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Love Hurts
From the series: Faces Around the Cross
Text: Luke 2:35; John 19:25-27
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Lent, March 9, 1997
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Love hurts. God knows. To love is to suffer. There is no other way around it.
Loving is suffering because loving is to invest in another and to set the other free.
To love, investing in the other and setting them free, is to give up control and to
refuse possessiveness. To love and invest in another in order to set them free is to
be disappointed again and again and again. Yet, we continue to love, because to
cease to love is to cease to be human and to realize the deepest experience of
humanness. So, we are caught in a tension. We are caught in that circumstance in
which love we must, but, loving, we hurt.
As we focus on the faces around the cross, the focus falls on Mary, the mother of
Jesus. I guess Mary could tell us a thing or two about loving and hurting, and in
the Gospel story, several vignettes of which we read this morning, we can see that
relationship fraught with tension, full of suffering which existed between Jesus
and his mother.
Traditionally you have heard this third word from the cross treated as an
expression of filial devotion - a son at the point of his death making provision for
his mother as a good and responsible son ought to do. That beautiful
relationship, parent to child, expressed always with a bit of sentimentality, has
warmed the heart of many a mother and caused many a son to squirm just a bit
because it's been a long time since his last visit. But, as a matter of fact, to make
this scene at the cross, the exchange between Jesus and his mother, an expression
of filial devotion or domestic relationships is really to miss the depth of what this
scene is all about, because if we have wandered around the Gospel of John very
much, we know that it is a highly symbolic Gospel, and we know that John paints
every scene with an intention. There must be more going on than simply a dying
son providing for his mother, although that certainly is a noble thing to do. Here
we have the committing of his mother into the hands of one who was not her son,
the committing of his mother into the hands of the faithful disciple, the beloved
disciple, the one that appears in the Gospel of John.
© Grand Valley State University
�Love Hurts
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
Traditionally, we think of John the disciple as writing the Gospel and speaking of
himself in disguise as the beloved disciple, but that really isn't the case. We don't
know who wrote this Gospel. It perhaps arose from a Johannine circle, perhaps
around the area of Ephesus where tradition has it he spent his last years. If you
visit Ephesus, they'll even show you the place where Mary spent her last days
under John's care. But, we really don't know about all of that. That's tradition;
maybe some of it has historical basis; it really doesn't matter.
The point is that John, in portraying this scene, is not talking about a son taking
care of his mother; he is talking about Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Church,
creating a new family, a new community, a new family of God. He is saying to his
natural mother, "Be the mother in the charge of this faithful disciple who is the
model of faithfulness," because what Jesus is claiming according to this event is
that out of his death and resurrection will arise a new community, a community
of faith, a community that will transcend bloodlines, that will be something other
than the natural family into which we are born and over which we have no
control. This will be a family of faith; this will be a community of commitment
and mutuality; this will be a community of mutual love and respect. Out of his
death and resurrection, the Gospel writers say, will come the creation of this new
reality, this new family that is something more than the natural family.
The natural family is so terribly important in our society. It's getting a lot of press
these days in rather silly and sentimental ways, as though we're coming to a time
when family doesn't exist anymore and, frankly, I don't see that. But I'm always
surprised and taken aback a bit when I reflect on the natural family relationships
Jesus portrayed in the Gospels. The family is so important - it's where we are
socialized, it's where we are nurtured, it's where we are loved and we learn to
love, ideally.
But, the family has its problems, too. The family is also the scene of
subordination and domination and possessiveness and control, and relationships
of power. The natural family is a great gift, but also can be a threat to the full
development of one's humanity, of the following of one's passion, of one's vision.
Families can be coercive and manipulative. Families can be destructive, and this
is rather clearly set forth in the Gospels. Families are terribly important, with
wonderful possibilities. But, in dysfunctional families, and I include us all there,
there are also serious threats to the full growth and development of a human
individual.
The Gospels are quite interestingly frank about this. Let us just focus on Jesus
and his mother. I read three passages, but let me cite a couple others. The first
one, the words of old Simeon as he holds the infant in his arms and he looks at
Mary and says, "A sword will pierce your soul." Luke likes to use foreshadowing
as a literary technique in the writings of his Gospels. This is one of those
moments. He is signaling to us already in the beginning in that beautiful scene in
© Grand Valley State University
�Love Hurts
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
the temple that there is going to be something more than domestic tranquility in
the future.
Had I read on in that chapter, we would have found Jesus at age 12 with his
family at the temple. They pack up and go for home and he's not with them. I
can't quite believe this scene; I can't quite imagine it - a 12-year-old staying
behind, not even being missed for a day? Back they come and there he is engaged
in theological discourse. (I like that boy.) But, there's no apology. There's rather
this distancing. Now, if you're a good mother, it sends a chill up your spine. He
says, "I must be about my Father's business." Already a signal that he's going to
need some space.
And then, although the Gospels don't give us a chronology of the life of Jesus, if
we go over to the Gospel of John, his first miracle, John tells us, was the making
of water into wine at the wedding at Cana. The supply was running down. His
mother comes and says, "Boy, take care of it." He says, "Woman, what concern is
that to you or me? My hour is not come." If you had shivers before, you've got
chills now. Because he is saying in the polite language of the evangelist, "Mother,
get lost."
And then, of course, the passage I read from Mark, in the time of his popularity in
Galilee when the crowds were pressing in upon him and he was obviously
becoming a threat to the social order. The authorities come down to check him
out and they say he's got a demon. And so, he takes them on to explain that it's
impossible that he could be demonic because if the demonic is against the
demonic, its kingdom will fall. Rather, he is claiming that he is not of an unclean
spirit, but of the Spirit of God. But the word got out - he has a demon. He is
"beside himself." He is eccentric, literally. You know what it is to be eccentric? It's
to be out of center. That is out of center with conventional wisdom, out of center
with social custom. He is not conforming. His socialization, obviously, has fallen
short at some point. He is an embarrassment to his mother and to his brothers,
as well as being a threat to those in authority. And so, they say he is eccentric, he
is out of himself. Eccentric, because, refusing to follow the center according to
social expectation, he lived out of his own center, and anyone who lives out of his
or her own center will be out of kilter with the environment around them. You
can count on it.
So, mother and brothers come to the place where he is; they want to pack him up
and bring him home, but they can't get in because the place is crowded, so they
send a message and he says, "My mother and my brothers are here? Who are my
mother and my brothers? Those who do the will of God - you are my mother and
my brothers and my sisters." Well, if you had a shiver before, and then chills, by
now, you must be in a paroxysm of horror. This is Jesus, huh?
The scene at the cross, finally, "Woman, behold your son. Son, behold your
mother," which with the typical sentimentality that is so rife in the Christian
Church, we claim that it's now made okay. But that's not what it's about. I do not
© Grand Valley State University
�Love Hurts
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
mean to say there is any lack of filial devotion, any lack of care, any lack of love
for his mother. But, according to the portrayal of the Evangelist, he is saying,
"Woman, do you get it now? Do you see that I had to separate and distance
myself in order to get your focus off that which is natural and given, the
bloodlines, in order that you might transcend to something that is more spiritual,
to a community of faith, a relationship that is beyond anything that is given by
human possibility?"
And so, we have that relationship between Jesus and his mother. It is a
relationship that we don't sit very easily with because we don't often want to face
the fact that real love invests in the other and sets them free. Real love seeks not
to possess, control or dominate. Real love sets free and is disappointed again and
again and again, but continues to love, nonetheless, always believing that this
time love given will make whole.
Love hurts. God knows.
The family is so terribly important, and yet we need honestly to face the fact that
it can also be an arena of such brokenness and dysfunction because of the pitfalls
of loving... my fear of the loss of your love, and so, seeking to control, seeking to
control because I love and I want to spare you. But I can't spare you because if I
love you, I set you free with all the risk involved, simply standing by and waiting
for the time when I'm needed again.
Ah, love in the family has its pitfalls. We find it so difficult to trust and set free,
because, well, you might embarrass me. Mary was embarrassed by Jesus. We
can't fault her for that. The brothers were angry. We can identify with that. How
often when our children have gotten into trouble has our first thought not been
their pain, but our embarrassment? If my kid fouls up, it reflects on me.
Therefore, kid, straighten up. Remember who I am in this community. And that's
flawed love, instinctive though it be.
And we love and make the other dependent. The jargon in the Social Sciences in
the last decade or more, growing out of recovery groups and 12-Step programs,
the jargon is all about co-dependency. Your misbehavior frustrates me, so I seek
to try to control it, but I almost find my own reason for being in trying to control
your misconduct.
Our families and our human relationships stumble again and again into one or all
of these pitfalls. We become conscious of it, we become aware, we step back, we
get hold of ourselves. We gain perspective again. We take a deep breath, we
plunge back in and before you know it, we're at it again, because it's that kind of
instinctual response that we make in the crises of those we love.
But, real love invests in the other and sets them free. God knows. That's how I
understand the biblical teaching of the love of God. That's what the Creation is all
about, giving the Creation elbow room, not dotting every i and crossing every t,
© Grand Valley State University
�Love Hurts
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
pulling strings, but giving us the frightful freedom to fail, not then to forsake, but
to begin again, always loving, trusting, setting free, not dominating or controlling
or possessing or making dependent.
We haven't done so well in the Church with that. Too many people in my position
have made too many people in your position dependent. Loving, to be sure, but
also needing to control and manipulate rather than setting you free, letting you
hear of the God Who sets you free, Who affirms you on your way, Who calls you
to grow up, to mature, to enter into that kind of reciprocal relationship of
mutuality.
God's love, seen best in the scriptures, is a suffering love. It is the suffering that is
the inevitable counterpoint to loving and it is that loving in which alone we find
the fullness of the human experience.
We went to a movie this past week. It's not going to win any Academy Awards, I
think, but if you want to have an hour and a half of pure family dysfunction, visit
Marvin's Room. Two sisters with total brokenness - one marries, has a couple of
kids; they're a mess; she's divorced. The other gives it all up and goes home to
take care of an aged father and an aged aunt. Now, the one who goes home,
having given her life to the care of these elderly family members, has a terminal
disease which perhaps the estranged sister or her son can alleviate through a
transplant. And so, we bring all of these disparate units together in all of their
dysfunction, and you can cut the tension, it is such a picture of human
brokenness, and nothing works out. The sister will die, but there is a redeeming
moment in which the two sisters look at each other and the one who is to die,
with tears in her eyes, says, "I've known such love in my life," and the other
responds with some guilt for her own lack of concern or love, saying, "I know. I
know. They love you so much." The dying sister says, "No, no. It's not their love
for me; it is my love for them! I loved them so much. I'm so lucky!"
You see, St. Francis was right - it is in loving that we are loved; it is in loving
without quarter asked, without condition, without control or possession, without
sentimentality or dependence - it is in loving and setting free that I find the
center in myself and God's highest for my humanity.
But, love hurts. God knows.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/40051ea688a154b5d2249a8c01165f58.mp3
ec228ef47c81466129ce3a6a9c6a831d
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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Interfaith worship
Sermons
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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1981-2014
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Lent IV
Series
Faces Around the Cross
Scripture Text
Luke 2:35, John 19:25-27
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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1997-03-09
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Love Hurts
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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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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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An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on March 9, 1997 entitled "Love Hurts", as part of the series "Faces Around the Cross", on the occasion of Lent IV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Luke 2:35, John 19:25-27.
Community of Faith
Unconditional Love
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PDF Text
Text
The Strength of Surrender
From the series: Faces Around the Cross
Text: Luke 23:42-43
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
March 2, 1997
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Luke paints a portrait for us of the crucifixion scene with the three crosses
crowning the hill and the conversation between the crosses. Last week we
considered the one criminal who died, still cursing, pouring derision on Jesus. I
treated that particular person rather unconventionally for the Christian Church,
and I did it intentionally because I believe it's so important for us to bring some
imagination to the biblical text, to see if there are nuances, if there are deeper
shadows that we've not glimpsed before, lest we be so familiar with the story that
we come to church and we know how the sermon should end before we hear it.
But, more than that, I said a good word for that dying criminal in order to
address that which troubles me so often - the smugness of the Church.
How easy it is for us to write off, to damn those who seem so alienated, so other
than we are. And I even said a positive word about the fact that there is a certain
integrity in saying "No," part of human dignity, God taking us that seriously that
if our "Yes" is real, our "No" is possible. There is a certain integrity in that one
who would not break. But, I hope I was clear that this was no ordinary criminal. I
suspect that this was one of those insurrectionists who rose up at the injustice,
the inhumanity, the brutal and cruel world of which he was a part, who saw in
that unjust society a foreign oppressor and a domestic aristocracy that
collaborated for their own advantage. He saw people driven off their land, into
abject poverty. There was so much that was wrong with his world and he rose up
and sought to do something about it.
He was no ordinary criminal; Romans didn't crucify ordinary types. But, the hills
outside of Jerusalem were set with crosses, thick with those who would dare
question the coercive, violent life to which that people were subjected. And so,
this one was one whose soul was so seared, who had been so crushed, finally
rather than breaking before the threat to life, died, cursing the darkness. And I
even suggested that such bitter cynicism and hatred that can grip the human soul
could be broken only with an encounter with an unimaginable mercy and a love
divine. That, I think, we can leave with the mercy of God, for I don't mean to say
that it doesn't matter how we live. I don't think that anybody gets away with
© Grand Valley State University
�The Strength of Surrender
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
anything. But, it is the deepest confession of my life that there is a mercy and a
love in God, the God Whom Paul says was in Christ, absorbing the pain of the
world. There is a mercy and a love in God that is able even to absorb the venom of
a human spirit which has been hardened, embittered, and dies cursing the
darkness. That encounter, then, at death, would be the moment of truth for such
a one. For, what is the encounter with God at death? Isn't it the moment when
perhaps for the first time we see truly, when we can see through? Is it not that
moment when we see our lives in God's light? Is it not, then, for the first time that
we can see the designs of mercy and the configurations of grace and the abyss of
love unfiltered by all of the static of the human situation?
Can one still resist that light and love? C. S. Lewis, in his allegory, The Great
Divorce – and it's only by way of allegory in myth and symbol that we can begin
even to speak of these things – suggests that possibly one on the other side might
linger in those gray, drab flatlands, refusing, resisting that bus ride into the
center of light. Who knows? We ought not to know too much when it's beyond the
limits of human knowing. I don't know. But this, again, I believe and this is at the
center of my passion - if there is a final, absolute "No," it will not be God's "No."
It will be a "No" that we utter in the full light of amazing grace and unconditional
love, and to say "No" in the face of such love and grace - that I cannot imagine.
Having said that, let me go on to say that to die cursing the darkness is a very
great tragedy. To die with one's soul shriveled, encrusted is a human tragedy.
There are those who move into that kind of experience and then, through time,
move out and heal, thank God. There are some who live long in that embittered
state. God be merciful to them. And there are some that have been so damaged
and so hurt by Church or by society or by state or whatever, that, like the one on
the cross, they die cursing the darkness. And that's a great tragedy, for such a
person dies before they live, and as Luke portrays that crucifixion scene, as he
paints his picture, he tells us that there is another possibility and it is the
possibility that we see in the one on the other side of Jesus.
What happened to him? How do things like that happen? What kind of a
breakthrough was it that in his last hour transformed his life, enabling him to live
before he died? Was it watching the one in the center and the one on the other
side? Was it watching his partner in crime cursing the darkness to his last breath
in contrast to the one on the center cross praying for those who were crucifying
him? Did the prayer, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,"
somehow or other break through his defenses? Did he see in his brother, dying
full of hate, the stark contrast with Jesus, dying full of grace? And did he see it all
in a moment?
What happens to one in such a moment? Well, we ought again not to try to do an
anatomy, but I must say this - confronted with that cataclysmic contrast in spirit
and attitude and ways of being and living and dying, this one on the other side
was at a point of decision, for then it was for him to decide whether to stay the
© Grand Valley State University
�The Strength of Surrender
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
course in the darkness or to surrender to the light that had broken upon him. If I
would be faithful to this text and to my own human experience, I must say that if
I affirm the belligerent one for the integrity of his "No," I must affirm the other
for the strength of his surrender, for it takes courage to persist in the darkness
and even more courage and strength to yield to the light, once it has been
glimpsed, once it has dawned upon one.
That is the critical moment which will determine whether one dies before one
lives, or whether one lives before one dies. There is strength in surrender, and it
takes courage and strength to face one's whole life project and to say, "I am
wrong. My motivation was right, my concern was right, but my method was
wrong, my spirit was wrong, my heart was wrong, my soul is dying within me!
God be merciful to me! Jesus, remember me."
There is an integrity in the "No" of the belligerent one. There is strength in the
surrender of the yielding one, and don't fail to see it. It is a difference between
heaven and hell. It is hell to die before one ever lives, lives in the wonder of the
gift of life. It is hell to be imprisoned in the black hole of one's own bitterness,
cynicism and hatred, even though God be merciful to such. I wish I sensed more
compassion in the Church for those who have been so damaged that they cannot
turn to the light. Oh, I see concern sometimes for the salvation of their soul, but
what we ought really to be concerned about is the restoration of their humanity.
God will take care of the rest. It is those two possibilities that Luke sets before us.
There is a certain strength in surrender, and to surrender to grace is to begin to
live before we die.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8e54c74e8ba5b45e5a18a7c3e88164ac.mp3
fcdab445cea78e1b551df9a8346f6183
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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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
Lent III
Series
Faces Around the Cross
Scripture Text
Luke 23:42-43
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-0-19970302
Date
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1997-03-02
Title
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The Strength of Surrender
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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
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
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on March 2, 1997 entitled "The Strength of Surrender", as part of the series "Faces Around the Cross", on the occasion of Lent III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Luke 23:42-43.
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Unconditional Love
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It’s a Pity to Pout at the Party
Text: Isaiah 40:27; Luke 15:28, 31
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
August 25, 1996
Transcription of the spoken sermon
The parable of the Prodigal Son, as I indicated last week, is misnamed. It is really
a story of a father with two sons, and it's not really about the two sons so much as
about the father. It is about the incredible, amazing love of the father who is, in
the story Jesus told, a symbol for God. This story is about the love of God, and it
was told, initially, because there were those of the religious leadership that were
grumbling because Jesus was receiving all kinds of people without condition,
sitting at table with them, breaking bread with them. He told this story in order
to respond to that criticism and that condemnation of his ministry.
