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Baptism: A Means of Grace: A Sign of Belonging
From the series: The Sacramental Character of the Church
Genesis 17:11; Acts 2:38-39
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Pentecost II, June 21, 1992
Transcription of the spoken sermon
You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant...
Genesis 17:11
Repent, and be baptized every one of you ... For the promise is for you, for your
children... Acts 2:38-39
The conception of the Covenant Community that had characterized Israel all its
days was reaffirmed on that first Pentecost in a most beautiful way. The Covenant
Community, instituted first in Abraham and Sarah and the birth of Isaac, was to
be a special people called by God. That community was given a sign of belonging,
a right of initiation. It was the sign of circumcision, and in that Old Testament
community, Abraham received the sign at 99 years, Ishmael at 13 years (Yes,
parents there is even hope for adolescents), and if we would go to chapter 21, we
see little Isaac at 8 days, all receiving the same sign, with the same meaning: a
means of grace, a sign of belonging. This special people marked their flesh and
were set apart by God for a special purpose: to be God’s people in the world, to
bear witness to the light and the salvation that God’s grace would create and was
creating a people by which God would finally realize God’s eternal purposes of
love for the world.
On the day of Pentecost, Peter pointed to Jesus, the crucified one who was now
exalted by God and present in the power of the Spirit. He said, “This Jesus, whom
you crucified, God has raised up.” And they said, “Well, what should we do?”
Peter said, “Repent. Change your mind. Revolutionize your thinking. Recognize
that you have to turn around 180 degrees and recognize that this one that was
crucified was indeed God’s special envoy, the Word of God incarnate in your
midst. Repent and be baptized for the remission of your sins. For the promise is
to you and to your children, and all who are afar off to the extent of the world the universalizing grace of God now through the Gospel. The promise is to you.”
What promise? The covenant promise. The promise that God made to Abraham
and Sarah. “I will be a God to you and to your seed after you.” The heart of the
© Grand Valley State University
�Baptism: Sign of Grace and Belonging Richard A. Rhem
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covenant promise is the Word of God, “I will be your God and you will be my
people.” And in that Old Testament community the sign of circumcision
functioned as a mark in their flesh of special relationship to God, for special work
in the world. And in the New Testament time, at that hinge point in the life of the
people of God, Peter stood up and said, “It’s the same promise, and it means the
same thing, and so change your minds and be washed in waters of baptism. For
the promise is yours as well - and your children’s.” Baptism - a means of grace, a
sign of belonging.
I want to begin this morning to reflect with you for a week or two or three or four
on the Sacramental Character of the Church. I could do little more than introduce
the idea this morning, and probably I can do that best by giving you a bit of a
personal narrative of how I have moved through the years of my ministry to an
ever-deepening appreciation and experience of the meaningfulness of the
sacramental life of the Church. Now, as Pam said, “I am an incurable preacher.” I
can’t really help myself - that’s all I can do and I just keep on doing it and would
probably wither up and die if I couldn’t preach any more. I am reflective of the
Reformed tradition in which I have been nurtured and shaped, and educated in
the centrality of the Word of God, the centrality of the proclamation of the Word
of God, the centrality of preaching.
In the Reformed tradition we have said that table and pulpit are equally
important on the same level but, as a matter of fact, the pulpit has far ascended or
moved to the ascendancy. We are a people of the Word. We have been shaped by
preaching. We have continued to baptize adults and infants and, in our tradition,
quarterly to come to this Eucharist table. But really, the sermon has been the
thing.
I always believed in the power of preaching. I never experienced in my earlier
years a great impact of the sacraments - in our case, the celebration of baptism
and the Lord’s Supper. The Roman Catholic tradition has seven sacraments. It
doesn’t really matter. It is foolish to argue about those things, but in our
tradition, in Protestantism at large: baptism and Lord’s Supper. And we’ve
continued to do that, but I have to admit that I was leery of baptism in my earlier
years. If you would go back in the archives of the Church Herald, the house organ
of the Reformed Church in American, back in about 1961-1962 when I was at this
congregation right out of seminary (really should have been put in a cage for a
few years), but they let me loose on this congregation. A great sign of grace is that
after being gone for seven years, they even asked me back.
In those early years I wrote an article that appeared in the Church Herald
entitled, “Covenant Children Must Be Converted.” What was I worried about? I
was worried about too much reliance on covenant relationship. I was worried
about too much reliance on the sacrament of baptism, as creating a genuine and
authentic relationship to God. I wanted to say, “You’ve got to be converted.” Oh, I
used to burn up the aisles, pound the pulpit, really get excited in my youth.
© Grand Valley State University
�Baptism: Sign of Grace and Belonging Richard A. Rhem
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Now, in the springtime of my senility, (Laughter) I have come to see the sermon
as a very shaky business. The more preachers I get to know, and the more
sermons that I hear as I flip through the dial and watch the television tube, the
more distrust I have of preachers and their preaching. There is all too much
freedom given to preachers. Too much arbitrary word going out - going out with
such pomp and circumstance - with such dogmatic assurance, knowing things
that one wonders if even God knows. I don’t trust the sermon any more. I still
believe in preaching. (We are not going to take a vote on that in this congregation
this morning. (Laughter.) I’ve got a few vocational years to fulfill yet, so I want us
to take that vote in another ten years or so.)
But, I want to say to you that I am more impressed today with this baptismal font
(reaching into the font) and the water that runs down the beautiful little noses of
lovely little children. Not as a cutesy little ceremony, but as a sign of grace. As a
sign of grace. The sermon was given vivid and eloquent expression this morning
before the sermon began. The message was in the infant in arms. The infant
presented. The infant signed. The recipient of grace. And as that child grows, that
child has been marked. In our practice as we continue to deepen that experience,
we present the candle so that it might be an annual celebration, that the child
might learn to know “I have been baptized. I have been graced. I am claimed. I
belong to Jesus.” That such children will have imprinted upon their minds and in
the very fabric of their beings that they belong to God through Jesus Christ. And
that a day will come – as we had two or three weeks ago, when this whole rail was
lined up with wonderful young people – when they can say in their own person,
“Yes. I belong to Jesus. My decision. My choice.” And then we bring them here
and give them a fatter candle from this same fire and say to them, “Now, no
longer need your parents to light that candle on the anniversary of your baptism.
Now you will light that candle when you need to know the light of Jesus in the
darkness of your adolescence, in the struggles of your youth, into your
adulthood.”
The story is told of Luther who had this vivid sense of the reality of the devil that
may be apocryphal, I don’t know, but you know he threw the ink well at the devil.
And whenever he got severely tempted, Luther could say, “I have been baptized. I
have been baptized. I have been claimed. I have been owned. I am undergirded. I
am overshadowed. I am embraced.” Baptism - a means of grace.
