e7edee115e66420a53.mp3
c5a1126020ddde8d21cec0d990163592
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
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981-2014
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Eastertide III
Series
Credo: A Series For Eastertide
Scripture Text
Acts 2:32, 36, Mark 10: 18
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-0-19940417
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1994-04-17
Title
A name given to the resource
Jesus in A Reverse Angle Lens
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on April 17, 1994 entitled "Jesus in A Reverse Angle Lens", as part of the series "Credo: A Series For Eastertide", on the occasion of Eastertide III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Acts 2:32, 36, Mark 10: 18.
Eastertide
Historical Jesus
Presence of God
Spirit
Trinitarian
Trust