Last week we focused on the younger son who was a rebel who sought his
freedom, or better, his autonomy. And we noted that Jesus just might have been
saying it is necessary to separate and to move out in the natural, normal
maturation process. But, it's a very perilous move and it can lead to selfdestructive behavior, decadence and despair. But, he told not only of that
younger son who left home; he told, also, of the elder brother who stayed home.
And just as the younger son in his move from home cut himself off from that
whole spiritual legacy that was his and became homeless, so Jesus says in this
story, the elder brother living all of his days at home righteously, responsibly,
faithfully, seriously, nonetheless was just as homeless as his younger brother. For
Jesus was saying that it is possible to be homeless by leaving or by staying, but
failing to delight and to bask in the love of God that is the mark of the house of
God. The younger son broke the father's heart because he left. The elder brother
just as surely broke the father's heart because he stayed without joy.
And so, for a bit this morning, having focused on the younger son last week, let's
linger with that elder brother a bit because, as I said last week, probably Jesus
was not talking about two kinds of persons so much as the two persons that live
within us. Is there not the rebel in us whose recklessness can lead to decadence,
as well as the diligent, elder brother whose serious obedience is given grudgingly,
without joy? Don't we know moments in our lives when we are the one and the
other? So, for a time, think with me about that elder brother.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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The story is a sad story. It's a sad story because it's always a pity to pout at a
party, and there was a party going on. There was a celebration. The elder brother
coming in from the field hears the sound of singing and dancing and he calls a
servant to say, "What's the meaning of this?"
I wonder, what do you think? I suspect he knew what was going on, don't you?
Don't you suspect he knew the father well enough to suspect that maybe the
young rascal came home and all of the joy and celebration was about that? And I
wonder if he didn't call the servant to confirm his suspicions in order not to have
to go too close and be drawn into the circle of light and celebration. It's a sad
story because, hearing the news, we're told that he was angry and he would not go
in. He stayed outside the party, paralyzed, as it were, by that anger that welled up
within him and erupted, probably surprising him, himself. There he stands. Can
you get into his skin? The best way to hear the word of God is to put ourselves in
the characters. Have you been there? Have you felt that kind of resentment and
anger overcoming you in a moment, so unexpectedly that it absolutely paralyzed
you, and you were consumed with a fury and a wrath that even scared you a bit?
That's the sad story of the elder brother. I suspect that we've all been there on
occasion, because I suspect that there are more elder brothers and sisters in
church than younger rebels who have returned.
Well, in a congregation like Christ Community, there are some rebels who've
returned. But, by and large, we are the folks who stayed home, aren't we? We are
the folks who've been serious and responsible and diligent and faithful, while the
masses have left, seemingly rather carefree and reckless. Apparently they could
not care less about whether the church lives or dies. I mean, we've stayed home,
haven't we? We've taken upon ourselves the heavy burden for keeping the church
alive, for God's sake. So, I suspect that when I ask you to get inside the skin of the
elder brother, probably many of us here have been there a time or two. The elder
brother is a type that is found often in church, because the elder brother was a
good and righteous and serious and faithful and diligent and responsible person.
But the thing that he didn't realize was that underneath, he was also a very angry
person, full of resentment.
I have a large library and I love books, and one of the most beautiful books in my
library is a book by Henri Nouwen, the Dutch Catholic priest. You've probably
read some of Nouwen's works; he's written a number of things - contemplative,
meditative, about the spiritual life. Very fine writer. This book is called The
Return of the Prodigal, and it's bound beautifully, and it is a meditation on his
contemplation of Rembrandt's painting of the return of the Prodigal, and there
are several colored plates of that painting in various scenes sprinkled throughout
the book. That text is Nouwen's encounter with that painting. He tells about a
time in his life when he was worn out, he had been carrying on his ministry, he
had been teaching and traveling, he had been engaged in Latin America,
concerned about the injustices there. He was really burning out and he came to a
point when he knew that it was time for him to take a sabbatical or change his
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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course or something, and he went into an office and there he saw a poster of this
painting of the return of the Prodigal, and something in it drew him and he was
drawn to it and struck by it and he saw the embrace of the aged father embracing
the son, kneeling, weeping at his feet. Nouwen said, "I saw myself in that return
of the younger son. I so yearned and longed for the embrace and the touch of the
father. I needed to come home."
It was a short time later that he was invited to travel to Russia and he went to St.
Petersburg, formerly Leningrad, where in The Hermitage Gallery, is the original
of the Rembrandt painting. Through special arrangements he was enabled to
spend hours sitting in front of that painting, just contemplating it, seeing himself
in the painting, thinking about Rembrandt, thinking about all of the dynamics of
that painting, finding in himself that longing to be held by the father and to go
home. He did change his career, of course, and he settled in and things began to
move for him again and he shared with a friend one day that he identified with
that younger son who'd been embraced by the father, and the friend said to him,
"Henri, don't you really think that you're the elder brother?" And it took him
aback.
Then he began to think about it and he began to study the elder brother and think
of his own life, and he said, "I had to conclude I was the elder brother." He said,
"At the age of six I was already committed to the priesthood. I was the oldest
child of the family. All of the expectations of the eldest child were upon me. All of
my life I had tried to please; I had tried to measure up. All of my life I had been
serious and responsible; I had obeyed my parents; I had obeyed my teachers; I
had obeyed my bishops. I had given my whole life to the service of God. And as I
thought about myself as the elder brother, I had to admit that there was some
subterranean stream in me of resentment and of anger." He said, "I never cut
loose, I never kick up my heels, and yet as I thought about my life at that point in
my life, I recognized that there was a subtle anger within me and a resentment
over against those who had been reckless and careless and seemingly to have
gotten away with it. I was resentful about those who could go out and turn the
tables upside down and then come back repentant and receive all grace. The more
I thought about it, the more I recognized that it was me in that picture, that I was
the one, underneath, resentful and angry for all of the diligence and all of the
faithful service I had rendered."
And Nouwen identified that which is the central characteristic of the elder
brother, which is an anger that manifests itself in resentment. And it is a serious
disease, and there are few of us who escape it totally, for whether we be the elder
child like Nouwen or some other scenario is written over our lives, as a matter of
fact, most of us at some time have to own up to having held a pity party, that
"poor me" syndrome, the fact that I've tried so hard, I've worked so hard, I've
been so faithful, I've been so righteous, and nobody really appreciates it; nobody
really appreciates me. Who would ever throw a party for me? So, if there's a party
around, I'm going to pout at the party because I'm feeling sorry for myself.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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I think Nouwen put his finger on that besetting sin of good people. It is doing
everything right and hating it. It is being absolutely square and resenting it. And
it doesn't take simply a child-parent relationship. The elder brother was resentful
against the father, but those of us who are parents can pull the same trick on our
children. Now, I'm sure there's not a father or a mother here that has ever given
even a hint to a son or a daughter that, in light of the sacrifice that we've made for
our sons or daughters, one might think that a phone call or a visit might have
been in order. I'm sure that there's not a parent here who has ever felt sorry for
themselves over against the tremendous job we've done in nurturing and raising
and working hard and scraping and sacrificing for our children, and look what we
get! And, it doesn't even have to be within the family. It can be among colleagues;
it can be among friends. "Look what a friend I've been to so-and-so. Do you think
that there's any reciprocity, any appreciation? In fact, as I think about it, nobody
really appreciates me and I really do feel sorry for myself, and when somebody's
having a good time and celebrating, I'm going to be outside, pouting at the party,
because I am so angry."
And the problem is no one can do anything for you because the problem's inside.
It's a kind of feeling of inadequacy, a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem. And
so, it doesn't matter how much affirmation we get. It doesn't matter how many
kudos are sent our way. It's because we don't love ourselves and respect ourselves
enough and we can't believe anybody else would love and respect us. I think that's
sort of what's going on with the elder brother syndrome.
I see this in the Church because, again, I think we in the Church tend to be more
the elder brother than the younger rebel. I ran into it in 1988 when I wrote that
article on the extent of God's grace, and I found that people were really angry to
think that perhaps the grace of God was broader than the scope of our human
imagination, that maybe the grace of God could embrace even those who were
outside our serious, dedicated, diligent, faithful, responsible commitment to the
kingdom of God. At that time, a colleague of mine was quoted to me as saying, "If
he believed the grace of God was that broad, he would give up the ministry and
start selling used cars."
We've experienced it recently again, haven't we? The Detroit Free Press headlines
said, "If Dick Rhem Is Right, the Heart of the Gospel is Cut Out." That sounds to
me an awful lot like those grumbling people who condemned Jesus for breaking
bread with those who were outside the acceptable parameters. What is there
about the Church? Do we feel put upon because we have stayed home? Do we feel
jealous of those who have simply left? Do we resent the fact that we have a
commitment to be faithful to the mission of the Church and to the broader
kingdom of God? Do we do it, but do we hate it?
It's such a pity, because the kingdom of God is about dancing and singing and
feasting. It is to be a banquet. It is to be a ball. And it's a pity to pout at a party,
but the Christian Church members are not the most spontaneous, joyful people in
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Richard A. Rhem
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the world, but we should be. So, whether it's in our individual lives or whether it's
in our corporate lives, it's a rather sobering thing to size up the elder brother and
then see the contours written in our own hearts.
But, again, this story isn't about those two boys at all. It's about God. And the
thing I think I never really appreciated in this old, old story, although I would
have thought that there wasn't another phrase in it that could have passed me by
in the many years of my life, but the thing that amazes me is that the love of God
is absolutely consistent over against the younger rebel and the older pouter. For,
just as God the father runs to meet the youngster who is returning, so the father
leaves the party and comes out into the darkness to plead with the elder son, and
the word he uses in the Hebrew language does not mean "son," but "my child;" it
is the word of affection. The father comes out to this elder son and pleads with
him to come and the elder son begins a tirade, listing all of his credentials and all
of his responsible actions and behavior, holding up to the father the dissolute life
of "this son of yours," whom he doesn't even claim as "my brother." The anger
just spews out of him! He can't contain it anymore. The dam bursts! To which the
father says, "My child, all I have is yours. You are always with me."
No accusation. No condemnation. Not of the younger one. Not of the older one.
Just, "Look, look, I love you and I value you, and everything I have is yours."
Unconditional love. If it's amazing that over against the younger one, he could let
him go and love him still, this is absolutely incredible. I mean, it's not so hard to
take a rascal back, is it? Particularly when the kid's weeping at your feet? One can
embrace such a youngster. But, this elder brother standing stiffly in his selfrighteous pride, resentful and angry, spewing out to the father all of hurts over all
of the years - to love that one? Well, I might have gone out, but I sure would have
let him know how disgusted I was with his behavior. And then if he wouldn't have
come in, I would have said, "Then stay there and rot!"
But, you see? That's the amazing nature of the love of God. Jesus couldn't portray
it any more vividly. It's not simply a greater degree of our love. It is a love divine.
It is the love of God. And right now I think there's some of you that may feel a
kind of constriction in your innards because you know that it is your nature to
pout at the party. And I wish I knew how to set you free. I wish I knew how to set
your tongue to singing and your feet to dancing, to lead you into the spontaneity
of joyful celebration. I know what you need, what you yearn for - it is to be loved,
it is to be valued. And I wish for just a moment this morning you could really hear
Jesus, really hear the story, really put yourself in the skin of the elder son,
acknowledge it, confess it, own it and then let the love of God wash over you. I tell
you, it is so transforming, if once you feel it.
Friday night Nancy and I were invited to the Sabbath service of the Muskegon
Temple where I was invited to give the sermon. In 1984, in Schenectady, that
congregation that I served for three months had an annual exchange with the
Jewish community in Schenectady and, while I was there, that exchange took
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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place and we went to the Sabbath service in the temple. I have to tell you, I
couldn't be free. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what to do. I didn't
know how to pray. I wasn't even sure if Jesus' name wasn't attached to the prayer,
if it was ... I mean, that's where I was. I was thinking about all of these things, and
what I want to say to you is that, in that experience, I wasn't present with those
people. I was there in body, but I wasn't present with them.
Friday night it was quite different, because I know, I have experienced enough
now to know those are God's beloved children, and I could rejoice when the
candles of the Sabbath were lighted and when the bread was blessed and when
the wine was poured. It was such an enriching, warming, human experience. And
I could sing. And I could dance. And I could be there.
Because, you see, the Kingdom of God is about a love that is so incredible that it
far exceeds the measure of our lives, and God would have each one of us know
down in our depths that we are valued and loved and hallowed, whether we've
kicked up the traces or kept plowing the furrows. Whether we've been wild and
decadent, or righteous and resentful - God wants us home. God wants us to know
we're loved, and if you could believe that this morning, if you could feel that this
morning, it would be wonderful, because it's such a pity to pout at a party!
Reference:
Henri J. M. Nouwen. The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming.
Doubleday, 1992.
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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.
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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Interfaith worship
Sermons
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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1981-2014
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Event
Pentecost XIII
Series
Prodigal Son Parable
Scripture Text
Isaiah 40:27, Luke 15:28, 32
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Henri J. M. Nouwen. The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming, 1992
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KII-01_RA-0-19960825
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1996-08-25
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It's a Pity to Pout at the Party
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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
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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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Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on August 25, 1996 entitled "It's a Pity to Pout at the Party", as part of the series "Prodigal Son Parable", on the occasion of Pentecost XIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 40:27, Luke 15:28, 32.
Inclusive Love
Transforming Love
Unconditional Love
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No One Is Excluded
Romans 2:1; Luke 18:9
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
October 15, 1995
Transcription of the spoken sermon
I’m very proud of this congregation, and I’m very proud to be your pastor. In the
1970s we sought to find out what God was calling us to be, and we lived into that
statement of identity. We did it again in the 1980s, and we lived into that identity.
As the 1990s came around, we began once again to say, “What is the context of
this ministry and what does it mean to be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ and
the people of God in our day, in this place?”
We defined ourselves according to some very familiar themes— the wonder of
worship, the mystery and awe of God, and the grace of God that embraces all
people. Then we became concrete and specific in order to indicate to all of those
who might be interested that this was a safe place, that was inclusive, that did not
exclude anyone. We added the words “sexual orientation” to indicate that
inclusiveness, knowing this issue to be a volatile one in the Church and one that is
dividing our society at large. We as a congregation took the position that one’s
human sexuality is not something that one chooses, but is something that is
given. It is a complex subject and research continues, but the weight of evidence
would indicate that human sexuality is at the very core of our being, intrinsic to
our humanity, something that comes along with the very constitution that we
inherit and with which we are born.
We made our statement to indicate to all in this community and beyond that for
us sexual orientation was a given and was not a matter of morality. I’m proud to
be a pastor of a congregation that dares to print that. And I’m proud to be a
pastor of a congregation whose Consistory, when the time came to act on that
statement, without demure, said to the Metropolitan Community Church, “Of
course, you can come in and worship in this facility.” And I’m proud that when
we have been called into question by our local judicatory in the Reformed Church
of America, as has happened in the past four weeks and will continue following
this service today, this congregation listened to stories, reflected together about
the basis of our moral judgments and spoke together about this very critical issue
in the life of our society and the culture of our time. I’m proud of you.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
As your pastor and teacher, I suspect that I ought to tell you my story. I was
listening to National Public Radio this week from the University of Michigan, and
I learned that Wednesday on the Christian calendar is National Coming Out Day.
Well, maybe it wasn’t the Christian calendar. So I’m going to “come out” just to
tell you how I got where I am.
It was back in the 1970s. I had a colleague in ministry who had a married person
on his staff who had come out of the closet—divorcing his spouse and declaring
himself to be of homosexual orientation. That was a tough one for that
congregation. And my friend began furiously to study and to read. The
congregation studied the issue, and they were somewhat divided as to how to
respond. When my friend studied, I studied, too. I suppose that I was, at that
time, where most of us are at one time, knowing very little about this shadowy
thing called homosexuality and thinking that, at best, it must be an aberration of
nature and, at worst, a perversion.
But as I began to read and to encounter the reality, I began to get new insight into
that human condition. At that time I read a statement that was approved by the
synod of the Christian Reformed Church and printed in their synod minutes by
one of their most respected pastors and theologians. I was amazed at the
compassion in that statement. I had lunch with that gentleman and I said,
“Where did you get that insight?” He just said, “Pastoral experience.”
It was about that same time that I came to understand what he meant, because a
young man who was worshipping with us sent me a letter. The handwriting was
so poor that I had to believe it was because of the great degree of pain written out
in that scrawled hand. He told me that in his hometown in another state, there
had been a time when he was in the hospital and quite vulnerable and had
confessed to his minister that he was homosexual. The minister’s response was
condemning, and he charged the young man to change his life.
After I read his letter, I called the young man in and I looked at him and I loved
him. I felt his pain and I sensed his love of God and his desire to worship and to
be valued as a child of God. I loved him and when I came to know the man with
whom he was living in covenant relationship, I liked him, too. And when through
a job change they moved out of the state, Nancy and I visited and stayed with
them in their home on more than one occasion. To my great disappointment, I
found they were quite normal.
In 1978 and 1979 the Reformed Church in American recognized that
homosexuality was an issue that needed to be addressed. And so a statement was
written by the Theological Commission, given to the General Synod, and passed
along to the churches for guidelines and instruction. I was pleased with that
statement. It had a very positive feel, a pastoral concern, a recognition that one’s
sexuality is not a matter of choice, but a given orientation. The statement did say,
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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however, that one with such orientation must abstain from the expression of their
sexual nature.
I had breakfast last week with the man who wrote that statement. When I
reminded him, he smiled. He said it was a good statement in 1978, but it is, of
course, untenable today in light of what we know. But it did at least move the
church ahead.
I continued to reflect and to experience and to hear human stories. And then it
was a warm, sunny day on my deck in September, 1985. My houseguest was my
old Dutch professor, Hendrikus Berkhof.
I said, “Henk, I think that sexual orientation is a given.”
He said, “Ja.”
I said, “If it’s a given, then it’s part of Creation.”
He said, “Ja.”
I said, “If it is part of Creation, then it’s not a moral issue.”