In the early years of my ministry I trusted the sermon - my ability to convince, to
persuade, to demonstrate. Now I know that if you put a paper bag over my head,
and put a string around my neck I would be dead in a short time because all that
proceeds from my mouth is gas - deadly gas. It has no power except when God
breathes (phew) through the word. In the early days of my ministry I was worried
that children baptized might count too much on it and, therefore, I called on
them to conversion. Now I want to say to our little ones until I am blue in the
face, “You belong to Jesus. You belong to Jesus. You belong to Jesus.” Until as a
rose quietly, gently opening before the warming rays of the sun, they simply open
© Grand Valley State University
�Baptism: Sign of Grace and Belonging Richard A. Rhem
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up their lives to the God who created them and has loved them from everlasting
to everlasting.
I don’t know why in the early years of my own experience I didn’t trust my own
experience, which was filled with such nurture; I had such a home, such a church,
so that I never knew a moment in which I did not know that I belonged to God.
But now at least before it is too late for all of us here, we can come to see in
baptismal waters, in the application of the water to the child, pure grace. All is
grace. All is grace. Not in our coming forward, not in our affirmations, not in our
rigorous execution of duty. Not in our morality. Not in our status. Not in our
works. Nothing in us! All in God. All in grace. The sign of it - the infant marked
and receiving passively a sign that says, “All is God’s. All is grace. You are not
your own, but you belong to your faithful Savior Jesus Christ.”
That promise. This water. (Pouring water through his hand.) Bread. Cup. Touch.
We are bodies after all and grace is experienced when we touch - and taste - and
hug - and partake - and experience the water of regeneration. All of God. All is of
grace. Thank God we have been baptized, signed as belonging.
Graced. Graced. Graced. All is grace. Isn’t that good! Thanks be to God!
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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Event
Pentecost II
Series
The Sacramental Character of the Church
Scripture Text
Genesis 17:11, Acts 2:38-39
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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1992-06-21
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A Means of Grace, A Sign of Belonging
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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Sound
Text
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application/pdf
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An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on June 21, 1992 entitled "A Means of Grace, A Sign of Belonging", as part of the series "The Sacramental Character of the Church", on the occasion of Pentecost II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Genesis 17:11, Acts 2:38-39.
Baptism
Community of Faith
Sacrament
Universal Grace
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An Alternative To Church As Usual
Article by
Richard A. Rhem
Minister of Preaching and Theological Inquiry
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Published in
Perspectives
A Journal of Reformed Thought
September 1991, pp. 12-15
Our discussion went on for nearly two hours. The pain in ministry was expressed
in example after example. Pastors—competent, committed, working hard, even
loved and respected by the community—were nonetheless seeing little or no
church growth; the traditional congregation in instance after instance was dying.
I was one of only two pastors in the circle; the others served the church in the
academy. Finally, the group leader turned to me and said, “In all of this
discussion about the pain of ministry and grim prospects for the church, you’ve
not said anything.”
It was true; I had said nothing. I am not unaware of heartbreak, disillusionment,
and despair in the ranks of clergy colleagues, frustration among laity, unrest in
congregations, but the experience is foreign to me. I have had quite the opposite
experience: delight in ministry; the joy of growth; a flourishing community rich
in gifts, supportive, positive in spirit—making ministry for me a challenging,
fulfilling vocation. Two decades of pastoral experience in the congregation I
presently serve have seen the numbers multiply nearly five times over. The giving
has grown proportionately, the site and facility expanded, and a large team is now
engaged in creative ministry. Now, as I enter my fourth decade of pastoral
ministry, I do so with greater zest, confidence, and joy than when ordaining
hands set me aside for this task.
I had listened and felt the hurt. I knew I had no answer, no formula for success,
no quick fix to make the pain go away and turn it all around. Further, I, too,
wonder about the future of the institutional forms of the church which, not only
at the local level, but even more critically at the level of denominational
structures, are experiencing sickness unto death. I felt disinclined to give some
triumphalistic testimony of success in ministry.
Someone suggested I write a piece explaining what people are fleeing when they
come to Christ Community Church. I resist that idea lest it appear that large
numbers have joined from other congregations, which really is not the case. Yet,
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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there are many among us who have fled the institutional church at some point;
they have simply dropped out, despairing of finding an authentic spirituality and
sensing that the church was a source of manipulation and coercion, imposing
shame and reinforcing guilt, rather than offering release from it. They found the
church to be ever so much like a dysfunctional family.
Others have fled the reactionary posture of the church on contemporary issues,
the slowness of the church to address matters of human sexuality, feminist
concerns, and concerns for justice and peace. Weary of fighting, waging battles
about questions on which contemporary society has reached a responsible
consensus, some have left the church with bitterness and cynicism. Yet,
eventually the hunger for spiritual reality sets them on a quest and many have
found a home and kindred seekers in this community.
We have welcomed many others who sense they had been cut off, rejected. The
human situation is messy. At some point most folks color outside the lines;
traditional expectations are shattered. And, too often, precisely at that point, the
church is awkward, daring not to reach out and embrace lest it appear to sanction
the life beyond the pale. If not in word, perhaps in body language, a person
stained with grit picked up along the way senses he or she threatens accepted
morality and the proper mode of behavior.
I like to speak of Christ Community as “an alternative to church as usual.” Over
and over again, witness is borne to the tangible experience of “something
different.” To flesh out the ingredients that create the alternative is not an easy
task, and I hesitate even to try, lest, defining too specifically, that elusive spirit be
lost, becoming one more “formula for success.”
What follows renders no formula, and what is proffered comes with the
acknowledgment that Christ Community is fragile, flawed, and riddled with
weaknesses. It is simply the story of a pastor and a congregation over two
decades.
The story actually begins in 1960 when I became the pastor of this congregation
for the first time after seminary graduation. During those first four years of
preaching and pastoral work, the theology with which I entered the ministry was
tempered by concrete experience.
Mary was a bright, lovely high school girl. She was one of those exceptions to the
rule; her parents had nothing to do with the church, but she did—on her own. She
was in worship, church school, and youth groups. She had a significant spiritual
experience, was baptized, made a good confession. She was radiant and I was her
spiritual guardian. For summer work, she left the community to join a friend
whose mother was a strong Mormon. When she returned, she was in spiritual
turmoil. I cited the Scriptures; she the Book of Mormon; two authorities and an
impasse. I lost her and I was shattered.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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In that experience, I came to see that my every claim was banked on the person’s
accepting the authority of the Bible as the exclusive source of saving truth.
Otherwise, I was stumped. The foundation of my theological system was
beginning to crumble.
Moving to a conservative congregation in the East, I began to research the nature
of biblical authority. At that time, the Reformed Church cooperated in the
publication of a new curriculum for church school, and it was introduced by study
papers that dealt with the questions of Scripture’s normative function in the
church and scriptural interpretation. I became convinced that my own understanding of biblical authority was untenable; if I were to continue to preach, I
needed a new basis upon which to do it. Evangelical passion was possible for me
only if it could be coupled with intellectual integrity. I needed to find “my gospel”
or I knew I would never be able to preach with power and authority, with a note
of authenticity.
That was the existential quest that led me to pursue graduate study in the
Netherlands. Hendrikus Berkhof, then professor of dogmatics at the University of
Leiden, agreed to become my mentor in a doctoral program in which my major
area was the history of dogma. Hearing my questions and sensing the nature of
my quest, his first assignment for me was to read Barth’s Church Dogmatics, Vol.
I.1-2, The Doctrine of the Word of God. I was amazed; Barth took the Scriptures
seriously, as seriously as I had ever experienced. I thought to myself, one day
conservative Christian thinkers will run to Barth for refuge, if ever they discover
the dynamic of this great mind and heart. I read with a voracious appetite. Pages
522 and 523 of that volume lie open before me now, dog-eared, as much underlined as not, margins full of my jottings as I struggled to understand Barth. Barth
writes,
The Reformers’ doctrine of inspiration is an honoring of God, and of the
free grace of God. The statement that the Bible is the Word of God is on
this view no limitation, but an unfolding of the perception of the
sovereignty in which the Word of God condescended to become flesh for
us in Jesus Christ, and a human word in the witness of the prophets and
apostles as witnesses to His incarnation. (p. 522)
As the passion and vitality of the sixteenth-century Reformers’ experience was
replaced by the second-hand experience of their spiritual heirs, there was an
effort to establish certitude of faith through a high doctrine of inspiration. Barth
contends that the statement “the Bible is the Word of God” was transformed from
a statement about the free grace of God into a statement about the nature of the
Bible “as exposed to human inquiry brought under human control.”
Barth goes on to point out that the eventual historical investigation of the Bible in
the Enlightenment period was simply a logical consequence of viewing the Bible
as under human control rather than as available as the instrument of God’s
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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revelation by God’s free grace. He gives a thorough review of the history of the
elevation of the doctrine of inspiration. I found myself in Barth’s description:
But ever more clearly and definitely a certainty was sought and found
quite different from the spiritual certainty which could satisfactorily have
been reached on these lines, and which on these lines would have been
recognized as the only certainty but also as real certainty. What was
wanted was a tangible certainty and not a divine, a certainty of work and
not solely of faith. In token of this change there arose the doctrine of
inspiration of the high orthodoxy of the 17th century. (Ibid., p. 524)
And the consequences?
Should there be found even the minutest error in the Bible, then it is no
longer wholly the Word of God, and the inviolability of its authority is
destroyed. (Ibid.)
Barth rejected the attempts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to make
the Scriptures the object of historical investigation as one might investigate any
literary piece, and he rejected, as well, the attack on the seventeenth-century’s
supernaturalism. He insisted,
We must attack it rather because its supernaturalism is not radical
enough. The intention behind it [seventeenth-century supernaturalism]
was ultimately only a single and in its own way very “naturalistic”
postulate that the bible must offer us a divina et infallibilis historia; that it
must not contain human error in any of its verses; that in all its parts and
the totality of its words and letters as they are before us it must express
divine truth in a form in which it can be established and understood; that
under the human words it must speak to us the Word of God in such a way
that we can at once hear and read it as such with the same obviousness
and directness with which we can hear and read other human words....
The Bible was now grounded upon itself apart from the mystery of Christ
and the Holy Ghost. It became a “paper Pope,” and unlike the living Pope
in Rome it was wholly given up into the hands of its interpreters. It was no
longer a free and spiritual force, but an instrument of human power. And
in this form the Bible became so like the holy book of other religions, for
which something similar had always been claimed, that the superiority of
its claim could not be asserted in relation to them or to the many
achievements of the human spirit generally.... The intention of
establishing the authority of the Bible along these lines was to avoid
historical relativism, but it opened up the way to it, and theology and
Church did not hesitate for a moment to tread that way. In content the
17th century doctrine of inspiration asserted things which cannot be
maintained in face of a serious reading and exposition of what the Bible
itself says about itself, and in face of an honest appreciation of the facts of
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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its origin and tradition. Therefore the postulate on which 17th century man
staked everything proved incapable of fulfillment (Ibid., pp. 525-26)
I was reading my own spiritual biography; the existential pastoral experience that
had exposed the vulnerability of my own theological position and triggered the
serious search for a new basis for preaching and pastoral care led me to the
discovery that I had fallen into the very pitfall against which Barth warned.
I struggled. Berkhof watched me dangle. I wanted him to give me answers, to
solve the mystery of biblical authority. He only smiled and let me keep working.
He did tell me he, too, had walked the path I was on, but I would have to find my
own way. He was not forthcoming with answers but was most helpful in aiding
me to clarify the questions.
I remember suggesting I should write my dissertation on this matter. I was
convinced there would be little theological progress on any front if in the RCA we
were not freed from a doctrine of inspiration that, for all the protestations, looked
suspiciously like the seventeenth-century version Barth attributed to the
orthodox who lost the vitality of faith by lusting for certainty they could control.
He responded simply, “Do you realize what they will do to you?”
My dissertation subject did not develop in the area of biblical authority, but I did
come to an understanding that enabled me to remain under the authority of
Scripture as Word of God while recognizing as well the human nature of that
witness and the continuing work of God’s Spirit making the witness the Word of
God here and now.
Just as I was forging a new foundation for preaching and pastoral care, I
experienced a personal crisis, a painful divorce and breakup of my family. It
seemed my future ministry was in jeopardy just when I felt more strongly than
ever the desire to engage in the ministry of the Word. Then the congregation I
first served, which is the Spring Lake, Michigan, congregation I still serve, invited
me to return, an act of grace and, for me, the greatest confirmation of my call to
ministry I have ever experienced.
Grace became a tangible human experience. Grace was incarnate in this people.
They touched me and I knew the touch of God. They took me in, supported me in
the care of my three small children, believed in me, and through them, I was
healed. That took courage, for in 1971 that was a radical thing to do. That is where
it all started, I believe, for my experience became a paradigm for the ministry of
grace in this congregation.
Two decades of exhilarating pastoral ministry have issued from a mediation of
grace from people to pastor. The conjunction of intensive theological reflection
and concrete human experience created the occasion for a congregation to
become an alternative to church as usual. That combination continues to be
fruitful as we strive to live into our name, Christ Community, a name we chose in
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
1971 to express a new vision and to create a new image. Newness did not come
without cost, without a willingness to let go of congregational patterns which had
grown and developed over 101 years of life in the Spring Lake community. The
name change signaled a willingness to die to what had been, trusting the God of
resurrection to create something new.