He said, “Ja, you’re right.”
I said, “Thank you.” And that is where I’ve been for the last ten years. For me, it is
not an issue.
But you say to me, “What about the Bible?”
And of course, I need to address that question. First of all, let me say that what
I’m talking about and what this congregation is engaged in is not addressed in the
Bible. We are talking about homosexual orientation and relationship in faithful,
covenant love. And that isn’t even in the purview of the Scripture. It never came
up for discussion. The whole matter of orientation was not understood until
relatively recently with the research of the behavioral sciences. And so if you want
to know about two people of the same gender living in loving relationship and
faithful covenant, the Bible doesn’t speak to it. It does address the whole matter
of human sexuality generally, and it has a whole lot to say there.
Now we can’t talk about human sexuality in church. The Church has never been
able to handle it. We get awkward and uncomfortable. We are human beings and
our sexuality is at the core of our being. But we can’t talk about it in church. That
is something that we simply have to recognize and acknowledge.
But sometimes we have to talk about it. We are sexual beings. And when I say
that, I don’t mean simply genital sexuality. I mean in the very relating of
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Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
ourselves, one to another, man to woman, woman to woman, woman to man,
man to man—in all of our human relationships there is the manifestation of that
precious gift of creation with which we are endowed, the gift of human sexuality.
Unfortunately, one Greek word of love, eros, is translated into English erotic.
Therefore, the Church has always been nervous about acknowledging the
presence of eros in human love. But eros is one of three Greek words for love, all
of which are in God, and all of which are in us. And it is the eros in our nature
that moves us toward one another, that enables us to relate to another, that
brings us into intimate connection with another, that is the glue of human
community and human relationship. As human beings we are sexual beings, and
thereby we are beings able to relate one to another and move toward community.
It is also that eros within us that moves our soul, causes our soul to yearn toward
God. It is one of God’s precious gifts. And the Bible says, use it wisely.
The Bible has a great deal to say about human sexuality. But being the great gift
that it is, sexuality also presents great potential for disaster. And that’s the
reference in Romans 1. I chose that passage because it’s probably the one last
holdout for people who claim the Bible condemns homosexual practice. There are
only a half dozen or so references in the whole of the Bible. In the Hebrew
scriptures they belong to the holiness code which has all kinds of regulations and
rules that were part of the culture of that day and that have been transcended in
the grace of the Gospel. But Paul was speaking or writing to the Roman church
because he anticipated coming there to proclaim the Gospel. Now this series is
about the Gospel, the Good News. And Paul was as passionate a human being as
ever has lived on this earth when he thought about the Gospel and the grace of
God in Jesus Christ. And so he says, “I’m eager to preach at Rome. I’m not
ashamed of the Gospel. It is the power of God for human transformation.”
Human transformation? Is there a problem?
Paul says, “Can we talk?”
And then he goes on with that catalogue of sins, one paragraph of which has to do
with messed up human sexuality, unnatural relationships. Now there are all sorts
of interpretations of exactly that to which Paul pointed, but the Greco-Roman
culture of Paul’s day would make a “lady of the night” blush! And there were all
kinds of decadence which Paul could point out and then call the Christian
community to withdraw itself and claim a new identity.
As Paul makes those references, he is not being exhaustive in a catalogue of sins,
nor is he condemning homosexuality per se. Because the root of his argument in
that whole context is not that people are messed up sexually, but that people are
messed up sexually because of idolatry. And idolatry is the putting of something
else in the place of God in one’s life. Read those verses again when you get home,
if you can stand it. He says the problem is that we have exchanged the creature
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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for the Creator, God blest forever. Everything that’s wrong with humankind
stems, according to Paul in this passage, from the fact that God is not put on the
altar of life. And Paul says, when God is not the center of one’s being, all kinds of
things unravel. There are unnatural sexual relationships. But we can’t talk about
that in church.
We can talk about some of the other things he said. We don’t have much trouble
talking about gossiping and slandering and hardheartedness and arrogance and
maligning and that whole catalogue of sins. I finally just quit the reading and
quoted Romans 3:23: “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”
That’s all. He’s speaking to a Gentile group and a Jewish group. They were living
in tenuous relationship in that community. And during the first verses he
probably was referring more to Gentile depravity and in the second chapter to
Jewish depravity. About the time the Jewish people were nodding their heads in
approval of his condemnation of Gentile depravity, he said, “And you do the same
thing!” And finally it’s as though he’s using a sledge hammer to beat everybody
down so that he can announce the grace of God, which he eventually does. But his
conclusion is, “You Gentiles and you Jews, universally, no one excluded, all sin
and come short of the glory of God.”
Now he is ready to announce the grand good news of what God has done in Jesus
Christ to change the situation. And as I said, in Romans 5, he says where sin
abounded, grace did much more abound. And in Romans 11 where he’s trying to
figure out why his brothers and sisters according to the faith of Israel didn’t see
what he saw in Jesus, he said, “God has included all in disobedience that God
might have mercy on all,” because Paul didn’t believe for a minute that the
Creator of heaven and earth would ever be defeated in terms of any individual. It
didn’t matter what their history, what their record, what their pattern, what their
orientation—God would finally win. Grace would overcome. Mercy would prevail.
And so I take Romans 1, put it in context so that when somebody throws it up to
you saying the Bible condemns human homosexual activity, you say to them, “No.
The Bible condemns abusive practices and self-destructive behavior in human
sexuality, period.” The only thing the Bible calls us to is faithful covenant love, to
mutual respect and responsibility. And that cuts across the board. That isn’t for a
special group of people. No one is excluded in that call to responsible, faithful,
covenant love, and everyone has this precious gift which is always potentially
explosive, ready to send us into all kinds of trouble.
Now that’s what the Bible says. Be faithful. Live in covenant love. And give each
person dignity. That’s what the Bible speaks to clearly. And it also is very clear
that one of the worst offenses for any child of God is to act in moral superiority to
any other. Jesus said in the little story he told of the Publican and the Pharisee,
“It is not the parading of my virtues. It is the acknowledgment of my fallenness
and the pleas for mercy that justifies and brings me again into sync with God.”
© Grand Valley State University
�No One Is Excluded
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
As I said, dear friends, homosexuality for me is not an issue. It just isn’t an issue,
until I hear the story of one of my brothers or sisters who is hurt, who is excluded,
who is shamed. To me it is not an issue until I read of a young boy whose mother
continued to paste Bible verses on his door and on his mirror until he finally
jumped from a viaduct into the path of a semi, taking his life. To me it isn’t an
issue until a fine young gentleman leaves choir practice one Thursday evening
and is found on Sunday morning, having taken his life because he despaired of
God’s grace. Then I feel like I felt walking the Jewish ghetto in Prague—as I
always feel when I encounter the unspeakable horror of the Holocaust. Then my
heart churns within me as I realize what we are capable of as human persons
hurting other human persons. And then, frankly, when I hear those stories and
come to that realization, my eyes fill with tears because, dear friends, I don’t want
any person to be hurt. I want them to be embraced and valued. And with all my
heart, I want this community to be a place that any of God’s children can come,
knowing that the good news is that no one is excluded and all are valued and all
are invited to follow Jesus and to live in awe before the mystery of God, embraced
by God’s grace. With all my heart, that’s what I want us to be, and I believe you
do, too. And I am so very proud of you.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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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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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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Pentecost XIX
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Good News
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Romans 2:1, Luke 18:9
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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1995-10-15
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No One is Excluded
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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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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 October 15, 1995 entitled "No One is Excluded", as part of the series "Good News", on the occasion of Pentecost XIX, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Romans 2:1, Luke 18:9.
Community of Grace
Inclusive Love
Unconditional Love
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Text
The Cross and the Theology of Self-Esteem
Book Review
Self-Esteem: The New Reformation
By Robert H. Schuller,
(Word Books, 1983)
Reviewed by
Richard A. Rhem
Minister of Preaching and Theological Inquiry
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Published in
Perspectives
A Journal of Reformed Thought
March 1986, pp. 10-13
The way of Jesus in this world led to crucifixion. God raised him up. Thus we
have a gospel to proclaim, but only Jesus stands beyond the cross; our history is
lived out under the shadow of the cross; those who follow Jesus are called to
costly discipleship. An authentic biblical theology must embrace the cross and
bring to expression the dying to self and denial of self, symbolized in the cross of
Jesus and the cross Jesus calls us to bear.
Does the theology of self-esteem outlined by Robert H. Schuller in his book, SelfEsteem: The New Reformation, meet the above criterion? Is there place for the
cross in a theology of Self-Esteem?
Schuller sketched the appearance of Christian theology, viewed from the
perspective of self-esteem, which he contends is the deepest need of the human
person. The whole spectrum of biblical truth is seen in light of this need. The
traditional content of Reformed theology, which is Schuller’s heritage, is not
changed, but the perspective of fundamental human need as a starting point does
put that traditional content in a new light. That new light changes dramatically
the appropriate approach to people. This is not surprising since this is theological
understanding which arises from the pulpit, from the heart of an evangelist, and
the passion of an apologist for the faith.
Schuller’s conviction that the deepest need of the human person is the need for
self-esteem or a sense of self-worth is coupled with an equally critical conviction
— the dignity of the human person. The content of the gospel addresses the
© Grand Valley State University
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person’s deepest need; the approach to the person is determined by the infinite
value of the human person created in the image of God.
Robert Schuller has called for a daring and creative rethinking of biblical faith;
indeed, for a new reformation. He has written a call to action, drawing a first,
tentative outline of what a theology of self-esteem would look like. He invites the
church to think with him and to go beyond him. He is convinced that it is possible
to move beyond our Reformation theology, characterized by reaction, into a new
age characterized by expanded mission.
His own ministry of over thirty years has gained him a worldwide hearing. His
credentials are established. Now he has moved beyond concrete demonstration
into the area of theological reflection. He invites us to join him on the journey. To
do so we must be certain that the gospel of Jesus Christ centered in the
crucifixion and resurrection comes to full expression. Let us seek to discover from
his own writing whether this is the case.
The Human Person
Central to Schuller’s understanding of both the content and approach of the
gospel is the dignity of the human person. He claims:
Historically, the Church does not have a commendable success record in
its effort to purge sinful pride out of Christ’s followers without insulting,
demeaning, and bringing dishonor to God’s beautiful children.
The theological task to which Schuller calls the church is to discover
a full-orbed theological system beginning with and based on a solid central
core of religious truth—the dignity of man. And let us start with a theology
of salvation that addresses itself at the outset to man’s deepest need, the
“will to self worth.”
He is insistent at this point:
No theology of salvation, no theology of the Church, no theology of Christ,
no theology of sin and repentance and regeneration and sanctification and
discipleship, can be regarded as authentically Christian if it does not
begin with and continue to keep its focus on the right of every person to be
treated with honor, dignity, and respect. At the same time, any creed, any
biblical interpretation, and any systematic theology that assaults and
offends the self-esteem of persons is heretically failing to be truly
Christian....
Such forceful affirmations raise questions about Schuller’s view of human nature
and the human condition. Is he naive about the demonic potential of the human
© Grand Valley State University
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person? Is he not aware of the record of human history written in blood, laced
with violence? Is his a Pollyanna view of the human situation, a refusal to see the
darkness? That is scarcely the case; he does, however, make a critical distinction
between the nature of the human person and the actual human condition.
Human nature is marked by wonder and dignity, a reflection of the image of God
in which the person was created. The human condition is marked by a reactive
behavior which is not reflective of human nature but by a denial of that nature.
The rebellious actions of a person are reactions, not the expression of a person’s
true nature:
By nature we are fearful, not bad. Original sin is not a mean streak; it is a
non-trusting inclination. Label it a “negative self-image,” but do not say
that the central core of the human soul is wickedness. If this were so, then
truly, the human being is totally depraved. But positive Christianity does
not hold to human depravity, but to human inability. I am humanly unable
to correct my negative self-image until I encounter a life-changing
experience with nonjudgmental love bestowed upon me by a Person whom
I admire so much that to be unconditionally accepted by him is to be born
again.
Schuller uses the illustration of the golf ball. The outside dimpled surface gives
little hint of what is really inside. Rebellion is our surface appearance. Why the
rebellion? At the center of the golf ball is a hard rubber core. Around that core is a
maze of stretched rubber wrappings. The core represents a negative self-image or
an intrinsic lack of trust or simply fear. The stretched rubber wrappings are the
reactions of that fear-filled core—all the anxieties and fearful reactions of
negative emotions which surface as the rebellious exterior—angry, mean, violent.
To use Schuller’s analogy, emanating from the core of the person constituted of
fear, feelings of inferiority, and doubt are all forms of demonic behavior—enough
to create hell on earth, presenting to the world an angry face. What is wrong with
humankind is the ego run amuck, an ego threatened, insecure, desperately trying
to establish itself, prove itself, justify itself, make something of itself. The
consequence is sin and misery. One can hardly accuse Schuller of naiveté in
regard to the darkness of the human situation.
He is not content, however, simply to explain it in terms of wicked human nature.
He asks why the human person reacts as he does. He finds the biblical picture of
human sinfulness corroborated and explained by insights from the behavioral
sciences. He sees the ego with its destructive potential reacting negatively
because instead of trust which liberates for love, there is at the core a lack of trust
which issues in fear, love’s opposite.
What is needful? To be born again—changed from a negative to a positive selfimage through an experience of grace in an encounter with Jesus Christ.
© Grand Valley State University
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Beginning with a strong conviction that every person must be treated with
respect and accorded the dignity that is his because he is created in the image of
God, Schuller has probed beneath the surface of human sin and rebellion to
understand that one acts, not according to his nature, but reacts out of an
intrinsic fear and lack of trust. That being the case, the approach to people is all
important, and it is here that he is critical of the traditional approach of much of
the church.
One reason many Christians have behaved so badly in the past two
thousand years is because we have been taught from infancy to adulthood
“how sinful” and “how worthless” we are. The self-image will always
incarnate itself in action. A negative diagnosis will become a self-fulfilling
prophecy. The most difficult task for the Church to learn is how to deal
honestly with the subject of “negativity,” “sin,” and “evil” without doing
the cause of redemption more harm than good.
The Place of the Cross
The cross of Jesus Christ plays a central role in the theology of self-esteem, and
self-esteem is the perspective from which the cross is discussed. Therefore it may
appear that Schuller reinterprets the meaning of the atonement, but that simply
is not the case.
He claims, “The Cross is the central force in the kingdom of God.” He discusses
this claim under the double aspect of the cross of Christ and the cross of the
Christian.
Christ’s death for us witnesses to the infinite value we have in God’s sight.
Such a realization changes one inside. The core of fear and lack of trust,
which is the generating center of all negativity and rebellion, is
transformed into trust and security—a positive sense of worth, liberating
one in turn to extend love and forgiveness to others.
Were this all Schuller had to say about the cross, his critics would be right in
seeing in this interpretation the effect of the cross as “moral influence,” Jesus’
sacrifice inspiring us to emulate his example of self-giving love. To claim this as
the heart of Schuller’s understanding of the atonement, however, is simply
without warrant if we listen to his own statement. References to the atonement
are to be found throughout the text and it is always the substitutionary
atonement that comes to expression. For example:
It is not until we meet Jesus Christ, who is perfect and he offers to share
his robe of righteousness with us and his garment of grace is draped across
our shoulders that we can then walk with him into the presence of God.
He specifically discusses the crucifixion in another context. There he lists three
ways in which we can say we are saved “by the blood of Christ.”
© Grand Valley State University
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1. The Cross of Christ brings vitality to my dignity...I know the value of my
life when I see the price God paid on the Cross to save my soul....
2. The Cross of Christ makes atonement from guilt possible because it
adds integrity to the positive Gospel...In the Cross of Christ we see the
harsh reality of “negativity,” “demonic human behavior,” “collectivized
social evil in institutions....”
3. The Cross of Christ adds morality to divine forgiveness. ...Negativity
must pay its dues. Evil must be punished. So Christ has taken the rap “for
our irresponsible negative behavior.” He experienced hell—on the
cross...His suffering is credited to my personal account....So God is morally
able and obligated to offer forgiveness to any person who claims the credit
card of Calvary’s Cross to cover the guilt of his sinful behavior.
As stated above, Schuller will always speak of the cross, and any other doctrinal
truth for that matter, from the perspective of his central motif, self-esteem,
because he is convinced that self-esteem affords an effective key for interpreting
the gospel for our day. To say, however, that the atoning death of Jesus Christ for
the sin of the world is not at the heart of that gospel in his understanding is
simply not true.
The second aspect in which the cross is “the central force in the Kingdom of God”
he discusses as “the cross of the Christian.” This is the cross the person graced by
God through Jesus Christ voluntarily assumes as his response to that grace. What
does it mean to bear one’s cross? It means to respond positively to the dream God
puts in the heart of the redeemed.
Faithful to his Reformed heritage, Schuller is careful to stress that he is now
speaking of the response of a grateful heart for a salvation freely given, a
salvation fully accomplished and graciously applied. To experience grace is to
respond out of gratitude, and that response involves commitment. Its price is
self-denial—”The voluntary vicarious assumption of the Cross.”
When God’s dream is accepted, we must be prepared to pay a high price.
The dream that comes from God calls us to fulfill his will by taking an
active part in his kingdom. The price? A cross. The reward? A feeling of
having done something beautiful for God.
It is the cross we voluntarily accept and willingly bear that distinguishes a
dangerous egotism from healthy self-esteem. To pursue the dream and thereby to
commit oneself to the fulfilling of God’s will as God reveals it to one is to bear the
cross. There can be no success without a cross, but even here success must not be
understood as “always winning and never losing.”
Rather, success is to be defined as the gift of self- esteem that God gives us
as a reward for our sacrificial service in building self-esteem in others. Win
© Grand Valley State University
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or lose: If we follow God’s plan as faithfully as we can, we will feel good
about ourselves. That is success! We will then be able to live with ourselves
with dignity when we know deep down in our hearts that we did what God
wanted us to do.
Cross bearing is no minor theme for Schuller. Self- esteem restored in a person
through the encounter with Jesus Christ and the experience of God’s grace
becomes the dynamic of a fruitful life lived to the glory of God. If one has truly
been overwhelmed by grace, redeemed by Jesus Christ, then one knows with Paul
that he can do all things through Christ who strengthens him. For Schuller this is
what it means to be a possibility thinker.
To be saved is to know that Christ forgives me and I now dare to believe
that I am somebody and I can do something for Cod and for my fellow
human beings.
Schuller contends that forgiveness is not simply the negation of our guilt but “a
positive injection of saving and soaring faith!” Repentance follows the experience
of grace. Our thinking is turned around; a whole new world presents itself and we
are called to “caring, risky trust which promises the hope of glory...through noble,
human need-filling achievements.”
Cross bearing is costly. In many and various ways this fact comes to expression:
There is no crown without a cross. There is no success without sacrifice.
There is no resurrection without death...no accomplishment without
commitment, and no commitment without conflict. For there is no
commitment without involvement; there is no involvement without selfdenial; and there is no self-denial without personal sacrifice.
So what is the real Christ-call to self-denial? It is a willingness to be
involved in the spiritual and social solutions in society.
Self-denial is the daring commitment of your name, your reputation, your
integrity, your ego on the altar of God’s call to service. Mark this; it is
important: The greatest Cross any person can carry is to risk sacrificing his
or her ego by risking the embarrassment of a public failure in the pursuit
of some noble, honorable, God-inspired dream. That is positive self-denial.
It is denying your ego the selfish protection from a possible humiliating
failure that might occur if you tried to carryout the divine idea.
No one familiar with the ministry of Robert Schuller can doubt that he speaks
here out of his own experience. Jesus followed a dream to do the Father’s will and
he was crucified. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream and he was assassinated.
Robert Schuller has followed a dream, and only the naive would judge the
personal cost in terms of the grandeur of the Crystal Cathedral.
© Grand Valley State University
�Schuller, The Cross & the Theology of Self-Esteem, review by Richard A. Rhem Page 7
Cross-bearing in Schuller’s understanding is a call “to do something creative and
constructive.” He rejects the “crusader complex.” While recognizing that
sometimes a situation calls for frontal attack, confrontation, he is also aware that
such an approach is a dangerous style and should be the exception, not the rule,
because violence breeds violence. The difference between a positive, constructive
approach to society’s problems and the confrontational approach is the difference
between generating a social climate of polarization versus creating a
community where creative and mutually respectful dialogue can happen.
Finally, cross-bearing will move the Christian person into the whole spectrum of
human society and its concerns. Schuller will not choose between a gospel of
personal salvation or a social gospel. He proclaims a whole gospel that brings
personal salvation to individuals and addresses the larger societal issues as well.
It is Schuller’s conviction that the idea of self-esteem provides an integrating
factor which can show how the personal and social dimensions of theology can be
interconnected. Schuller thus sees the applicability of the gospel to the full
spectrum of human existence, personal and social. He sees the theology of the
Reformation as reactionary and the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries as the
“reactionary age.” With the conviction regarding the dignity of the human person
and the realization that the deepest human need and longing is for self-esteem,
he is convinced a Christian theology will be able to address the whole person and
the whole of society with its healing gospel ushering in a new age, the age of
mission.
As we reflect on our walk with Jesus Christ through another Lenten pilgrimage
we raise the question of the human condition and what address this time of selfdenial makes to it. In a critique of the idea that low self-esteem is at the heart of
the human dilemma, David G. Myers cites recent data from psychological
research which seems to indicate that there is rather a “self-serving bias” that
characterizes the human person. Myers contends,
It seems true that the most common error in people’s self-images is not
unrealistically low self-esteem, but rather a self-serving bias; not an
inferiority complex, but a superiority complex. In any satisfactory theory
or theology of self-esteem, these two truths must somehow coexist [The
Christian Century, December 1, 1982, pp. 1226-1230).
If Myers is correct, it would not be the first time that truth proved dialectical. We
ought not immediately be forced to choose between Schuller and Myers. Rather,
it would seem that each has hold of an important and critical insight. In all of the
recent research data referred to by Myers we are dealing with the human person
in action—acting man or woman in concrete, existential situations. In our
analysis of Schuller’s position on the human person we saw that there is no dark
shadow, no demonic dimension of human behavior that he denies. His
© Grand Valley State University
�Schuller, The Cross & the Theology of Self-Esteem, review by Richard A. Rhem Page 8
contention regarding the fundamental need of every person for self-esteem says
nothing about concrete human behavior. What he does insist is that that behavior
is a manifestation, not of human nature as human nature, but rather of human
nature as distorted, wrenched loose from its native soil of resting in God. Once
that separation of the person from God occurs, all hell breaks loose, literally, but
it is reaction, not simple action as a reflection of nature.
Thus the recent research data only confirms what we in the church have always
known from Scripture about ourselves: our lives are marked by rebellion, pride,
and self-love in the sense of selfishness.
It is precisely here that Schuller—the pastor and communicator of the gospel —
has so much to teach us. The diagnosis of the situation is dismal; will we be
content simply to declare that dark truth? Can we be content to reinforce what
our hearers already really know but which, if thrown in their faces, will only
reinforce them in their already entrenched rebellion by which they are trying to
deny the truth?
Schuller points us to an alternative which is both theologically and
psychologically sound. There is no need to recite the darkness of the person’s
reactive behavior of which he or she is quite aware; what is needful is to show
that through the creative action and intention of God, he or she is something
quite other than the behavior would seem to indicate. Through an appeal to what
he is, not what he does, one may just succeed in breaking through to the person
because the approach will have been motivated by love, executed with grace, and
grounded in truth. Defenses tumble; the cornered is known, feels no need to rush
to justify himself, senses acceptance, and learns of the reality of forgiveness. Then
it is that deep repentance occurs. It is not a prelude to salvation but a fruit of the
experience of grace. It is in the presence of Jesus Christ in whose face is seen the
good and gracious God that one knows unconditional love and acceptance;
therefore it is in that presence that one dares see oneself deeply and that one
“dies” to those old patterns of reactive behavior that bound him in chains of
selfish existence and created havoc in his human relationships and, most
seriously, alienated him from God.
If the church would really hear Robert Schuller, there would be renewal and
revitalization of major proportions. One of my most respected teachers, Professor
D. Ivan Dykstra, wrote in personal correspondence about Schuller’s basic premise
regarding the dignity of the human person and the basic need for self-worth.
Commenting on Schuller’s book, Self-Esteem:... he judges
it was Bob Schuller in search of a theology, or, better, in search of a Bible.
And this is exactly the right order and the only proper order, despite our
wish and our pretense that we find our Bibles first and then go on from
there. All reformations, vitalizations of the faith, happen by our first
responding to an instinct of authenticity and then going on to re-read our
© Grand Valley State University
�Schuller, The Cross & the Theology of Self-Esteem, review by Richard A. Rhem Page 9
Bibles accordingly or creating our theologies....The great prophets did it
that way, Jesus did, Luther, and so on down the line.
Dykstra then goes on to reflect on his own philosophical work which led him to
an examination of Christian beliefs through use of linguistic analysis. He raises
the question, are our Christian beliefs Christian? His conclusion is
That religious terms, including Christian ones, begin always in the form of
some great, situationally defined, instinctive authenticities. After the first
flush of excitement...there is a time of intellectual and institutional
structuring of the belief. There is a virtually complete discontinuity of
meaning between the universe of discourse of the original intuition and
the institutionalized universe of discourse into which we move the original
terms. In the process the whole original meaning is simply buried. In
Christian contexts, the over-all name for that structuring is
“ecclesiasticizing.” And everything, every dominating concept in the
ecclesiastico-theological structure, loses the authentic Biblical meaning:
faith, sin, Jesus, inspiration, scripture, resurrection have no longer any
discernible connection with the initial biblical intent. Until some
courageous soul, (like Luther, as one example) has, and has the courage to
act on, a new authentic instinct. To attack the ecclesiastical
inauthenticities one does not need to attack the Bible on which they base
themselves; one needs only to “out-Bible” the bibliolaters. To read the
Bible via the instincts is not to invent a new Bible; it is to recover it.
Dykstra suggests that Schuller’s authentic instinctual grasp of a deep biblical
truth has ramifications for the whole theological system; that perhaps Schuller’s
unquestioned Reformed orthodoxy is itself too confined a vehicle to contain the
ferment of his own insight. Such is certainly the case, but Schuller did not write
this slender volume as the complete and final word. He writes a first word
pleading with others to join the question for a more adequate way to bring to
expression his own authentic insight confirmed by the worldwide hearing he has
gained.
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
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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.
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
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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References
Robert H. Schuller. Self-Esteem: The New Reformation, 1983.
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RA-4-19860302
Date
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1986-03-02
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Text
Title
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The Cross and the Theology of Self-Esteem a review of
Publisher
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Perspectives: A Journal of Reformed Thought
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Richard A. Rhem
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eng
Description
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Book Review created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on March 2, 1986 entitled "The Cross and the Theology of Self-Esteem a review of", on the book Self-Esteem, written by Robert H. Schuller, it appeared in Perspectives, March, 1986, pp. 10-13. Tags: Way of Jesus, Theology, Unconditional Love, Human Nature, Christian, Self-Esteem, Forgiveness. Scripture references: Robert H. Schuller. Self-Esteem: The New Reformation, 1983. .
Format
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application/pdf
Christian
Forgiveness
Human Nature
Self-Esteem
Theology
Unconditional Love
Way of Jesus
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/34f3161a574651367bd33a00cbdf3006.pdf
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
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/86cd07d8d50961092450bcdb1cc042c0.mp3
f7feec19bd2eec89238135a0fe994a5e
Dublin Core
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Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
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English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
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
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-0-19930509
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
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
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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/a70a19c8032dc56d2025f16ea3cb1b92.pdf
37ad02a018d808b5da4ba77c17392f9f
PDF Text
Text
Faith-Full Generations
Text: Psalm 78:5-7; II Timothy 1:5
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Pentecost XV, September 20, 1992
Transcription of the spoken sermon
… which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children; that the next generation
might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so
that they should set their hope in God … Psalm 78:5-7
I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois
and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you. II Timothy 1:5
Well, there’s a new Miss America, I think. I was busy last night and didn’t check
in but it was supposed to happen. And if that was supposed to happen, then it
must be a new church year and time to get church school started. It’s time for that
annual sermon on engaging in the life of the community of faith. It’s time for that
annual pep rally.
One of the things that I don’t want to do, ever, is to make the pulpit a place for a
pep rally and the sermon a promotional piece. It’s too important a time, an
encounter, to let it become simply a time for banner waving. As I was reflecting
on this morning in our life, I know that we are at that point again when the
“menu” is before you. The smorgasbord is being spread. But, rather than slipping
into the temptation, into which the Church so often slips, of becoming an
institution characterized by the tyranny of “the ought, the must and the should”
– It is so easy to talk about all of the wonderful things that are out there, to say
that you “ought to do this, you really should do that, and you simply must do
something else,” I wonder if long-time Christian people generally bend their
backs just a little bit as they enter the sanctuary, waiting for one more burden to
be laid on them – this morning let me put a little different twist on this day and
say, “I celebrate you. I am grateful for you as a congregation. I’m thankful that
you show up.”
Didn’t the now famous Woody Allen say that 90% of success in life is just
showing up? Well, I’m glad that you show up. And you keep coming back. And in
the diversity and the multiplicity of the offerings of the life of this community you
will be there – some of you here, some of you there, as this community moves
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Richard A. Rhem
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into full gear and I am thankful for you. You are a marvelous congregation, and I
say that in all sincerity. I don’t really need to cajole you, to coerce you, to
persuade you. I can celebrate you! I think that is a thing that has characterized
Christ Community, and at least in part is what has made this an alternative to
church as usual. You show up. You find that which strikes fire in your soul and
meets the need of your heart, and together we are a community of faith. I’m really
grateful for that. A community of faith. A community. There’s a connectedness
here. Brothers and sisters. Pilgrims in passage. Together. We’re not alone. We’re
not in isolation. We move together toward a shared vision and hope. We support
one another, and as we move together we are able to draw strength and
encouragement from one another. We are a community. I’m very grateful to be a
part of this community, this community of faith, a common faith, a shared
confidence that God is, that God is good, that God is gracious. We keep coming
back here together to have that reinforced in our lives, to let it wash over us once
again. We live together in that faith, in the God who will never abandon us. I
celebrate you.
A person who lives a long distance from here and is on our mailing list called me
last night and congratulated me. He had opened his mail and saw “Joining God’s
Agenda,” and he said, “Dick you are doing a wonderful job.” And I had to say, “I
have surrounded myself with some wonderful people.” There is a level of
creativity and commitment here that is second to none. Colette said to me this
week (in the intensity of getting ready for this morning, you’d have to be around
here to sense that intensity, the hours day in and day out getting ready for today),
“I am surrounded by strong individuals and there is not a follower among them.”
You know what it is to be a leader when you don’t have any followers, but a whole
host of leaders? Have you ever tried to lead leaders? Well, it’s challenging, and it’s
exhilarating. That’s what you are. You are a gifted, creative, committed, talented
group of people, and I am grateful for this community and for the privilege that is
mine to be in a position of leadership in the midst of you who are so bright and
engaged and involved, and strong in your own right. It is a wonderful thing.
In the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, which is one of the great churches of
the land (I’ve gone there of late when I have been in New York City because of an
outstanding preacher, Dr. Morris Boyd, who has been there about five years), I
became aware in the last year of some tension that was growing between Dr.
Boyd and the leadership of the congregation through my friend, Ernie Campbell,
who was close to the situation and had gotten some inside sense of what was
going on there. Unfortunately, in the spring of this year, Dr. Boyd resigned. Last
Sunday the Interim Pastor was there for the first time in this fine congregation.
The announcement was made in the bulletin that there was a copy of the Mission
Statement that had just been prepared for those who would like to avail
themselves of it. So following the service I made my way to the reception desk
and asked for one as though I was interested as a member of that congregation.
But really I wanted to take it home, because for the last couple of years we’ve
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been working on a mission statement, and I thought it would be good to see what
this fine congregation has come up with. Quite a document. I thought I’d read it
to you this morning! (Laughter as he holds up that document!) But at least this
might be important to hear. There will probably never be agreement about the
circumstances that led to Dr. Boyd’s resignation and early departure, but all agree
that this was a wrenching experience for the entire congregation, “leaving deep
wounds and division which cry out for the reconciling presence of Christ our
Lord.”
And then a paragraph about the different priorities and envisions of action in the
congregation, “as the church turns to the task of seeking a new pastor, it must do
so with the sobriety and grace of a congregation that has learned that the bonds
of trust and mutual connectedness are fragile. That words spoken carelessly or in
anger cannot be withdrawn, but can be forgiven. That the certainty in the
rightness of one’s own position does not exclude mutual respect. That love and
commitment are acts of will rather than fleeting emotions. The congregation
must now have the strength to see through its anger and conflict as it recognizes
that people of good will can differ yet join together in a common ministry.” That’s
quite a candid statement.
I apologize to the Session of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church for hanging
out their dirty laundry in public. It is a great church, and it has a great tradition.
It has just experienced some very painful brokenness. Their statement says to me,
number one, I’m very lucky. Number two: let’s never take this community and
our relationship with each other for granted. You are a marvelous congregation.
Gifted. Creative. Full of leadership. I am constantly amazed when someone else
emerges out of the woodwork, of whom I was not aware, bringing tremendous
gifts to the community and to our life together. It is a delight. I celebrate you.
Today I delight in you. I give thanks for you. And we must never presume upon
you or take you for granted. Because as the report says, those bonds of
connectedness are fragile and they need always to be nurtured as we live together
in this community of faith.
But, what are we all about? Well, we are all about “telling a story with a
meaning.” That’s the translation of Psalm 78, verse 2. That’s the New English
Translation. In the version that I read a moment ago it says, “I will speak in a
parable.” The Hebrew word speaks of parable or proverb, but the New English
Translation I love. The Psalmist says, “I will tell a story with a meaning,” and
that’s really what we are about. We keep telling the story and listening for the
nuances of its meaning, meanings that continue to deepen and to take on new
color as we move through the pilgrimage of life. We are about “telling a story with
a meaning.” That’s what we are engaged in right now. Part of a living tradition of
faith that stretches back into Israel, finds centrality in Jesus Christ and has
moved on through two thousand years of Christian history. We are a people, a
community of faith, who live out of that story, out of that faith vision. And we
keep telling that story.
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I keep connecting what I do on Sunday morning with this storybook. Our
children left us, but they have left us in order to hear stories, Bible stories, stories
that have a meaning. A meaning that says God is, that God has created all things,
that God is good and full of grace, that God will never abandon them because God
is unconditional love. That’s what we need constantly to be telling. We tell the
stories because they have a meaning and the meaning bespeaks Grace and Love
in all of the respective stories of this story of God’s love and grace. In order that
as a community of God’s people we may baptize our children here with
confidence, and that we may bury our dead here with confidence because there
has been laid in the fabric of our lives a deep fundamental trust.
Fundamental trust. That’s a kind of a catchword, a slogan, the jargon which the
leaders of child and human development have coined to express a posture of life.
Not trust in this and that and another thing, but just trust. And we know from
child development studies that the most critical thing we can do for the infant is
to secure the infant in trust. To surround the infant with the warmth and stability
and security that translates in their early days as the foundation on which they
can rest. We know from concrete studies that it is so critical that a child learns to
trust. Not, again, in terms of trusting that this is true and that is true, and that is
true, but being able to trust. There are people and they are human tragedies who
have never been able to trust, to let go, to take their hands off the controls, to
entrust themselves to another. One nurtured in a safe environment learns to
trust, and it is fundamental trust that we are seeking to instill in our children, our
adolescents.
The Psalmist understood clearly that this was Israel’s way. This is why the Jewish
people are still a people four thousand years later, because they have continued to
tell the story that had a meaning, the meaning of which was God, the creator of
all, is good. That reality can be trusted. God will never abandon God’s children.
And so the Psalmist in Psalm 78 recites the history of God’s people, because it is
in their concrete history that Israel experienced God with them, for them. He says
in the 5th verse, “God established a decree in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel
which he commanded our ancestry to teach their children that the next
generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and rise up and tell them
to their children so that they should set their hope in God.”