A theological vision, hammered out of the dialogue with Scripture and concrete
human experience, is at the center of our life. For me, human experience has
driven me to theological reflection, and theological investigation has freed me to
proclaim good news with evangelical passion and intellectual integrity.
The vision that shapes us could not have evolved had I not come to a new
understanding of Scripture, as indicated above. I believe Scripture is normative,
God’s Spirit moving the human author to witness to the “happening” of God’s
revelation. Scripture arises out of the history of Israel and Jesus, the locus God in
freedom chose to unveil God’s eternal purpose for Creation, the “place” in which
God’s grace has come to clear demonstration.
But, the story goes on. Just as the biblical witness is the interpretation and
reinterpretation in light of ongoing historical experience of living under the reign
of God, so the church keeps alive the story of Israel and Jesus Christ, but must
constantly re-frame the given story, casting it in new perspective, as it moves
through history’s unfolding landscape. Any expression of Christian faith must be
shaped through dialogue with that witness. The Bible is the inspired preaching of
the community of faith, but preaching in the power of the Spirit is today, as well,
Word of God. God’s revelation in Israel and Jesus is listened to in the context of
concrete human experience. Revelation “happens” as Barth insisted, and it still
happens.
Traditionally, the Scriptures have been used in an authoritarian manner, laying
the “then” over “now” in a prescriptive way. One preaches “correct beliefs” and is
locked into specific practices of life and worship. We are seeking rather to
experience God in concrete human experience illumined by Scripture so that our
faith and our life connect.
In preaching and teaching I have cultivated openness, affirmed diversity, and
encouraged respect for a broad spectrum of opinion. A closed belief system
disallows the possibility of a full human experience, which is always developing,
to remain connected to one’s authentic spiritual perceptions—which cannot help
but receive the impact of present experience. If an external rule holds absolute
authority, then I cannot honestly evaluate my own concrete human experience. I
have the answer before I can formulate the question. Where such biblicism is the
rule, the gulf between “correct belief” and actual experience widens. Subscription
to a doctrinal system that is absolutized forces compartmentalization of religious
belief from everyday experience of the world and life.
© Grand Valley State University
�An Alternative to Church As Usual
Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
If there is a center to the theological understanding that shapes our total
existence as a people, it is the theology of grace. Out of the barrenness of Sarah’s
womb (Gen. 11:30) God began a movement with particular focus in order to
realize the universal purpose expressed in creation. A theology of creation
embraces the covenant of grace initiated with Abraham, through whom God
would bring grace to all nations. God’s electing love found expression in the
covenant community, not to the exclusion of the many, but on behalf of the
many.
If I would point to one theological insight that has transformed my preaching and
released me to embrace all who come and, consequently, has formed the mind
and heart of this community, it is the universal extent of God’s grace. I will not
argue universalism; I think when we come to “isms” we generally know too much;
we become ideological. But that God’s grace is of far greater extent than it has
been traditionally understood is a deep conviction and it has changed my
ministry.
The limits of grace can be debated. Christians differ. But that to which I witness
regarding my own experience of ministry and the tone quality of the congregation
cannot be denied. It is rooted in a theology of grace that takes historical shape in
Israel and the church and embraces creation.
A profound sense of God’s grace brings one a very great freedom, freedom from
fear and defensiveness, freedom from the anxiety of what the future holds for
human development, scientific discovery, or philosophical formulation. Grace
brings freedom and creates openness. There are no questions we dare not ask, no
perspectives we fear to bring to expression.
The people have joined me in a pilgrimage of faith. There is no “Christ
Community line.” They trust me and give me freedom to probe and test, and I
give them freedom to agree or disagree. I have continued to do serious theological
study and I offer classes in theology. For example, we have studied Berkhof’s
Christian Faith, Küng’s On Being a Christian, Does God Exist?, and A Theology
for the Third Millenium, along with David Tracy, Charles Davis, Edward
Schillebeeckx, and many others. I always let the congregation know where I am
investigating, what questions are pressing to me, and in which direction I am
moving.
We do theology together—indirectly. Out of concrete human experience, the stuff
of our present experience of life in family, community, and world, we think
theologically. The biblical story illumines experience, and experience elicits new
light from the Scriptures. Our theology is not a static given; it is in process, an
ongoing adventure of seeing our life in God’s light, a joyful and serious endeavor
of discovering what it means to live before the face of God.
By seeking to define and clarify the questions that move our human existence,
rather than claiming to have answers, we give space for a broad spectrum of
© Grand Valley State University
�An Alternative to Church As Usual
Richard A. Rhem
Page 8
persons to join the journey. The openness of the community creates freedom to
be open to any contemporary quest for meaning, for transcendence. Those who
are empty and rootless are not impressed if handed a ready-made answer before
their question is sensitively heard.
The recent widespread interest in the work in mythology by Joseph Campbell,
popularized by the interview with Bill Moyers and published under the title The
Power of Myth, is just one example of the spiritual quest of multitudes who have
given up on the institutional church as a place where their quest might be
satisfied. What responsibility do we bear for their despair of finding in the church
some clue to spiritual reality, to the experience of God? Secure in the grace of
God, our faith is not fragile. When I encounter the defensiveness and fear so
common in our churches today, I am amazed at the lack of confidence in the
truth of biblical faith as though it need be protected from the challenge of new
insights and angles of vision.
God’s grace—before it, I am in awe, humbled, full of gratitude. I rest in it and feel
a freedom to let God be God, to entrust my flawed self and fallible understanding
to God s mercy. I don’t know why some experience anguish in ministry and I have
known such joy. I know all is Grace; therefore boasting is excluded, but so is
despair.
There is enough pain in the church to go around, and simplistic solutions and
pious clichés only deepen the woundedness. Our story is simply a story of trust,
resting in the good and gracious God, letting go of yesterday’s formulations if
they no longer connect with today’s experience; letting go of church structures
that have outlived the purpose for which they were created.
Maybe the truth is that the institutional church has to die. Maybe our pain stems
from our desperate attempts to rescue structures which are warring against the
larger purposes of the Sovereign One. Maybe our techniques and promotional
schemes, our growth strategies and evangelism campaigns are human control
measures borrowed from the marketing strategy of a consumer society. We may
have to let the church die, but God is not dead.
Reference:
Karl Barth. Church Dogmatics, Vol. I.1-2, The Doctrine of the Word of God. First
published 1957; T & T Clark Ltd., 1961.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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English
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Sound
Text
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
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References
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Vol I, 1961.
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RA-4-19910902
Date
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1991-09-02
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Text
Title
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An Alternative to Church as Usual
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Perspectives: A Journal of Reformed Thought
Creator
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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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eng
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Article created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on September 2, 1991 entitled "An Alternative to Church as Usual", it appeared in Perspectives, September 1991, pp. 18-21. Tags: Authority of Scripture, Faith Community, Church, Universal Grace, Inclusive, Spiritual Journey. Scripture references: Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Vol I, 1961..