Isn’t that a marvelous text? Isn’t that what we are about? Isn’t that why we go
through all of the effort to nurture our children? That, finally, with us they may
set their hope in God. But it isn’t always the children. You keep coming back too.
You’ve heard so many sermons I couldn’t think up a new one for you. And I’ve
been here so long I couldn’t possibly have a new thought. But we don’t come here
to get more information. We don’t come here in order to know more things.
One of the finest books on preaching that I know of, by a Dutch scholar, speaks
about fundamental trust. He points out that preaching really is that weekly
occasion in which the people come to be renewed in their fundamental trust. Just
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to have it wash over us again. You don’t come here really week after week to gain
some new insight, some new piece of knowledge. You come here again to be
together in the presence of God, and in hymns and prayers and liturgy, and
anthems and sound of the organ, and the Word of preaching. Simply to know
again in your depths God is. God is good. God is full of grace, and God will never
abandon God’s children. God will finally bring us home. Why, my goodness folks,
if in your depths that is your confidence, then there is nothing you cannot
negotiate in the passages of life.
We in the church often know too many things. We get too excited about matters
of doctrine or theological correctness. That’s not what it’s all about. We know too
much. We know far more than we ought to bother our heads about. What it’s
about is Trust - in God - the baptismal font - the Lord’s Table – the candle lighted
for our final passage. We are kept in the grip of love by the gracious God who will
bring us home.
That’s what happened to Timothy. Paul writes to his child in the faith, longing to
see him, and then encourages Timothy, reminding him that he stands in the third
generation of faith-full living: the faith of his grandmother Lois and his mother
Eunice. Paul says, “the faith that lives in you too, Timothy, I am sure.” It wasn’t
exactly an ideal situation: Lois and Eunice; I wonder where Timothy’s father was?
Maybe he was dead. Maybe he abandoned them. One thing sure, he was alive
when Timothy was born because Timothy, the child of a Jewish mother and a
Jewish grandmother, was never circumcised. I’ll bet Lois and Eunice had some
words. I’ll bet Lois was really upset with Eunice for falling in love with a Gentile.
I’ll bet they really scrapped. I’ll bet you could have cut the tension with a fork. But
somehow or other they got together, grandmother and mother. Poor Timothy
didn’t have a chance. They nurtured him in the faith to the point at which, when
Paul came telling the Good News of God in Jesus Christ, Timothy was ready to
take on the mantle of ministry himself. Paul says to him, “Timothy, my son, you
have not been baptized with the spirit of timidity and fear, but of power and love
and self-discipline.” And that’s really what I would pray for all of you.
So often religion appeals to the weakness in us. I would hope at Christ
Community we might always appeal to your strength, to the center of your being.
To call you in your strength, in your giftedness, in your creativity to serve God
with all your heart, to follow your bliss, to do that which strikes fire in your soul to be alive. There’s no party line at Christ Community. Once we have laid that
foundation of fundamental trust that God is - that God is Good - that God is full
of Grace - that God will never abandon us -that God will bring us home…once
we’ve affirmed that and constantly renew that, well, you’re on your own. You’re
not sheep. You have not a spirit of timidity and fear, but a spirit of love and selfdiscipline.
I don’t ever want to hear you say, “Well, at Christ Community we don’t believe
that, or at Christ Community we believe that. Christ Community has no party
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line. I call you to maturity. To be able to stand on your own two feet. To be able to
say, “This I believe.” To stand in your own concrete truth, mature in faith.
I am not going to urge you to grow. What’s alive grows! And our pilgrimage takes
us through so many different experiences - sometimes it’s on the mountaintop
and sometimes it’s in the darkness of the deepest valley but, in it all, where we are
rooted and grounded in the good and gracious God, we will be able to negotiate
the passages. Not alone, but finally being able to say, “This is who I am. This is
what I believe, and my belief is being translated into my life.”
And we are here to help you to come to that kind of wholeness and maturity and
strength and power and love so that finally, whether you are on the left end of the
spectrum or the right end of the spectrum, or whether you waffle in the middle
somewhere, it doesn’t matter. Whether you dot your i’s and cross your t’s, or
whether you spice life with a little heresy, I don’t care. All I want you to be able to
do finally is to be able to say with a Paul, “I know in whom I have believed, and I
am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to him against
that day.” To say with sobriety and grace, and with power and strength. To be
able to say, “I know, I am persuaded, I am alright.” That’s what we are all about. I
celebrate you. You are a great community of people. I thank God for you.
© 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
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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1981-2014
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Event
Pentecost XV
Scripture Text
Psalm 78: 5-7, II Timothy 1:5
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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1992-09-20
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Faith-Full Generations
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Richard A. Rhem
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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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An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on September 20, 1992 entitled "Faith-Full Generations", on the occasion of Pentecost XV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Psalm 78: 5-7, II Timothy 1:5.
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application/pdf
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Community of Faith
Meaning
Nature of Faith
Unconditional Love
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d48209a6f8683ca668ed43fa9b6e58a7.mp3
4fd6f1ebc5df1bbdefdecc63a28d8878
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/0ba5393081407615a0b05709aee3b03a.pdf
a84af30dbf60d8a6c40d08e312ddb825
PDF Text
Text
All is Grace
From the series: Images of God in the Stories of Jesus
Text: Psalm 130:3-4; Luke 18:13-14
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Pentecost XIII, September 6, 1992
Transcription of the spoken sermon
If you, O Lord, should mark inequities, Lord, who could stand?
But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered. Psalm 130:3-4
God, be merciful to me, a sinner! I tell you this man went down to his hour justified …
All who humble themselves will be exalted. Luke 18:13-14
I had an interesting week this past week. I received a sweatshirt with a cartoon on
the front that had a dog, a Dalmatian, preaching, saying “Bad, Bad, Dog.” The
dogs (Dalmatians) were lined in the pews and underneath it said, “Hell, Fire and
Dalmatians.” (Laughter) I got a good laugh out of that and some warmth as well!
I received some interesting letters, and notes too, very nice ones about last week’s
sermon. Thank you for those. I received a pew card too. It raised a question about
the mercy of God about which I spoke. The question was about the mercy of God
in regard, for example, to a Hitler or to a Saddam Hussein (to update it a little
bit). That question always arises when you talk about mercy in God, or sin in us. I
would have thought perhaps that the paragraph in the bulletin by Carlyle Marney
might have forestalled such a question. If you remember, he said:
Man is the most dangerous and savage of the beasts: His bite is poisonous;
his hand is a club; his foot is a weapon; knives, clubs, spears are projectiles
to bear his hostility. Nothing in nature is so well equipped for hating or
hurting. Confuse him and he may lash out at everything. Crowd him and
he kills, robs, and destroys, for his crime rate increases in proportion to his
crowding. Deprive him and he retaliates. Impoverish him and he burns
villas in the night. Enslave him and he revolts. Pamper him and he may
poison you. Hire him and he may hate both you and the work. Love him
too possessively and he is never weaned. Deny him too early and he never
learns to love. Put him in cities and all his animal nature comes out with
perversions of every good thing. For greed, acquisitiveness, violence were
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so long his tools for jungle survival, that it is only by the hardest [effort]
that these can be laid aside as weapons of his continued survival.
Now, if we worry about a Hitler or a Saddam Hussein, our first problem is that we
haven’t scratched ourselves - you see? Because, if you scratch yourself a little bit,
you find most of the stuff there that is operative in Saddam Hussein. That’s a
tough word to hear. But it’s true. Did you happen to catch 20 Minutes last week?
They aired one of the most gripping segments I have ever seen. A Jewish
psychiatrist, 50 years after the Holocaust and the horror of that Nazi Death
March of the Jewish people, brought the children of some of Hitler’s henchmen
together to talk for the first time since the end of the war. The children of the Nazi
leaders, people now in their 60s, 70s were gathered to speak of their feelings and
memories – the son, for example, of Martin Boermann and some other persons
whose names I didn’t recognize. It was very moving. Martin Boermann’s son was
I think a lad of 8 or 9, or maybe 14, when he had to come to terms with the fact
that his father was a monster. Well, not a monster, but a human being who could
sing hymns as well as organize the Death Camps. The son of Boermann converted
to the Catholic faith and became a priest. I suppose he is living out his life as an
atonement. There was a woman, I don’t know her name, who was moved to weep
as she spoke of her fear that there might be something in her own genetic makeup that would emerge of the awful monstrousness that emerged in her father.
Here they were 40-50 years later, human beings like you and me, sensitive
human beings, feeling all the weight of that past.
It is a tough word to receive that God has mercy even for the Hitler’s and Saddam
Hussein’s. Just ask Jonah. Saddam Hussein is not the only person who has
persecuted God’s people. There was the King of Nineveh, that gravely wicked city!
Next to Nineveh, New York City is the jolly Big Apple. God saw the wickedness in
Nineveh. Don’t get me wrong. It is not that there are not terrible, evil deeds
perpetrated by the likes of us and by our brothers and sisters. God doesn’t like it.
So sometimes God sends a preacher. He said to Jonah, “Things are rotten in
Nineveh - go preach. Tell them to repent. Tell them that I, the Judge of all the
earth, demand that they turn around in their tracks.”
Nineveh was east. Jonah hopped a boat west. He didn’t want any of that
preaching to Nineveh, because Nineveh was the enemy. The King of Nineveh the
capital of Assyria, the oppressor of Israel, the decimator of the North Kingdom,
the enemy, the adversary on the horizon. Let Nineveh go to hell! Nineveh
conjuring up judgment for itself. “Ah-h-h, I can hardly wait,” says Jonah. God
says, “Go preach to Nineveh.” Jonah says, “No way. I know you. I’ll preach.
They’ll heed. They’ll repent, and you will forgive. No way!”
So off to Tarshish he goes, in the direction of Spain. A little Mediterranean cruise,
if you please. But, of course, the Lord God was not to be outfoxed by the likes of
Jonah, and so God blew (phew) a little bit of wind. The sea turned. A shipwreck
was imminent. All the sailors began to pray to their gods. The captain found
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Jonah down in the hold of the ship asleep, drugged on his own anger and
hostility. He said, “Hey man, get up and pray, if ever you’ve prayed. The situation
is desperate!” And then they cast lots to see who might be the cause of this storm,
and sure enough it fell to Jonah and Jonah said, “Yup, it’s me. It’s me. I am
running from God.” And they said, “What should we do?” And he said, “Toss me
over.” And they did. And the sea calmed - and all was fine. Jonah, going down
into the depths, got swallowed in the belly of a whale. And there, amidst the
digestion juices of the big fish, he had a little time to contemplate the call of God.
Then God, feeling perhaps the prophet had finally gotten the point, God tickled
the belly of the fish and he burped Jonah up on dry land, safe and sound, and
said, “Would you like to go to Nineveh?” (Laughter)
And to Nineveh he went. And he preached. And it was just as he said. They
heeded. They repented. God forgave. And Jonah was so angry. God said, “Do you
do well to be angry, Jonah?” “Yes, I do well! I knew what would happen. You are
so soft. You are just a teddy bear. Just let people give a little inkling that they are
turning to you, and you just open up your arms. Yes. And it makes me very
angry!”
So he went off and found the Pacific Palisades hotel, which overlooked the city.
He thought he would see what was going to happen. Perched on a hillside, he
built himself a little booth for shelter (it was a hot climate). God looked down and
said, “Plant. Grow-big-fast.” The plant towered over the booth with shade. Jonah
was happy as a lark. He thought he was poolside. The next morning God says,
“Worm, eat the plant.” The plant dies. The sun beats down, mercilessly. Jonah
can hardly stand it. God says, “Good morning Jonah. You’re angry. Do you do
well to be angry?” “Yes, I’m angry!” says Jonah. God replies, “Jonah, you’re angry
because a plant that you didn’t plant, didn’t nurture, grew up overnight and
withered in a night. Jonah, how do you think I feel about the hundred and twenty
thousand people in Nineveh, to say nothing of the cattle?”
Now the parable of Jonah was told in the Post Exilic period after Judah came
back from Babylon, came back from its exile experience. It was during this time
that the Pharisaic Movement began - the separated ones who began to gather
their skirts around them in righteousness. They punctiliously followed the law,
the rituals, said their prayers, did everything that they were supposed to do as
recorded in the prayer of the Pharisee of last week’s sermon. The righteous ones.
The good ones. The serious ones. And as that society developed in a kind of
narrow meanness of heart and spirit, somebody told the parable of Jonah. They
told it in order to remind Israel, in its exclusiveness and narrowness, its
nationalism which translated also into a kind of particularism of religion - God is
bigger than that. God has mercy on all people. But Pharisaical particularism had
become a dominant view in Jesus’ day, so it was to that group Jesus had to
constantly defend himself. It was to that group that he had to vindicate the
Gospel he proclaimed, as well as the behavior of his life. It was to the murmurers
and the grumblers that Jesus had to constantly defend the fact that he received
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all sorts of people. In his home synagogue in Nazareth he gave an inaugural
sermon. They almost killed him because he indicated that the Grace of God was
broader than the limits of Judaism.
Jesus reflects that word of God, as shown in the parable of Jonah. It is in that
context that he tells a story of a man who owned a vineyard, who went at 6 o’clock
in the morning to the labor union office to find who was eligible for the day. He
negotiated a contract with a bunch of workers and sent them out into the field.
Twelve hours a denarius. “Is it a deal?” “It’s a deal.” Such a deal! Full day’s work full day’s pay. Honest wage for honest work. Everything fair and square. At about
9 o’clock in the morning on the way to coffee he saw a few more standing idle
there and he said, “What are you guys doing?” And they said, “Well, we’re
available.” “Well,” he said, “get into the field and I’ll make it right with you.” No
written contract negotiation, no wage established. Just “I’ll do right by you.” At 12
o’clock the same thing. At 3 o’clock the same thing. At about 5 o’clock he was
making his last pass and he saw a few more still standing there and he said,
“Where have you guys been?” They said, “Well, the time before when you came
we were in the ‘john’.” (Laughter) They didn’t say that, but they probably were,
because they really didn’t want to work, they wanted to be able to go home to
their wife and say, “There was no work today.” He said, “Get into the field.”
So they worked for an hour and, when it came time to dole out the pay for the
day, those who worked for an hour got a full day’s wage, and so did those who
came at 3 o’clock, 12 o’clock, 9 o’clock and 6 o’clock. And those who were hired at
6 am and had worked a whole day and had worked under the sweat of the
noontime heat, when they got the same wage as those who came at 5 pm, they
were angry. Wouldn’t you have been angry? Be honest now, wouldn’t you have
been angry? Every normal human instinct in you should rise up and say, “That’s
not fair. That’s not just.” And that’s true. The owner of the vineyard said, “Look.
Did we negotiate? Have I lived up to the contract? “Well, yes but. . .” “Am I not
able to do what I wish with what is mine? Do you begrudge me my generosity?
The anger that you are feeling is the anger that Jonah felt when wicked Nineveh
repented and found Grace.”
What is the image of God in this story of Jesus? Let me suggest this to you, that
God is a promiscuous Lover. Do you know the word promiscuous? I didn’t say are
you? I said do you know the word? (You should have laughed a little bit!)
(Laughter) The word is usually identified with those of somewhat less than moral
scruples. Do you know what the word means? Its root is in Latin. Miscere which
is to mix or mingle. Promiscuous is to mix or mingle indiscriminately. That was
the charge against the vineyard owner. That’s what makes people angry about
God. God does not discriminate. God is indiscriminate. In the bestowal of God’s
gifts, God’s Mercy, God’s Love, God’s Grace flows indiscriminately, mixing and
mingling, with those who have some claim upon it, and those who have no claim
upon it. God does not distinguish in the way we do, between those who are
© Grand Valley State University
�All is Grace
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
worthy and worthless. Valuable and valueless. Good and evil. Black and white.
With God there aren’t good guys and bad guys. God is promiscuous.
And this made a Jonah angry. It made the religious leaders in Jesus’ day angry.
And it still makes the church today angry.
Listen to an interesting twist on the story told by Jesus. This is a true story
recorded in the Jerusalem Talmud in about the year 350 A.D. Thus it is later than
Jesus’ story, and so probably either working off the same story that perhaps had
general circulation, or maybe an actual twisting of the same story of the vineyard
owner.
A rabbi, aged twenty-eight, died. He died on the day that his son was born. He
was a very worthy rabbi. And so the rabbi’s colleagues gathered for his funeral.
One of his colleagues gave the funeral oration, in which he told this similar story.
Similar but with a twist. He said there was a householder who went out and
engaged laborers for the day. As he observed their labor he saw one man that was
tremendously industrious, competent, capable and fruitful. And after two hours
of work, he went to that man and he said, “Come with me. Let us walk and talk
today.” And so for the rest of the day they carried on conversation, walking and
enjoying one another. It came the end of the day and the time for the pay, and the
man who had walked with the master all day long after working only two hours
got the same pay as those who labored all day. Those who had labored said, “Why
should he get a full day’s pay, he only worked two hours?” And the householder
said, “Because he did more in two hours than the rest of you did all day long.” In
the funeral oration the rabbi said, “God took our young brother early because he
was more fruitful in his short life than many gray-haired scholars who live a
whole lifetime.”
Now do you catch the twist? Do you see how the rabbi turned Jesus’ story on its
head? In Jesus’ story the ones who went to work at 5 o’clock received a full day’s
wage. And there was absolutely no justification for it. It shattered all conception
of reason and justice and fairness. When the rabbi told the story about his
brother, he had said, “Maybe God took him young, but it was because he was so
worthy.”
There are only two options, two worlds described in those two stories. In Jesus’
story, it is a world of promiscuous love, grace and mercy on behalf of a God who
does not seek to justify such promiscuous ways. In the rabbi’s story there is
perfect justification because the reward follows the merit. In the story of Jesus,
God is a God of promiscuous mercy, grace and love who refuses to justify these
ways, who simply says to those who complain, to those who are angry, “Do you
begrudge my generosity?” And if we would be honest we would say, “Yes. Yes,
God we begrudge your generosity. We don’t like that about you, and we don’t like
a world that is run that way.”