Format
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application/pdf
Authority of Scripture
Church
Faith Community
Inclusive
Spiritual Journey
Universal Grace
-
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Text
At Our Death – No Fear of Judgment
From the Lenten sermon series: Christian Hope in Life and Death
Text: John 5: 24-25
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Midweek Lenten Service, March 11, 1987
Transcription of the spoken sermon
I want to begin this evening a series of brief messages on the theme “Christian
Hope in Life and in Death.” And in so doing, I want to probe some of the biblical
teaching around the point of our death and the nature of that experience that we
will pass through at the moment of death. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is that great
positive announcement of what God has done in Christ for the salvation of the
world. The Gospel, in its radical announcement in the New Testament, is an
announcement of an accomplished reality which is announced by the Apostle in
order that people might simply open up their lives to it.
Oftentimes in the history of the Church, down through the centuries, salvation
has been made something that has been offered as a possibility, sort of dangled in
front of a person, almost used, on occasion, as a kind of manipulative motivator
in order to get people to toe a certain line or to mouth a certain confession, but
salvation as a reality has often been held out as something to be grasped and
appropriated. But a line has been drawn, a line around the redeemed with a very
clear demarcation between those who are in and those who are out, and
therefore, the idea of a final judgment or a continuing judgment, even in the
midst of history, has been used often in the Church to create fear and, at its
worst, even terror. Religious people have often been people who have been
controlled by that fear of the end, and religion has been as much a binder of the
human spirit as it has been a liberator of the human spirit. Indeed, I would not be
surprised if we could actually examine the annals of history and had a profile on
every human person that has ever passed through this way, if we might not find
that religion has been a burden to be borne rather than that which lifted the soul
and brought a person into the freedom of the grace of God. And the idea of
judgment has been one of the great tools that have been used in the religious
community to control, and fear has been a negative motivation that has often
been used in the church.
© Grand Valley State University
�At Our Death – No Fear of Judgment
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
It has been my own personal pilgrimage that we have moved from a response of
fear to a response of love and joy in the presence of grace. And, as I have done
that personally, I have found my own spiritual life enriched and I have found my
ministry enriched. You don't find a lot of fire and brimstone preached around
here, and you do not have often held before you in vivid fashion the leaping
flames of Hell, and I suspect that you probably won't as long as I'm around,
because I am, more and more, overwhelmed by the radical nature of God's act in
Jesus Christ by which He has brought about redemption of the world, and I see
that as an accomplished fact which has wider and broader implications than
those that seem to be evidenced within the narrow circle of the Church. I believe
that God's salvation of the world has been accomplished through Jesus Christ,
but I think that in our traditional understanding of salvation in the Church, we
have been far too narrow as to the scope, the breadth and the depth of that saving
act in Jesus Christ.
Now, it has often been the case that people who have moved away from that
fearful portrait of judgment and that threat of Hell have moved in a reactionary
way to the denial of the reality of judgment and the seriousness of human
experience and the testing nature of human life. I want to avoid that kind of
reaction in my own pilgrimage and so, as I have been probing these things
personally in my own life, I have begun to share them with you in preaching. A
year ago in December we talked about Heaven and Hell and Judgment and
Purgatory, and that was only the beginning, but I have continued to study the
theme and reflect upon it, and so during these Wednesday evenings in Lent, I
want to seek to share with you from the Word of God some conviction to which I
have come which I hope will be helpful to you.
I am convinced that there are many questions in the hearts and minds of God's
people about these themes and, in the Church in general; often not very much is
said about it. We have been a little bit embarrassed about the subject of Hell, a
little embarrassed about the subject of Judgment, we have oftentimes, in
becoming rather uncertain of some of the biblical images, backed away from it
and just left it alone, and yet I find that we really still have within our hearts –
educated, sophisticated, suave people of the last quarter of the 20th century – we
still wonder what lies before us, what is human destiny? What kind of an
appointment do we have with God? What has God done in Jesus Christ, and what
will be the implications of that for the whole world, for the whole human race,
and for me?
Well, with that as kind of a broad-stroke introduction, let me say that tonight I
simply want to say to you that at our death there need be no fear of judgment. But
the first thing I want to say is that there will be judgment, and that is clear
throughout the scriptures. In the 5th chapter of John's Gospel, which is really a
very difficult passage, – I read part of it this evening – in the 24th verse we have
these words,
© Grand Valley State University
�At Our Death – No Fear of Judgment
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
In very truth, anyone who gives heed to what I say and puts his trust in
him who has sent me, has hold of eternal life, and does not come up for
judgment, but has already passed from death into life.
Now, that statement would seem to say that judgment is a thing of the past, for
the one who has come to believe in Jesus Christ, there is no condemnation.
One has passed from death to life. That's a very common theme in John's Gospel,
and it makes a very important point, which we ought to take to our hearts and
minds and that is this: that, in coming to God through Jesus Christ, we have
moved beyond the fear of judgment, we have moved beyond condemnation. Paul
said it another way - in the 8th chapter of Romans,
There is now therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.
In John's Gospel the theme of eternal life is dealt with to great extent, and it
means the present possession of a qualitative dimension of life which is the gift of
God's grace. Eternal life has often been popularly spoken of as something that
begins after our death, as though we live now, die and then come into the
possession of eternal life. That is not biblical teaching. John's Gospel is very clear
- Jesus' words here are explicit. The one who believes, who puts his trust in him
who sent me, has (present tense) hold of eternal life, and does not come up for
judgment, but has already passed from death to life. There is a state of spiritual
death; coming to God through Jesus Christ beings one into a state of spiritual life.
To come to life through Jesus Christ is to move beyond the threat or the fear of
condemnation.
But then you take the passage we read from Paul's letter to the Corinthians, the
5th chapter, and in that chapter Paul speaks about judgment, and he speaks
about judgment to those at Corinth who had committed their lives to Jesus
Christ. He says "We must all have our lives laid open before the tribunal of Christ
where each must receive what is due him for his conduct in the body, good or
bad." Now, how do you put Jesus' word from John 5:24 together with Paul's
words in Cor. 5:10? Jesus said he is passed from death to life and had moved
beyond judgment. Paul says our lives must be laid open before the tribunal of
Christ where each must receive what is due him, according to his conduct.
Both are true, obviously. In the one case, Jesus speaks about coming into that
condition or that state spoken of as eternal life, which is a qualitative change of
life, an existence in relationship, in conscious relationship with God through
Jesus Christ. For such a person, there is no fear of judgment. Yet, Paul speaks
about the judgment of Christian people and, in this case, he says our lives will be
laid bare before the tribunal of Christ. So, we have now a testing, an examination
that God's people will go through in the moment of their death. On the one hand,
Jesus speaks about no fear of condemnation. But, on the other hand, Paul speaks
about that testing or sifting that we will go through at our death. And both are
true.
© Grand Valley State University
�At Our Death – No Fear of Judgment
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
The subject this evening is, “At Our Death, No Fear of Judgment.” No fear of
judgment in terms of being turned away or turned out, or condemned. But
judgment, to be sure. Judgment that we need not fear, in fact, judgment that we
ought to seek. For when we reflect on our lives, don't we really know that we are
people responsible and accountable, and don't we really want to know the truth
about ourselves before the face of God? What is it to belong to God through Jesus
Christ and experience his grace, if it is not to free us up to want to have our lives
just that open in His presence? At the moment of our death, no fear of judgment,
but judgment, to be sure, in the sense of a testing and a sifting of the character of
our lives. And, indeed, that not only should not strike fear into our hearts, that
should give us great consolation. For, not only in our own lives, but as we survey
the whole course of human history with all of its horror and its tragedy and its
suffering and its evil - isn't it a necessary and desirable thing that somehow or
other wrongs will be righted, and justice will be done? Don't we really want to be
transparent before the face of Jesus Christ, and is that not what the biblical
theme, the New Testament theme of judgment is all about? There is now no
condemnation to those who are in Christ. That's behind us. But there is that
laying open of our lives before the tribunal of Christ.
Now that makes my living every day a very serious matter. Not that it strikes
terror in my life, but what it does do is cause me to seek to be a person of
integrity, of honesty, of honor, and to the extent that I know that I fail, and to the
extent that I know that I'm caught up in life itself where things are not black and
white, but various shades of gray, where I not only deliberately do that which is
wrong, but sometimes get caught up in the web of that which is wrong, do we not
really in the depths of our being long for that day when we will know as we are
known, and our lives will be laid open? That is not a cause for fear, but an
encouraging cause of hope, for we believe in the God Who takes us seriously and
Who takes human history seriously, and Who has a redeeming purpose in the
midst of our history, and Who has a destiny designed for us wherein His kingdom
will fully come, a kingdom of righteousness and joy and peace.
And so, our lives will be laid bare before the tribunal of Christ, and the conduct of
every day is a part of the ingredient of that which will be revealed. At our death,
judgment without fear, because the judge is Jesus, our Saviour.
Now, you know you've heard me say that God is not through with us at our death,
and I'll be coming to that on subsequent Wednesday nights. That moment of
death must be a fascinating moment when, in a moment, we will understand both
the wonder of grace and the record of who we have become. No cause for fear, but
a fascinating appointment before the judge of all the earth, who is none other
than Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world. He who loved us and gave himself for
us and has prepared for us that place in eternal fellowship with God through that
which he has accomplished for us in his death and resurrection.
© Grand Valley State University
�At Our Death – No Fear of Judgment
Richard A. Rhem
At our death, judgment without fear, for the judge is our Saviour, who in a
moment will give us bread and wine, his very life flowing into our lives.
What wondrous love is this, indeed!
© Grand Valley State University
Page 5
�
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
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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
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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
Midweek Lenten Service
Series
Christian Hope in Life and Death
Scripture Text
II Corinthians 5:19
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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KII-01_RA-0-19870311
Date
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1987-03-11
Title
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At Our Death - No Fear of Judgment
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 March 11, 1987 entitled "At Our Death - No Fear of Judgment", as part of the series "Christian Hope in Life and Death", on the occasion of Midweek Lenten Service, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: II Corinthians 5:19.
Judgment
Lent
Transforming Love
Universal Grace
-
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PDF Text
Text
Conversion: From Religion to Grace
From the series: The One Covenant of Grace – The Salvation of the World
Text: Philippians 2:7
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
October 11,, 1987
Transcription of the spoken sermon
But whatever gain I had I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Philippians 2:7
God has determined from all eternity that He will save us, that He will redeem
the world. He made a pre-decision. He decided, not only to create, but also that
He would redeem, and we noted last week that that pre-decision is spoken of
sometimes in the scripture as predestination - simply the determination of God to
save, an eternal plan and purpose by which God will become the Saviour of the
world. And in the execution of that plan, within the course of human history, He
chose a special people, elected a people through whom to execute that plan and
purpose, and in binding Himself to that people specially chosen, He entered into
covenant relationship. And that covenant relationship with the people specially
chosen was in order, again, to execute His eternal plan and purpose, to send that
people specially chosen, bound to Him in covenant, to all the world to share good
news and to announce the grace and mercy of God for all people. That, in a
nutshell, is what the one story of the Bible is all about, and there's one covenant
of grace that is witnessed to throughout the whole of the scripture.
It is grace in the Old Testament where God called Abraham and bound Himself to
him. Abraham believed God and became the recipient of the grace of God.
Throughout the whole Old Testament it was a story of a special people, specially
graced. God bound Himself to the nation in the event of the Exodus and
reiterated the promise that He had spoken to Abraham, "I will be your God, you
will be my people." A special people in order that, through that people, all
families of the earth might be blessed and the light and the salvation of the
eternal God might be witnessed to in the midst of history. Jeremiah the prophet,
seeing the dismal results of that mission in the life of Israel and Judah, said,
Behold the days are coming when God will bind Himself in new covenant
and in that day it will not be a matter of external religion, but it will be
© Grand Valley State University
�Conversion: From Religion to Grace
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
something of the heart, the law written within the heart when everyone
will know the Lord.
Jeremiah knew that the whole national scheme of things was falling into
shambles, but he also believed that the eternal plan and purpose of God would
not fail, that God would continue binding Himself to a people in order that,
through a people, there might be light for all people. The choice of a few on behalf
of the many. The choice, not simply to salvation, but to mission for the whole
world in order that the whole world might come to know that God is gracious,
that God is a Saviour.
Paul was a son of that old covenant, and the Judaism of that first century had
become a religion that had fallen into legalism and moralism as we know all too
well from the New Testament witness. And yet, there was still that zeal, that
determination and that dedication to God, which we see in the life of a Paul. Paul,
as he tells his own story, tells of a life before he met Jesus Christ that was full of
religion, that was full of pious practice, that was full of ritual rectitude, that was
full of legal morality, that was full of passion, seriousness, dedication and
commitment. But the paradox which Paul discovered was that his very religious
intensity was the means by which he was cutting himself off from experiencing
the love and the grace of God.
Paul, writing to the Church at Phillipi, is carrying on a controversy by those who
were disturbing those converts that he had brought to Jesus Christ. Those who
had come after him said, "Jesus, yes, but also Moses. Jesus, yes, but also the
ceremonies of the law, and all of the trappings of religion." Ritual purity, legal
rectitude, all of the embroiderment that so easily attaches itself to the
relationship of the person to God. Paul had cut through all of that. Paul had had
all of that cut through in the moment in which he was confronted by the Risen
and Ascended Lord Jesus Christ.