© Grand Valley State University
�All is Grace
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
Let me twist the knife one more time. Jesus told the story to vindicate the Gospel
over against the Pharisees, the Jewish leaders of the day. But, by the time the
Gospel of Matthew was written, we’ve moved two or three decades down the line,
and those Gospel writers wrote and selected their stories for a reason. What they
wanted to do was not simply tell this story about something that happened back
there. They wanted to speak to the Church to whom they were writing. Now the
story in Matthew’s Gospel is addressed not to the Pharisees; it’s addressed to the
Church.
It’s so easy for us to read our Bibles and say, “Oh those bad Pharisees,” and, “Ah,
give it to them Jesus!” Oh no. Jesus had to tell the Pharisees. Matthew had to tell
the Church. And I have to tell the church. I’ve got to tell you. If you have heard
this story, you don’t like it. If you heard this story you can understand Jonah’s
anger. Because this story says that God does not play fair. And the straighter you
are, the more righteous you are, the more serious you are, the more industrious
you are, the more you will be offended by God’s promiscuity. You simply won’t
take it sitting down.
This matter is so important because it is our image of God that influences our
behavior. It is our image of God that shapes our spirit. And if our image of God is
not the image of Jesus, then we are going to be reflecting something quite foreign
to the Jesus whom we claim to follow.
Shall I make it concrete for you? Let me give a contemporary example. Now I’m
not a politician. I could never make it. But if I were a politician, and if I were a
Republican, I would be extremely nervous about the inroads that the religious
right is making into the Republican Party. Here is a paradox for you. It is
fundamentalist Christian people that are influencing a political party and that are
making a political party mean-spirited and divisive. It is Christian people. If I
were a politician, and if I were a Republican, I would tremble before the prospect
of Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan setting the agenda for my party. If I allowed
them to set the agenda, to take over, then the party of Abraham Lincoln would be
no more.
The spirit that they are spewing out is the spirit of Jonah, who gets very angry
with all of the sinners out there and wants to draw nice clean lines between those
who are worthy and those who are not, those who are right and those who are
wrong. They would be terribly offended at a God that could be promiscuously
gracious - across the board.
Now - I’ve said it. Do you do well to be angry?
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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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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English
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Sound
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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
Pentecost XIII
Series
Images of God in the Stories of Jesus
Scripture Text
Jonah 4:2, 4, 11, Matthew 20: 15-16
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
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KII-01_RA-0-19920906
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1992-09-06
Title
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All is Grace
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 September 6, 1992 entitled "All is Grace", as part of the series "Images of God in the Stories of Jesus", on the occasion of Pentecost XIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Jonah 4:2, 4, 11, Matthew 20: 15-16.
Forgiveness
God of Grace
Jonah
Sin
Unconditional Love
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3956bbade0484bff0099c8c106fe3f23.mp3
3a81f3e74afc2f97995a4635344e45e7
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e4010e64105211275e9974398b85a62e.pdf
ddb217edffee798b7473eecc87c30e09
PDF Text
Text
Prodigal Love
From the series: Images of God in the Stories of Jesus
Text: Luke 15:20
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Pentecost X, August 16, 1992
Transcription of the spoken sermon
But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion, and he
ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Luke 15:20
It is very important to name things correctly because names give us a
preconception of the reality of something. The parable that we just read has been
popularly known as the “Parable of the Prodigal Son,” but, actually, that is a
misnomer. That is an incorrect naming.
To call it the Parable of the Prodigal Son is to put the focus on the son. Now there
were two sons. But to name it the Parable of the Prodigal Son is to put the focus
on the more exciting son, the one that would put a little raciness into the
narrative. But it is not a story about the rascal or the rogue. It is a story about the
father. And the father represents God. It is very important for us in this series of
messages, in which we will be looking at the Images of God in the Stories of
Jesus, to get the title straight.
In titling today’s sermon, I’ve saved the word prodigal because I looked it up in
the dictionary and found that it can have a positive as well as a negative meaning.
Prodigal, in the sense of the prodigal son, means wastefulness, spendthrift, a
rascal, using one’s substance on that which is not necessary or important, etc. But
if you keep reading you will find that prodigal can also mean abundance, lavish,
superabundance, profuse. So, in order to name the parable, I’ll save the word
prodigal, but we’ll call it prodigal love. It is important to get that straight because
images of God in the stories Jesus told are metaphors. And it is important to get
the proper focus of the story in order to be sure we catch the metaphor.
A metaphor, you will remember we said last week, is a figure of speech. The word
comes from two Greek words - meta, which means behind or over or across, and
pherein, which means to carry, to bear. And so a metaphor carries us across the
gulf of unknowing in order that we might have some sense of that Mystery that is
beyond us. In order that, in terms of things that are familiar to us, we might have
© Grand Valley State University
�Prodigal Love
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
some sense of the Mystery that is always beyond our comprehension. We can
only talk of God in metaphors. We can only understand God and the deepest
spiritual Mysteries in terms of poetic expression, and so, in this metaphor, this
parable, we have an image of God as Prodigal Love.
Jesus didn’t lecture those who were complaining to him and about him. He didn’t
write a catechism. He didn’t try to get into a rational argument. He told a story.
Jesus always told stories because Jesus knew that was the only way to
communicate the depth of the Mystery to which he was pointing. You can only
speak of God poetically. You can only get the feel and the sense of the reality of
God in an analogy, in a figure of speech, a story, a parable. He told this parable in
order to image God as Prodigal Love, because God is Prodigal Love.
Isn’t that good news? Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t that the news that has set our
tongues singing and our feet dancing? “Why, of course,” you say. “Why certainly,”
you agree. But wait a minute. Wait a minute. Are you sure? Do you really buy
that? Does that really make you feel good, comfortable? Are you at ease with
that? God as Prodigal Love.
I want to tell you, it will never make it in Houston this week. The Republican
Platform Committee would never come out with a platform that had at its heart
the theme that God is Prodigal Love. I’ll tell you, neither Bill Clinton nor George
Bush could capture the White House this fall, campaigning on a plank of God’s
Prodigal Love as the answer to our economic ills. I’ll tell you something more;
there’s not a national church assembly meeting this year that would ever have at
the center of its mission statement, God’s Prodigal Love. I’ll tell you something
more; even in Christ Community we might not rest totally at ease with God’s
Prodigal Love.
I suppose making a provocative statement like that I ought to support it. I could
see you were nodding your head “yes” all too soon and all too easily when I said
it’s good news that God is Prodigal Love. Sure. But why did Jesus tell the story?
Because the scribes and Pharisees were murmuring about the fact that the tax
collectors and the sinners were coming to hear Jesus, and they were put off by the
fact that Jesus was receiving them and inviting them to eat with him, which was
the sign of hospitality and the acceptance of such a person.
Luke sets the story of God’s Prodigal Love in the context of the murmuring of the
scribes and Pharisees. And who were the scribes and the Pharisees? Well, they
don’t get very good press in the Gospel because they are always set over against
Jesus. They are always in the adversarial position, but, as a matter of fact, in all
honesty, they were the best people in town. They were the serious people. They
were the religious people. They were the pillars of society. They were decent.
They were honest. They were hard working. With dogged determination and
dedication they kept life going and institutions intact. They were faithful. They
were devout. They were seriously good people. They were like the people who are
© Grand Valley State University
�Prodigal Love
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
going to fill Convention Hall in Houston this week. I mean, that describes
Republicans, doesn’t it?
They murmured, “Who does he think he is? Look with whom he is associating.”
Murmur. Does anybody murmur better than good religious people? We the
upright and the uptight, don’t we murmur? Aren’t we always grumbling in our
beard about how bad the world is and how everything is going to pot, and about
our irresponsible neighbor?
Folks, the scribes and the Pharisees were the kind of people who come to worship
at 10:00 on Sunday morning. Good people. But they murmured. They were
offended at Jesus living and acting out what he believed to be true and that is that
God is Prodigal Love. Jesus acted out what he believed God to be. Jesus was
transparent. He was a picture. He was a metaphor of God. Seeing into the face of
Jesus, we see into the heart of God. And what the good folk saw… They. Did. Not.
Like.
You want another piece of evidence? This is still in Luke’s Gospel. If you go to the
fourth chapter where Jesus begins his ministry, he came to his hometown crowd,
his local congregation where you would have thought they would have given him
a break. Remember? He preached from the Prophet Isaiah. He proclaimed a
message of liberation - sight to the blind, and hearing to the deaf, the lame to
walk, the prisoners freed. And his own people were so angry they wanted to throw
him over the cliff. They wanted to kill him. And it was his consistent living out of
that inaugural text that earned him the wrath of the best people in town.
You want one more piece of evidence? How does the story of the Prodigal end?
The story ends, not with the salty tears of the father over the son who came home,
but with the faithful, obedient, hard working, dedicated, committed son who was
always every day out in the back 40 plowing and hoeing and weeding. He comes
home one night; he’s tired; he is satisfied, feeling that he has worked hard and
put in another good day’s work. But, of course, his satisfaction is really riddled
with resentment, because nobody really likes to be that good and that faithful all
of the time. I mean if you are that good and that faithful all of the time, then you
in all probability have a bit of resentment suppressed somewhere. It will
inevitably pop up now and again. He said, “What’s going on?” The servant says,
“Your brother’s home.” Dark clouds. The father comes out and says, “Your
brother’s home, let’s have a party.”
“No way! That no good joust-about, who’s wasted all your living?” he says to his
father. Then he colored the story a little bit. He didn’t know for sure what the
younger son had been doing, but he knew what he would have done, if he were
out there; that’s part of his resentment. He said, “He was wasting your living on
harlots and all that other kind of stuff, and you kill a fatted calf for him? I have
slaved for you all these years and you never gave me a party.” Jesus is
brandishing a vivid point to those to whom he told the story in the first place, to
the murmurers.
© Grand Valley State University
�Prodigal Love
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
Now to come back to the question I started with. Does it really sit easy with you
that God is a God of Prodigal Love? Just think about the story for a minute. The
younger son gets what he can get and scrams. Breaks his father’s heart. Breaks all
codes of decency and honor. Enters into a self-destructive pattern of life. Finds
himself in a real pinch, scratches his head and realizes the servants in his father’s
house are better off than he. He devises a plan. “I will arise and go to my father.”
He rehearses this speech: “Father, I am not worthy to be your son. I have sinned
against heaven and against you.” I think he meant it. I think he had attained a
certain amount of proper humility. But I don’t think he was changed yet. This is
still just a strategy. He was going to come home. He was going to give his
prepared speech. He was going to try to be one of the hired servants because he
still is operating under the old principle. He thinks, “You know if the old man will
give me a second chance, and I work hard enough, and I am dedicated long
enough, if I follow my elder brother around long enough, maybe I can prove that
there is really some good stuff in me after all. Maybe if he’ll give me a second
chance I can still prove myself.”
So he comes home and the old man is on the rooftop. He’s been up there every
day since the kid left. He’s been straining his eyes looking down the road, hardly
seeing because he is blinded by the tears he’s been shedding. And then he sees his
son and almost leaps off the roof of his house. He gathers his garments around
him in a way that would be considered shameful in that culture and in that day,
and he begins to run down the street as no male over 30 years of age would run.
He throws off proper decorum and proper behavior and doesn’t care who is
watching, who is witnessing this kind of shocking display of emotion. He races,
the text says, he races to his son and his son gets the first line of his prepared
speech out, only to be smothered by the arms of the father, whose salty tears flow
over the son as he kisses him effusively in a prodigal manner and restores him to
sonship.
That is a moving story isn’t it? It is a wonderful story. The trouble is we haven’t
dared preach it that way in church, we haven’t let the story just be. We haven’t
dared to just tell that story and say, “God is like that.” We’ve always hedged a bit.
I am going to quote from a sermon given by a preacher, recognized as
outstanding in our tradition. It is from a sermon on this parable:
“These parables teach and depict in a pictorial form the basic message of
the Bible that God is a God of grace.” (Good so far.) “God forgives sinners
by grace. That is, he forgives sins freely and not by merit on the part of the
person who has sinned. The word grace means unmerited favor. This, of
course, does not mean that God overlooks sin or that he winks at it, or that
he excuses it. God forbid. He is able (listen to me now) to forgive us freely
because full atonement has been made for our sin in the death of Jesus
Christ, the Son of God, on the Cross of Calvary. (I’ll repeat that.) He is able
to forgive us freely because full atonement has been made for our sin in
© Grand Valley State University
�Prodigal Love
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
the death of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, on the Cross of Calvary.” [Words
in parenthesis spoken by Richard A. Rhem.]
This is the way you’ve had the Gospel preached to you almost all your life. The
cross of Calvary, the death of the Son of God, the Atonement. Did you really find
that in the story? Where did that come from?
Now this is a very fine preacher, and this very fine preacher knows full well that
when one preaches one is supposed to preach the text. But he dragged the word
about Calvary into this story didn’t he? It’s not in there. Jesus told a story about a
son who went bad and came home and got loved by his father. He didn’t say
anything about parole, or probation, or recrimination, or condemnation, or
somebody else taking the rap for all of the grief the father had experienced.
Where did it come from?
It came from Paul, of course: Paul’s reflection, after the fact, a reflection back on
the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. All of Paul is theological reflection.
The problem in the Church is that we have never let the images of God in the
stories of Jesus be heard in all of their potency, in all of their power. We have not
trusted these stories. We have wanted to warn folks like you that what Jesus said
in a case like this is not all that there is to say. This preacher was following a
principle of interpretation that is taught in our seminaries, and that is that every
text of scripture has to be interpreted in light of every other text of scripture. So
you preached the text, but always in the context of the whole.
Yesterday Nancy was doing some baking. Here she was up to her elbows in flour had the rolling pin out. She starts from scratch, that girl! I mean she’s good! She’s
rolling out this crust until it is beautiful and smooth. There’s not a foreign particle
anywhere, nor any kind of little lump. It is absolutely flat, uniform,
homogeneous. You could take a hunk of that crust any place and you would have
the real ticket. That’s what we have done with the Bible in all of its rich diversity,
in all of the thousands of years over which it came to expression, and all of the
different contexts into which it is spoken. We have taken a rolling pin and we’ve
rolled it and rolled it.
It reminds me of a soup I used to like when I was trying to lose weight. (I’ve, of
course, gotten that weight down now where it is just right!) This was a soup that
had all kinds of vegetables and when it was all done you couldn’t identify
anything in that bland mush. You threw them into the blender and blended that
thing until - well, there were carrots and onions, and celery and tomatoes, and
potatoes and all of that. Sometimes I like to take a big bite out of a carrot and
taste a carrot, or an onion, or a tomato or a potato. But if you get it all blended
together, you can dish it out and it’s got a little bit of everything in it and it
doesn’t taste like anything distinctive! And it doesn’t have any pungency or any
punch.
© Grand Valley State University
�Prodigal Love
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
And so in the Church we have hedged on the stories of Jesus just so you folks
didn’t get the wrong impression. We are afraid you might think, as the preacher
said, “God might wink at sin.” Or that God could just forgive us if God willed to
forgive us. So we have, thank God, Paul who puts the damper on Jesus.
But now just think with me for a minute. You are parents, grandparents, aunts or
uncles. Is there a child you love? Can you imagine a child you love with all your
heart and soul, that child breaking your heart? A son or daughter going wrong?
Can you imagine every time the telephone rang your heart skipping a beat
because you hoped it was he or she? Can you imagine going to the mailbox every
day just in case there might be some communication from that son or daughter?
Can you imagine a son or daughter whom you loved, seeing, clear as a bell, that
they were on the road to destruction and not being able to do a thing about that?
Loving them. Caring. Longing. Yearning. Weeping. And one day there is a rap on
the door and there they are. What would you do? What would you do?
Jesus said, “If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how
much more your heavenly father.” I think Jesus would say, “Don’t drag Paul into
this story. I am trying to image for you God, who in Prodigal Love simply forgives
freely.” It is an image of God who has to let the kid go because he will only love,
and has no other plan. God who stands helpless even in the face of his “steadyEddie” elder son who complains, saying to that elder son, “All I have is yours. You
are home. Come in to the party,” but can’t drag him by the hair. Jesus images God
as Prodigal Love who loves and loves until one finally gets close enough to him to
be embraced and to experience and to be lost in the abyss of that love.
Jesus paid it all - I feel a little more comfortable - that’s the kind of world I can
operate in. Then, Dad, take me back and let me prove myself. That feels better.
But it’s not the Gospel, and it’s not the way God does it. The old Dutch painter,
Rembrandt, captured the story and the poignancy of the parable in a painting
that Peter owns, that he has shown me. It is the parable of the Prodigal Son,
which we have renamed now the Prodigal Lover. Peter and I are going to show
you the painting. I’ll be God. [laughter heard] Well I’ve got this beard. [Peter
responds, “I get the party!”] [Dick embraces Peter and says:] This is the painting.
Do you see the salty tears on the father’s cheeks? All God ever wants to do is
embrace his children and have them home.
You get the picture. Listen to the voice of God. “You are loved. You are home.”
© 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
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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>
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 X
Series
Images of God in the Stories of Jesus
Scripture Text
Luke 15:20
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-0-19920816
Date
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1992-08-16
Title
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Prodigal Love
Creator
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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
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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 August 16, 1992 entitled "Prodigal Love", as part of the series "Images of God in the Stories of Jesus", on the occasion of Pentecost X, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Luke 15:20.
Nature of God
Parable
Transforming Grace
Unconditional Love
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6eaabb5f6c3838d1b287c3064ee37d23.mp3
1502e0b2905a94807a8d94111a19d5b7
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/296334c1430357a5c0559c36e2e9080b.pdf
56237fec0160a8ded5b49259cefdabb0
PDF Text
Text
I Can’t Believe the Love I’ve Found
From the sermon series: God’s Prodigal Love
Text: Luke 15: 20-24
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
August 17, 1986
Transcription of the spoken sermon
…while he was still a long way off his father saw him, and his heart went
out to him. He ran to meet him, flung his arms round him, and kissed
him….The father said to his servants, “Quick! Fetch a robe, my best one,
…a ring…and shoes….Bring the fatted calf. …let us have a feast to
celebrate the day…and the festivities began. Luke 15: 20-24
The next time I select this parable as the basis of the message, I will entitle it,
"When Heaven Throws a Party." That says it well, better perhaps than our title
today. But the title of this message is consistent with the perspective from which
we have walked through the story; we've been looking at it primarily through the
eyes of the younger son. An Old Scottish preacher treated it that way, too, but in
one message he divided the story into three movements, "Sick of home,
homesick, and home." That says it well, too. We've stayed with the story for four
weeks and I think we, too, have gotten the feel of the movement:
I want to do it on my own!