You know his story - On his way to throw into prison those who named the name
of Jesus, he was overcome with a brilliant light and heard the voice of Jesus. He
yielded himself to that voice, becoming the Apostle of Jesus Christ and the great
champion of the radical grace of God. Paul was one of the few figures in history
who understood the radicality of the grace of God. Paul was converted. Paul was
turned around in his tracks. Paul did a 180° twist. Paul's whole existence was
transformed in a moment, in the moment that he looked into the face of Jesus
Christ, and came to experience the grace - the grace of God in Jesus Christ, his
Lord.
This morning I want you to see that that one covenant of grace which is the one
story of the Bible, which is of cosmic scope and of eternal dimension, that
includes the new heaven and the new earth and all God's people, is nonetheless
just as individualizing and just as personal as your name. For it is one thing to
rejoice in the fact that God is a saviour, that God has determined to renew and to
redeem the world, that God has, from all eternity, loved and gives Himself in
© Grand Valley State University
�Conversion: From Religion to Grace
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
love, binding Himself to the creation that He called into being. But finally, what
we all need to know is that we are loved, and that He knows our name.
The call to turn to God through Jesus Christ comes to us this morning, not as a
call to those beyond the bounds of the Church, not to the nonreligious, not to the
nonbeliever. We do that. We have a mission to the world. We do proclaim to
people everywhere the love and grace of God. But the interesting thing about the
call to conversion this morning as it comes to expression through Paul is that it is
the call to conversion to people who are religious, for whom religion has become
their security project by which they set themselves off from God.
That's the interesting thing about religion. Religion walks a narrow line. It can be
a blessing, or it can be a burden. It can be freeing and liberating, or it can be
binding and depressing. And I'm not sure but I suspect that religion has done
more damage in the world than it's done good, and I'm not sure, but I believe that
a person is better off with none of it than with a dose of a bad variety of it,
because religion can cramp the human spirit. Rather than liberate, it can oppress;
rather than inspire, it can dehumanize; it can make a person broken, cowering,
crushed. It can be the heaviest burden that one can ever be called upon to bear.
Paul understood that. He was deadly serious, deeply committed and passionately
involved in the practice of religion. And remember this, too, for Paul this was not
some kind of dark, degenerate paganism. Paul was a son of the covenant. Paul
lived in the light of the covenant of Israel; he lived in the light of the Torah; he
had all of the privilege that was accorded that special people to whom God had
specially bound Himself. When we speak of Paul, we're speaking of one who
served the true and living God, and what we have to see with Paul was that what
he needed was not to believe that there was a God rather than no God; what he
had to come to experience was not that he had to turn from his secular life and
begin to be serious about spiritual things. The interesting thing about Paul is that
he was all tied up in the true religion, in the religion of the true God, in the
revelation of the God to Israel. What he had to learn was that all of his religion
was his "self-project" by which he was securing himself, justifying himself,
seeking to validate himself over against God, to guarantee his life, to secure his
existence. That probably is the greatest temptation and the greatest peril to
religious people.
It's difficult to be the Church. It's difficult to be a society like we are, where
religion is practiced, where it has become institutionalized, where it has taken on
forms and structures, where it has developed a liturgy, a ritual life, a polity, a
form of government; where it has all of the trappings that any human institution
has. In such a situation where people are gathered together in the name of God in
the religious institution, there comes that subtle temptation to trust the
institution, to trust the practice, to trust the exercise of religion and to lose sight
of the fact that all of that is only so much scaffolding; all of that is so much
instrument or means for the end of coming to experience the grace of God.
© Grand Valley State University
�Conversion: From Religion to Grace
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
Paul came to realize two very important things, which he shares with the congregation at Phillipi. He says that religion, first of all, or the grace of God, the
experience of salvation, is not a matter of status. If you want to talk credentials,
let me tell you my credentials, he says. He was an Israelite, so he belonged to that
special people who had been specially chosen, who had experienced the electing
love of God. More than that, he says, I was circumcised on the eighth day; I was
ritually proper. Once in a while I sense someone who gets very nervous about
being ritually pure. What if we do it this way, or what if we don't do it this way, or
what if this is not the process we follow, as though the rituals that we have
established have some kind of magic about them. What if the communion is
distributed by, God forbid, Deacons rather than Elders? Or if the bread should be
broken by an Elder rather than a Minister of the Word or, to be ridiculous, what if
the service were at 9 o'clock rather than 9:15?
And we may laugh, but religion has that terrifying power of binding people into
structures and forms that become absolutized and eternalized, and finally
become the things that are trusted, rather than recognizing that all of it could go.
All of it could go! We must simply rest in the grace of God, Who needs none of it!
And just the time we get so proper and so proud and so arrogant is the time that
the Spirit of God needs to shatter all of our forms. Paul was circumcised on the
eighth day; so what? His religion was burden, not a means of access to the smile
of God. The tribe of Benjamin - that's like saying the family of the Rockefellers,
the elite, something a little special. Paul says, No. To be in the grace of God is not
a matter of status.
But, neither is it a matter of achievement. If it were a matter of achievement,
would Paul have needed to find grace in the face of Jesus Christ? No, because
there wasn't much that God could do for Paul. He had achieved it all. Hebrew of
Hebrew-speaking parents. That means Jews of the dispersion living way off in
Tarsus but still speaking Hebrew. That's how serious was Paul's home about the
tradition. Still speaking Hebrew. As to the Law, a Pharisee. There were never
more than 6,000 of them. There were never many rough and ready religious
souls to be able to keep the discipline of the Pharisee. The Pharisee gets bad press
in the New Testament and we don't like them very well, but they were serious
people. They were the cream of the crop. Not many of us here in Christ
Community would qualify, a funny church such as we are! We take anybody. Not
many Pharisees could come out of a bunch like you. As to zeal, persecuting the
Church. No "live and let live" with Paul. No nonchalance. No easy tolerance. Paul
went to haul into prison those who dared to name the name of Jesus whom the
likes of Paul had crucified because Jesus put in peril their religion by which they
were justifying themselves. And he says as far as the Law is concerned, blameless.
Human achievement! Paul was no piker, but he wraps it all up in one little
package and tosses it on the dung hill, literally. Translate it more colloquially for
yourselves. That's what it was worth as a means of finding peace with God.