Is that all there is?
I wish I could start over!
Now, finally, I can't believe the love I've found! I like that statement. It expresses
the amazed joy of discovery the younger son experienced at his reception by the
father and it points, as well, to the heart of the story, what the story is really all
about – the love of the father, which is a parable of the love of God.
We have rehearsed the story often enough; it is the most familiar parable Jesus
told. But the climactic scene never fails to move us.
But while he was still a long way off his father saw him, and his heart
went out to him. He ran to meet him, flung his arms around him, and
kissed him.
© Grand Valley State University
�I Can’t Believe the Love I’ve Found
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
What a vivid picture of love, forgiveness, reconciliation. What deep emotion is
thus expressed and what deep chords the scene touches in our own hearts.
Let us stick with the text for a moment.
The son managed to get the first part of his rehearsed speech out:
Father, I have sinned, against God and against you; I am no longer fit to
be called your son.
No more could be spoken; no more need be spoken. Love took over; love simply
overwhelmed the penitent. There would be no more discussion, only rapid-fire
instructions by which the son would be restored fully to the position of son and
heir and the party would be prepared. The father's rationale was simple:
The dead one was alive; the lost one was found.
Let the party begin!
There you have Jesus' understanding of the nature of God's love and the way love
acts. He was defending his own action, his openness to all kinds of persons –
winners and losers, rich and poor, prestigious and peasant. He claimed to be in
his behavior, spirit and attitude a mirror of the heart of God. The portrait of the
father running down the road, embracing and kissing the son and restoring him
fully is simply a picture of God waiting, watching and finally welcoming His
children home.
Let us reflect on the nature of God's love as it comes to expression in Jesus'
story. It is obviously the love of God and quite foreign to all human conception or
expression. I am reminded of a statement from the Old Testament prophet
Hosea. He is preeminently the prophet of divine love in the Old Testament. The
passage is not strange to us; we have focused on it often; but the nature of the
love is strange to us precisely because, as God says in the prophet's words, "I am
God and not man." Hosea's prophecy opens with a personal narrative of his love
for a woman who proves unfaithful, a woman whom God calls him to forgive and
embrace again. That personal experience was Hosea's parable of God's love for
Israel. In the 11th chapter, Hosea records how God created and cared for Israel tenderly, lovingly, only to be rejected by her. He then speaks of judgment to fall
on them for their rebellion and revolt. But then the mood changes. God says,
How can I give you up Ephraim, how surrender you…? My heart is
changed within me…I will not let loose my fury, I will not turn round and
destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not man. Hosea 11: 8, 9
I am always struck by that statement. So often we explain our behavior, our
responses, our relationships with a shrug of the shoulders – "Well, I'm only
© Grand Valley State University
�I Can’t Believe the Love I’ve Found
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
human." And it is true, only human - and so, I lose patience, my love has limits.
You can push me over the line; my love comes to an end.
I think there are some rights I do not have to give up. I take offense at some point
of provocation and feel justified in doing so. In the family I set limits, I demand
respect. I will not tolerate some things. I think the children need it and they do,
but it is also true that I refuse to be used, abused. It makes me wonder if one
could raise a family on the kind of love God displays.
I know it won't work in the world of practical affairs, in business and government.
Certainly not in international affairs. That kind of love ends up crucified. It is not
practical.
What are we saying about God?
What are we saying about ourselves?
Let's not try to qualify God's love as Jesus portrayed it. Let's not try to make it
something else by all sorts of conditional clauses. Just think about it as Jesus
portrayed it.
It is like Hosea expressed,
My love is what it is because I'm God and not man.
What will we say? Too good for this world? Too impractical? Too idealistic? Some
love, though! Some love.
The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, said, "Great men never run in public." Research
into the ways of Palestinian community life confirms that no father would pull up
his garment and run down the road. It was a disgrace. God's love, Jesus says,
loses proper decorum, loses dignity, has no self-regard – just races to embrace a
child coming home. Some love!
What are we saying? Are we wiser than God? Do we know better how to run the
world? Is love really soft, ineffective?
Let me suggest that love is really the only truly transforming power.
Love changes us from the inside. Only an inside change is transforming.
Fear can hold us in line. Behavior patterns can be changed by threat. A heavy
smoker has a coronary, and the doctor says, "No more," and the habit is broken.
Law can hold us in line. I really resist the seat belt law. It is foolish of me, but I
resist being told I have to buckle up. One day this week I reached over and
buckled up as I was approaching Bobbins Road on U.S. 31. At the light I stopped
© Grand Valley State University
�I Can’t Believe the Love I’ve Found
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
and next to me the Sheriff's car stopped. Nancy said, "I wondered why you
buckled up."
But behavioral response to fear or law or threat of any kind - while it may control
my behavior and keep me in line - which may be for my good and for the good of
society - does not have the power to transform me so that I become a new person
- my new behavior being the outward sign of my new being.
Love is powerful. Love is transforming.
Maybe our trouble is that we just do not trust love to do its work. We grow
anxious; we want to exercise control; we want to secure the proper outcome. We
are often well-intentioned. We really do want the best for our children, our
nation, our world. But we don't trust love to effect it; we feel constrained to force
the best solution in any situation. So we make demands and we threaten penalty.
God loves.
Jesus came into the midst of human history and he loved, and people felt its
power and all kinds of people came to him. He made no distinctions; he simply
loved people. And they were changed. Transformed. And Jesus was simply God's
love in flesh and in action.
Unconditional love - that is the love of God. Love that can be spurned, love that
can be abused, taken advantage of, love that will not coerce, but that alone can
transform.
The Father did not play it cool; he did not remain aloof; he did not keep the boy
hanging, put him on probation, lecture him on responsibility or vent the anger of
his wounded pride. He just hugged him and kissed him and said, "My boy is alive;
he's home again!"
The son had gained insight. He had faced himself, come to his senses,
acknowledged his foolishness and attained a proper humility. He was prepared to
make a reasonable request of his father. He had come a long way, but he was still
a stranger to grace until he felt the arms of his father, the hot, salty tears of the
father falling on his shoulder.
It was the love of the father that turned him inside out. It was the love that
transformed him. How could he take it in? As he thought about it, he must have
said,
"I can't believe the love I've found."
Maybe we are not wiser than God; maybe God is wiser. Maybe He knows that
threat and condemnation do not transform even though they may coerce one to
© Grand Valley State University
�I Can’t Believe the Love I’ve Found
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
conform. Maybe He trusts the power of love and so He deals with us with the
patience of love.
I wonder why we have missed that point in the Church. Sometime, taste some
radio sermons or TV evangelists. Reflect on your experience in church over the
years. Read sermon titles or the church page in the newspaper – it sounds like a
horror story rather than a love story. What is the overwhelming impression
created? Why do we use the phrase, "Don't preach to me!"?
What is preaching in common usage? Is it not full of oughtness - full of threat,
full of warning, and laced with condemnation? Why do we adopt a method that
turns away when we have the message of an unbelievable love to share?
Is it because we are insecure about the truth we bring? Do we want to force
everyone into our mold? Are we unsure of love's transforming power? Do we rush
in to force while God patiently waits?
God loves. God waits. And then God races to embrace the one who finally comes
to his senses.
That is why the story ends with a marvelous party. The fatted calf. Music and
dancing. Celebration. That is what worship ought to be – a great party.
Once again, how we have mutilated the whole matter.
There is a discipline of worship. I heartily commend it. Unless you arise on
Sunday morning knowing it is the Lord's Day and you will worship without even
stopping to make a decision, you will probably not worship with a disciplined
regularity.
But, why? Do we do God a favor? Do we honor God? Well ... perhaps. But what is
this coming together? Is it not a party, a celebration for a grace amazing and a
love beyond compare?
I know there are spiritual disciplines, which I really need to keep in tune, in
touch. But I do not do them for God's sake, to win His approval or curry His
favor. I do them to keep in view this amazing love, the inspiring, uplifting
experience of a love that keeps on throwing arms around me, believing in me
when I give up on myself; a love that will never let me go.
So I keep coming here to hear it again. I come here to say, "Thanks be to Thee, O
God!"
I really need to keep coming back; I forget so soon. I get down on myself. I see the
ambiguity of my life, the equivocation of my commitment. I would give up on me;
wouldn't God, Who knows the twists and warps of my soul better than I do?
© Grand Valley State University
�I Can’t Believe the Love I’ve Found
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
The answer is simply, "No," He will never give up on me.
Remember again this story is about God's love, His attitude toward His children.
We've missed the point and ruined the story by making a big deal about the far
country and loose living, but that is to distort the story and turn it into a
moralism. It is not about how one lives, but about how God loves.
If there is one great underlying, foundational, fundamental truth woven through
the one story of the Bible, it comes to beautiful expression in this parable Jesus
told and it is simply this - God loves us with an everlasting love.
Personalize that; put your own name in the sentence: God loves….
Now, to make that felt, we should really take a moment and put our arms around
each other.
When you need space, go ahead - run, run like mad for as long as you need to
run. Get it out of your system - that feverish cry, "I want to do it on my own!"
One day you may wake up with a real headache and a heartache, as well, and ask,
"Is that all there is?"
When you get hold of yourself and feel that yearning inside and find yourself
saying, "I wish I could start over," then remember this story Jesus told and
simply come home - You won't believe the love you'll find.
In the meantime, God waits, God searches for the slightest sign of homesickness,
God loves and longs to have you feel it, in His embrace. Open yourself to the love
and to God.
Come to the party!
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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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
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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 XIII
Series
God's Prodigal Love
Scripture Text
Luke 15:20-24
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-0-19860817
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1986-08-17
Title
A name given to the resource
I Can't Believe the Love I've Found
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 August 17, 1986 entitled "I Can't Believe the Love I've Found", as part of the series "God's Prodigal Love", on the occasion of Pentecost XIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Luke 15:20-24.
Nature of God's Love
Parable
Prodigal Son
Transforming Love
Unconditional Love
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a503d8a764d33009dd85e998c8a1de86.mp3
84ba667e9bf10ed011418446f9212014
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c7384105eae71b92553d5e333e550549.pdf
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PDF Text
Text
I Wish I Could Start Over
From the sermon series: God’s Prodigal Love
Text: Luke 15: 17
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
August 10, 1986
Transcription of the spoken sermon
The parable of "The Prodigal Son" is probably the most familiar and best loved of
Jesus' parables. Strange, then, that it should have become known as a story about
a son when, in reality, it is a story told to portray the nature of God in His
relationship to us. There is prodigality in the story, but it is the prodigality of
God's love. "Prodigal" is defined as "given to extravagant expenditure,"
"recklessly wasteful," "lavish." That sounds like God's love, which comes to
expression so powerfully in this compelling story.
The story was told to "The Pharisees and the doctors of the Law." They had been
grumbling at Jesus' behaviour; he extended fellowship to "sinners." He opened
himself up to and embraced persons with whom the religious elite of his day
would have nothing to do. "Sinners" covered a broad spectrum of persons. Of
course, we do know that he was available to all, the prostitute of Luke 7, the hated
tax collectors such as Matthew and Zaccheus, the Samaritan woman of John 4,
Mary Magdalene whose past was colorful. But the category "sinner" referred not
only to the obviously tainted, but all non-Jews and all Jews who failed to keep the
ritualistic demands of the current interpretation of the Law.
Jesus told the story to defend his openness to all persons, his offer of grace and
forgiveness to all who came with a longing to be made new. He told the story of
the father with two sons, each son representing different attitudes and situations
of persons. The sons are necessary to the story, but the story is really told to
reveal the heart of the father. The amazing truth we learn is that the father has a
consistent, steady, boundless love for the rebel who leaves home, and for the
uptight, upright son who stays home.
The one is a rebellious youth who wants his own life, his independence, feeling he
cannot be his own person in the presence of the father. The other is a meticulous,
humorless, obedient son whose virtue through performance is offered in place of
the one thing the father desired - a warm, spontaneous, loving relationship.
© Grand Valley State University
�I Wish I Could Start Over
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
The latter described those to whom the parable was addressed. The former
described the persons about whom the grumbling occurred: the "sinners" Jesus
received.
The Truth of the parable is that God is limitless love, open to all, yearning for all
His children, wanting their wellbeing, wanting them to be themselves fully, at
home, in the Father's house.
The focus of the first message was the younger son, the rebel who requested his
inheritance and left home. He is a mirror of the person who says, "I want to do it
on my own!"
The second message pointed to the emptiness that is the end of a life of
autonomy, a life which seeks to be a law unto itself, a life lived selfishly, selfindulgently with no meaning or purpose beyond the pleasure of the moment, a
life out of relationship of love and trust. Such a life sooner or later raises the
question, "Is that all there is?"
That sense of emptiness or meaninglessness can come over one gradually or as a
jolting revelation. Sometimes it comes after a period of treadmill existence with
life going nowhere. Sometimes it comes about in a crisis. Whatever the concrete
situation, we are caused to reflect on our lives, on the choices we have made, the
priorities we have set and we may be led to sigh, "I wish I could start over."
That is the place the younger son came to in the story Jesus told. In the midst of
the disaster that befell him, he "came to his senses." (NEB)
The Revised Standard Version renders it,
When he came to himself.
Reality hit. Sober reflection on his situation revealed the folly of his ways. He
remembered his father and home. He decided to return; he wanted to start over.
Wanting a new beginning is a very common human desire. There are so many
areas of our lives that we would like to do over - choices we have made, decisions
that directed our life in one course rather than another - to marry or not to marry,
to marry this person rather than another, to get an education or not, to pursue
one career rather than another, to have a family or not, to make a major move, to
start a business. There is no end of the decisions one makes, and every decision
becomes a thread in the weaving of the tapestry of our lives. The complexity of
decisions forms a web and within that web our lives are caught.
The sigh, "I wish I could start over," is thus not uncommon. Most of us, at one
time or another, have known the feeling, the longing for a second chance. But
there is no going back.
© Grand Valley State University
�I Wish I Could Start Over
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
The very nature of our historical existence is such that we are writing a story in
time that is moving from a point of beginning to an end point. Time can be
recollected in memory; time can be anticipated in imagination; thus we can
transcend the present moment but we cannot unravel time; we cannot undo it.
Nor can we freeze it in the present moment. Relentlessly we must move on in the
stream of time and to move on is to continue to make decisions. Such is the
nature of our human existence.
What might be included in the moment Jesus describes in the story as "coming to
himself?" I suppose, first of all, there was an honest facing up to his life, to his
story. Coming to one’s senses or coming to one’s self is a moment of Truth. Such
moments are rare and precious. So much of our lives never come under honest
scrutiny; many persons never come to a moment of Truth at all.
Most of us live with denial; we may consciously suppress the truth of our lives
and expend great energy keeping the truth under, or we may be unconscious of
the denial and live with a vague restlessness and anxiety. Who am I really? What
is the Truth about me? It takes courage to ask that question. Some of us never
allow the question to surface.
I doubt that the Elder Brother ever faced the question. Had he honestly engaged
himself in dialogue, he might have come to self-awareness of the anger and
resentment that were seething beneath the surface of his righteous exterior. He
was not a free person, spontaneous, happy. He was without humor. He worked
diligently but it was drudgery and life was a drag. When he came upon the joy
and celebration of the prodigal's return, it all erupted; the dam burst, the volcano
within exploded. He had never really come to know himself.
The younger son paid a price for the choices he made. We must not glamorize his
wild fling. He suffered. He came to the edge of despair and we must assume that
he carried with him throughout his life some scars from his scrape with
desolation. But all of that was as nothing compared to the experience of the
moment of Truth. When he finally got the courage to do some serious
introspection and to take inventory of his life, he came to himself; he came to the
moment of Truth.
Such a moment does not issue in a running away from oneself or a denying of
one’s life. Indeed, that is precisely what had been the case. He had done his best
as long as he could to convince himself that he was glad to be away from the
father, on his own, actualizing his own person. As the emptiness became more
and more evident, the denial of the mess he had made of things was increasingly
difficult to sustain. Finally he could do it no more. Now he owned his life, he
owned his story. He had made his choices and this is where it led.
There was no wallowing in self-pity. There was no blaming of his Elder Brother or
his father. He faced his life; he took responsibility for it. He decided on a course
of action that would enable him to start over, to begin again.
© Grand Valley State University
�I Wish I Could Start Over
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
In traditional Christian terminology - biblical terminology - the younger son
repented; he changed his mind, changed his thinking. That is the literal meaning
of the Greek word Metanoia. His thinking was turned around.
The speech he prepared for his father indicates that he was aware of his own
responsibility. He says bluntly, "I have sinned against heaven and against you."
The parable shows us what Jesus understands by sin. It is going out from the
father's house, i.e., godlessness and remoteness from God working itself out in a
life in the world with all its desires and its filth. The word "sin" used in this
instance means literally "missing the mark." That puts it well. That was what the
younger son came to see, acknowledge, and confess. He said, "I've missed the
mark." Today one might say, "I really blew it!"
And then he acted on his new knowledge. He arose and went to his father. He
came home. This, too, is a vital step and of critical importance. It is one thing to
come to oneself. It is one thing finally to be engaged by the moment of Truth. It is
another to act on that insight when it means turning around and facing up to
wrong choices and deeds in the presence of family and friends.
This phase of the story we might call conversion - the actual about-face. It
involves the honest recognition and acknowledgment that one has been in the
wrong and is responsible for "missing the mark" and for appropriate action in
light of that acknowledgment - in the case of this story, the actual return to the
father.
All of this is included in coming to oneself. It is a crisis. It is devastating. It takes
great courage and it is wonderfully liberating.
Our young friend still knows nothing of grace, but he is now ready to face his
father and bargain for a chance to start over on the father's terms.
"Let me be as one of your hired servants;
I know I can no longer expect to be considered your son.
Thus he brings to expression the longing to start over. Let's reflect on that for a
moment. Starting over is not a denial of the past. We write our story. What we are
is the compilation of all we have been. Starting over does not rip us out of our
past; rather it creates the opportunity for new beginning with the past no more a
weight shackling us with guilt and remorse that would hobble our spirit and limit
our future.
We own our past. We assume responsibility for it. We are the wiser for it; we live
with the consequence of it.
© Grand Valley State University
�I Wish I Could Start Over
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
Sometimes that past is something we would not want ever to experience again,
but even in its tragic dimension, having gone through it, we would not trade the
lessons learned, the experience gained.
One must come to accept and take responsibility for one's own story. Beginning
again does not involve amnesia. There is no whitewashing, brainwashing or some
other psychological trick that we play on ourselves. We put it behind us and we
move on, but the past remains our past. It is our story.
The younger son did not really realize the newness that grace creates. His
intention was to return and earn at least servant status. What he was to
encounter in the father's loving forgiveness and total acceptance was beyond his
wildest dreams.
Move, now, to the attitude and posture of the father. He did not use his authority
to hold the young son. He used no coercion, manipulation or guilt trip. He let him
go. From the reception he gave the boy on his return, we know this was not
because of a lack of love and concern. We will focus on that love in the final
message. Why, then, did he simply let the boy go?
The answer is that he knew he would not have his boy home, even if he forced
him to live under his roof, until the boy came to himself, until he came to his
senses.
That is the only way God's intention can be realized. What he desires is a
gracious, personal relationship.
Our relationship with him is not reciprocal in the sense of being "fifty-fifty." He
initiates. He offers grace. He sustains us in relationship. But we are not passive
blocks of wood. His initiation must call for the response which is a genuine
turning toward him. Trust speaks of response. And for response to be the inward
movement of the person, it must be elicited but cannot be demanded or forced.
Remember again why Jesus told the story. He was claiming that his very presence
was a sign of God's initiating grace, a sign of salvation present and freely offered.
To respond to him was to respond to God - to come home to grace.
When the son said, "I want to do it on my own!" the father recognized the always
possible option of seeking autonomy rather than relationship. Only when he
came subsequently to say, "Is that all there is?" had he made his own discovery
that he was on a dead-end street. That was the moment of truth. He came to his
senses. He said, "I wish I could start over."
He had not yet encountered grace; he did not yet have the faintest idea of grace.
But one thing he remembered: the sadness in his father's eyes when he left. The
absence of anger, of threat. The sense that he might cut off his father, but his
© Grand Valley State University
�I Wish I Could Start Over
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
father had not responded in kind, cutting him off. The posture of the father built
no barriers for return.
In our broken human relationship we often cut off the possibility of return
because we respond in kind, anger for anger, wound for wound. Jesus portrays a
father whose spirit and action communicate that the door is always open. There
he was pleading with the religious leaders saying precisely that - come home, just
as he pictured the younger son arising and going to the father.
The good news of the message is that the way is open; the barriers do not exist
beyond our own minds. The Father awaits us.
We can start over. We can begin again.
The longing for home is the first sign of grace. The honest owning of one's life, its
light and shadow, its goodness and guilt is the dawning of something more
wonderful than words can describe. There is much more to tell. We will come to
that. But hear this good news, all who are weary, bored, empty, guilty, afraid —
Come home.
You can begin again.
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
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English
Type
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Sound
Text
Identifier
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KII-01
Coverage
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1981-2014
Format
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost XII
Series
God's Prodigal Love
Scripture Text
II Corinthians 15:17
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-19860810
Date
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1986-08-10
Title
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I Wish I Could Start Over
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
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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 August 10, 1986 entitled "I Wish I Could Start Over", as part of the series "God's Prodigal Love", on the occasion of Pentecost XII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: II Corinthians 15:17.
Forgiveness
Nature of God
Parable
Prodigal Son
Sin
Unconditional Love
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e622183f1e0cd091317afc0bbf39bdf2.mp3
abb62bb54b8c5ad6015d8b2001d3fcdb
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/144bbe34a716e35d9da20af0d9dd2d6f.pdf
7ca02a1137396715bda1969816873676
PDF Text
Text
The First Day of the Rest of Your Life
Text: II Corinthians 5: 17; 6: 2
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Eastertide II, April 6, 1986
Transcription of the spoken sermon
When anyone is united to Christ, there is a new world; the old order has
gone, and a new order has already begun. II Corinthians 5: 17
…The day of Salvation has dawned. II Corinthians 6: 2
May I teach you a rather difficult word, which for most of you would not be part
of your ordinary conversation?
It is ontology. It is the science of Being. It is a branch of Philosophy, which
studies the essence of being or the structure of Reality. It derives from the Greek
word for “being,” ousia. Ontology refers to what is: the structure of Reality, the
way things are.
Now, what has Ontology to do with the Gospel of Eastertide? Very much, indeed.
Easter changed the Ontological structure of the Cosmos. With the Resurrection of
Jesus, God created a whole new world, a new reality. The Gospel is the
announcement of that new world. To "hear" the Gospel is to be introduced into a
whole new Ontology. To realize this and to grasp it by faith is to experience
The First Day of the Rest of Your Life.
Paul had experienced it. Jesus revealed it to him as the Risen Lord in a vision.
The whole structure of Reality was changed for Paul. In one of his letters he
expressed it this way:
When anyone is united to Christ, there is a new world; the old order has
gone, and a new order has already begun.
For Paul, in Jesus' death and resurrection, the day of salvation has dawned.
© Grand Valley State University
�The First Day of the Rest of Your Life
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
Let us begin by listening to what the text is teaching us about the way things
really are - the reality of our world and thus the reality of our situation.
…there is a new world, the old order has gone, and a new order has
already begun.
As we have moved together through Lent, Holy Week and celebrated Easter
Sunday, we have been aware of two worlds, two kingdoms.
We heard Paul's story: A man of impeccable credentials, according to human
standards of judgment, who says,
But all such assets I have written off because of Christ…. I count
everything sheer loss, because all is far outweighed by the gain of
knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. …all I care for is to know Christ, to
experience the power of his resurrection…
Paul ranked ahead of his fellows when judged by the performance principle. But
that driven, compulsive need to establish and secure himself yielded no peace.
Then he met Jesus. He learned life was not an achievement to be gained, but a
gift to be received. He began to live by grace. It was the first day of the rest of his
life.
We have learned that grace does not free us from responsible commitment, but
frees us to love as we have been loved. That is, to love unconditionally.
That is the way God loves us. He demonstrated His love to us in that while we
were yet enemies Christ died for us. Thus we saw that it is out of the abyss of love
that grace flows, embracing us, melting our defenses, overcoming our weakness
and our fear, our hostility.
But on Palm Sunday we became very much aware that while the Kingdom of God,
the Kingdom of love and grace, has taken root in our old world in Jesus, yet the
old world rages on refusing to let go.
Jesus enters the City defenseless and vulnerable. He is totally free of worldly
entanglement because he is wholly God's man. Because he is wholly God's man,
he moves into the hostile environment where death awaits him with calm
assurance.
Unconditional love clashes with the established powers of this world. The High
Priest announces the death sentence. Jesus is crucified. On Good Friday it would
appear that the way of love is doomed to be crushed out by the way of expediency.
And then dawned the Third Day.
© Grand Valley State University
�The First Day of the Rest of Your Life
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Easter was the first day of the rest of the world. There was an Ontological Shift on
Easter. The Creator raised Jesus and created a new world. He re-created the
world as far as His relationship with the human family is concerned.
The point is, something happened. On Monday morning it was not business as
usual. It was an Easter world - a whole new Reality.
That is why I bother you with that strange word "Ontology." I want to stress that
the world is changed; Reality is changed. The old world continues. We continue
to be part of the old scene. But the old world is gone, in reality! This is an
Ontological Shift, a shift of cosmic proportions.
I have become more aware of this recently. I am aware I have not proclaimed it
strongly enough, confidently enough. That is why the Easter message pointed to
the God Whose power effects that which is beyond all human potential. Too
much of my ministry and my preaching has been within the narrowly prescribed
limits of human possibility. Sometimes I think I am only beginning to glimpse the
gracious power of the God of unconditional love.
We have been too much focused on the human response, not enough on the
objective reality of the new creation. Listen again to the text:
There is a new world, the old has gone, and a new order has already
begun.
Do we believe it? Do we live accordingly? Whether we do or not, the Truth
remains. Whether we believe it and appropriate it is not the measure of its truth.
Our response does not create the new reality and our lack of response does not
detract from the reality. So will you hear the word of proclamation?
The day of salvation has dawned.
I was reading an Easter sermon preached by the great Karl Barth. He went
regularly to the Basle prison to preach to the prisoners. He who could command
any pulpit in the world chose to preach at the local jail because he said if I preach
in the Cathedral, people will come to hear Karl Barth. If I preach at the jail, the
prisoners will come to hear the Gospel. He preached on Jesus' words, "Because I
live you, too, shall live." To these prisoners he spoke of Jesus who lived for them.
In great simplicity he pointed to Jesus living for us and dying for us. And he
spoke of the promise:
You will live also.
And he explained:
Yet the significant fact to remember is precisely not an obligation we are
invited or urged to fulfill, so that we may, or may not, live. We are not
© Grand Valley State University
�The First Day of the Rest of Your Life
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
merely given a chance; nor is an offer made to us. "You will live also" is a
promise. It is an announcement referring to the future, to our future.
"You will live also" succeeds the present of, and our presence in, the "I
live" like two succeeds one, B succeeds A, the thunder succeeds the
lightning ... You are a people whose future issues from my life and hence
does not lie in your sin and guilt, but in true righteousness and holiness.
Not in sadness, but in joy, not in captivity, but in freedom, not in death,
but in life. From your present participation in my life, you may anticipate
this and no other future. (Deliverance to the Captives, p. 31F)
He goes on to stress that Jesus is not only our future, but also our present.
Not the world with its accusations and we with our counter accusations.
Not even the well deserved divine wrath against us, let alone our
grumbling against God, or our secret thought that there might be no God
after all. Therefore, not we ourselves, as we are today or think we are,
make up our present. He, Jesus Christ, his life is our present: his Divine
life poured out for us, and his human life, our life, lifted up in him. This is
what counts. This is what is true and valid. (p. 32)
He then stresses that no one must think himself excluded, too insignificant, too
sinful, too godless. And then he invites each one there present to join him at the
Lord's Table. There in the Bread and Wine is the sign of what he had been saying
in the message.
Jesus Christ is in our midst, he, the man in whom God himself has poured
out his life for our sake and in whom our life is lifted up to God. Holy
Communion is the sign that Jesus Christ is our beginning and we may rise
up and walk into the future where we shall live. ... My brothers and sisters,
I do not want to oppress or compel any one among you when I add: Shall
we not all here present go to the Lord's Table together? Holy Communion
is offered to all, as surely as the living Jesus Christ himself is for all, as
surely as all of us are not divided in him, but belong together as brothers
and sisters, all of us poor sinners, all of us rich through his mercy. (p. 33F)
There I see a preacher acting on the Reality of the new world which was born on
Easter. We get so bogged down in checking out the human response that we lose
sight of the Reality. We forget the Ontology of the New Creation.
We wonder if someone has true faith – whether his life is morally pure, whether
one understands the contents of the faith. All the things that come subsequently
we worry about first and instead of a grand invitation to a new Reality to which
we welcome people, we erect all kinds of barriers that discourage and turn away.
© Grand Valley State University
�The First Day of the Rest of Your Life
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
Perhaps rather than keeping this Table of our Lord's here in the antiseptic
atmosphere of the sanctuary, we should move it out on the highway and pass out
bread and wine to those traveling past.
What would happen if, with authentic excitement in the face of the Reality Shift
of Easter, we went out and shared the wonderful news of what is really true!
Something has happened. The day of Salvation has dawned.
Of course, we cannot be unconcerned with the response. The new world has
dawned but it is possible to live in the death grip of the old. It is for those who are
in Christ that the new world becomes reality in their experience. Therefore in our
announcement of the new Reality we point to him. We must tell the story of
Jesus, of his life, his death and resurrection. We must invite our neighbors to
receive what has been provided and is fully offered.
And we must ask ourselves if we who believe in him have really entered into the
newness that he has created.
Again I must confess that too much of my own concentration and too much of the
traditional message of the Church deals with the death and resurrection of Jesus
in terms of forgiveness, dealing with the past and too little emphasis is placed on
the power of God to change our lives – really change our lives. Too much of my
concentration and the concentration of the Church has been on getting the lost
snatched from Hell fire and into the safety net of the Church. We want to get
people saved!!
But what does that mean? For too many of us that has meant out of Hell and into
Heaven - no matter in what state and once we get people in, we can relax a bit.
Whether we consciously operate this way or not, underneath this has been a
powerful motive in the Church's outreach. But it misses the whole point of what
we claim to be trying to do – get people "saved." Salvation's root is the same as
the root of salve. Salvation is healing. It is to bring the person toward wholeness.
God is not interested in making us pious or religious; He would make us human.
That is what He created. That is the intention of recreation.
The Church Father Ireneaus understood that long ago when he wrote,
The Glory of God is a human being fully alive.
What is it, then, to be "in Christ?" - Literally it is to be lifted up to God in the
Anointed One - the one anointed with Spirit, one full of God.
The context of this great text is illuminating. Paul's apostleship was under attack.
He is a man sold out to Jesus Christ – making him known, announcing good
news, calling all people to the new world now open to them.
© Grand Valley State University
�The First Day of the Rest of Your Life
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
We will all appear before the Judgment seat of Christ. Our lives will be laid open an awesome thought. He senses a divine imperative to carry out his apostleship,
his own life an open book. He is simply responding to what has been revealed to
him. In verse 14 Paul writes:
For the love of Christ leaves us no choice, when once we have reached the
conclusion that one man died for all and therefore all mankind has died.
His purpose in dying for all was that men, while still in life, should cease
to live for themselves, and should live for him who for their sake died and
was raised to life.
The purpose of Jesus' death and resurrection is to incorporate us in him in the
death to the old world and the rising to a whole new order of things. He goes on:
With us therefore worldly standards have ceased to count in our estimate
of any man; even if once they counted in our understanding of Christ,
they do so no longer.
Why?
The one in Christ is a new creation! The old is gone. The new has come.
Well, how does that fall out? What does that mean in the everyday affairs of an
ordinary human existence? It means a new understanding - a change of mind.
This is the meaning of repentance “Metanoia,” the Greek word, points to a
change of mind. Our thinking needs to be straightened out –
about God:
That we no more resist Him in our weakness and hostility, fearing He will
rob us of life, but rather see Him as He is - the loving One Who comes to
us in our weakness and hostility with total vulnerability in order simply to
embrace us with a mercy that knows no limit, setting us free for the first
time to be fully human.
about what it means to be fully human:
We see it in Jesus, totally open to the Father, totally open to the neighbor,
living out the unconditional love of God in covenant human relationship.
Is not to be "in Christ" to be filled with the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of God? Is it
not to live in the conscious flow of God's life, His energy, His grace, seeing
ourselves not as buckets to get filled but as channels to let flow through us the
Divine life?
To be "in Christ" is to live consciously in the Kingdom of God, knowing one is no
longer bound to live according to the Kingdom of this world. It is to be done with
© Grand Valley State University
�The First Day of the Rest of Your Life
Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
the old way of doing things - the tit for tat world of vengeance, retaliation and
vindictiveness. It is to be done with the world of selfish indulgence, of selfasserting, of defensiveness and the strenuous compulsion to justify oneself.
It was reported on national news last evening that a millionaire died and left her
two million to a few friends and casual acquaintances. She left this word with her
will. "To my children I leave nothing. I want them to receive in my death what
they gave me in my life."
Think of it! Think of dying with that kind of bitterness. You say maybe the kids
deserved it. Maybe they did. That that is the old world. According to the canons of
the old world, God should leave us in our self-constructed hells. He could write a
similar note: "I leave you in your death what you created in your life - Hell." But
He showed His love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.
I feel sorry for the poor woman. I'm sorry her children neglected her. Perhaps she
could not change them, but she could have changed her mind, her attitude. She
could have let love fill her, driving out the anger and vindication. How? By
looking to Jesus. By understanding God's love, by receiving it and then letting it
fill her heart.
Think of standing before Jesus when one's last act was an act of retaliation and
bitter resentment. Will Jesus' eyes flash with fire? No, they will be wet with tears.
Will he say, "Go to Hell"? No, he will say, "My child, my child!"
And what will the dear woman respond? "They got theirs! I’m finally happy!"?
No, but rather, "O my God, what have I done?"
Think of it, friend. The day of healing has dawned. This is not just Pollyanna talk.
Christ is risen! There has been an ontological shift in Reality. A new world is here,
the old is done away with. You don't have to live according to the canons of the
old world, filled with brokenness, pain, hate, resentment.
Look to Jesus. Know that God raised him from the dead, thereby creating a whole
new possibility. He died - one for all, once for all. He arose - one for all, once for
all. God's Spirit filled him, the Anointed One, the Christ. Now the Risen Jesus
pours out that same Spirit on all flesh - so we shall celebrate on Pentecost.
Let go. Open up; entrust your life to the Risen Lord who brings you into the
presence of the Father and gives you the Spirit by which you can be freed from
the old, brought into the new. Be healed by the love and grace and power of God
Who needs from you simply the word "Come into my heart, Come into my heart, Come into my heart, Lord Jesus.
Come in today, come in to stay. Come into my heart, Lord Jesus."
He will! And it will be the First Day of the Rest of Your Life! Amen.
© Grand Valley State University
�The First Day of the Rest of Your Life
Richard A. Rhem
Reference:
Karl Barth. Deliverance to the Captives. First published 1961.
© Grand Valley State University
Page 8
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981-2014
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Eastertide II
Scripture Text
II Corinthians 5:17, 6:2
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Karl Barth. Deliverance to the Captives, 1961.
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-0-19860406
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1986-04-06
Title
A name given to the resource
The First Day of the Rest of Your Life
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
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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
A related resource
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
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A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on April 6, 1986 entitled "The First Day of the Rest of Your Life", on the occasion of Eastertide II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: II Corinthians 5:17, 6:2.
Eastertide
Grace
Inclusive
Resurrection
Salvation
Transformation
Unconditional Love