© Grand Valley State University
�Conversion: From Religion to Grace
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
A person whose religion is a matter of ought, heavy ought, duty, obligation,
onerous grinding out that which has to be done, all the time creating hostility
within and repressed anger that can never come out to God and so comes out in
ugliness to everybody else - all of that, Paul says, is to no avail. "One day I met
Jesus." Paul wasn't converted from darkness to light, from unbelief to belief, from
nonreligion to religion. Paul was converted from religion to grace, to the grace of
God Who says, "How come you're bustin' your buns, Buddy? I've always loved
you. Why don't you relax and let me put my arms around you? And then,
incidentally, tell the story."
"I considered all of that rubbish for the sake of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord,"
says Paul. His whole existence transformed. His life changed. Paul converted,
realizing what God intended in the first place with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob
and Israel. And what had happened in Israel happened in the Church over and
over again so that a voice like Paul's arises just once in a while and for not very
long because the cry of radical grace does not build strong institutions where
people are sheep and the religious leaders hold the spigot of grace. Once in a
while, through the sham and the ceremony of religious pride and arrogance, a
voice is raised, crying, "Radical grace!" and then again the saving God Who
revealed Himself in the face of Jesus breaks through and says to people, "Relax. I
love you. And there's nothing you can do about it."
Amen.
© 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
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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 XIX
Series
One Covenant of Grace - the Salvation of the World
Scripture Text
Philippians 3:7
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-0-19871011
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1987-10-11
Title
A name given to the resource
Conversion From Religion to Grace
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 October 11, 1987 entitled "Conversion From Religion to Grace", as part of the series "One Covenant of Grace - the Salvation of the World", on the occasion of Pentecost XIX, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Philippians 3:7.
Covenant of
Grace
Hebrew Scriptures
Nature of Religion
Prophets
Salvation of all
Universal Grace
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/83ef58ff7fd401a2fcfd54c26e691194.pdf
a6c401321cd204b372ff1c1e460f533f
PDF Text
Text
Dare To Follow the Light
Text: Isaiah 60:6-7; Ephesians 3:9; Matthew 2:2
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
January 5, 1997
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Epiphany, the manifestation of Christ, the Light of which the prophet in Israel
spoke, that Light of God which was Israel's treasure in order that they might be a
beacon to the nations, Matthew now sees coming to manifestation in Jesus.
There, in the face of Jesus, we see into the heart of God. And Paul with his
experience, being knocked off his horse by that light from heaven, realizes that
the mystery of God hid for the ages, now manifest, is that there is grace for the
whole world. That really is the Epiphany story. We read it in Matthew's Gospel,
and not only there but in the prophet, in Paul's understanding, the Light has
come. "The Light has come; the Light has dawned upon you."
The light has dawned upon us but we recognize immediately in that story of Jesus
as Matthew tells it that, when the light comes, the darkness is threatened, and all
hell breaks loose. This is the story of Herod, threatened by the announcement of
this newborn king, who passes a decree that the innocents should be slaughtered
in order to wipe out any pretender to the throne. Matthew is telling us
immediately in this joyous announcement of the birth of Jesus that the world will
not take kindly to the light, and that has been the story down through 2000 years,
has it not? It has been the story forever. The Christian Gospel is the
announcement of the Light of God. It is seen in continuity with that light that
dawned on Israel, and now for 2000 years the Gospel has been proclaimed and
the light of God has shined throughout the whole world.
This morning I want to suggest to you that it is not a question of whether or not
the Light has dawned. The question always before the Church, and the question
before us this morning is whether or not we will dare to follow the Light. I want
to suggest to you that Paul was a courageous person who made a radical break
with that heavy, sturdy tradition in which he had been nurtured. When
confronted by the Light, he recognized the call of God to take the Light to the
nations. We take that for granted. We celebrate Epiphany as the dawning of the
Light that had shone on Israel, which was now being manifest to the whole world,
symbolized by the coming of the Magi. So, it's ho-hum; we take it for granted.
© Grand Valley State University
�Dare to Follow the Light
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
But, you couldn't have taken it for granted if you had lived at the time of the event
itself. For Paul to realize, to sense a calling of God, to take the good news of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles involved Paul going contrary to all of that
that had been nurtured in him.
Paul had to be a person of daring to say that the Gentiles can be reconciled to God
by God's grace without first becoming Jews. Paul was a radical reformer, and
there was great tension in that early Church. It was a long time before the
question was settled as to whether or not there would be a separate Jesus
Christian Movement or whether Paul could prevail within the Jewish community
itself to see in Jesus this Light of God. But, Paul had the courage to act on his
conviction and that at great cost. As he writes in this third chapter to the
Ephesians, the secret, long hid with God, but now made manifest, is precisely that
- that the grace of God is for the Gentiles so that Jew and Gentile will form one
new humanity. In another place in this letter he speaks about that wall of
separation being torn down. Paul had cut his eyeteeth on the idea of Jewish
separation, that separation over against all others. But, Paul says no more wall,
no more partition, no more separation. Now what God has said in Jesus Christ is
that God is moved to embrace all. That took courage and Paul paid for it dearly,
as many of his writings will indicate. My Epiphany message 1997 is this: Do we
have the courage to follow the light?
Our problem is not a lack of knowledge. I think the prophets and apostles and
preachers for ages have recognized that the light has dawned. But there has been
a failure of nerve to live out the implications of the light. It seems to me that here
we are 2000 years down from the event of the gift of that one in whose face we've
seen the light of the glory of God. What are the issues before us in the light of that
light; what is God calling us to do and to be in our day in order to follow the light?
It's one thing to dance in the light. It's another thing to behave and to act in light
of the light. I want to suggest to you, because of the nature of our situation, that
the stand we have taken as a congregation is the only responsible and reasonable
way in which the Church of Jesus Christ can respond to the light and follow the
light.
Bill Moyers has been in the news a lot lately. His Genesis series is very, very
popular, and he's done a lot of other things. I knew he was a Southern Baptist
minister, but I was surprised that Southern Baptists invited him to address the
Texas Conference, because the Southern Baptist Convention has been taken over
in the last decade or decade and a half by very conservative, fundamentalist
forces. But, Moyers addressed the Texas Southern Baptist Convention and he said
to them in a little clip I found in the newspaper, that there is a "whole new
religious reality out there" and you have to change from militant anger over the
fact that the universe is not closed and life is not static. Well, it sounds like he
really gave them both barrels, and he probably won't be invited back, but what he
said is true and we all know it. There's a whole new religious reality out there and
most of the Church wants to put its head in the sand as though it doesn't exist.
© Grand Valley State University
�Dare to Follow the Light
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Isaiah thought the end was imminent and the light was dawning. Five hundred
years later, and Matthew thought the light had dawned and the end was
imminent. And now it's 2000 years later still. Do you suppose that God in heaven
is saying, "What in heaven's name are you people doing? Why don't you keep
following the light? Why don't you keep working out the implications of the
light?" Is it not evident to anybody with any sensitivity to our present global
situation that world evangelization that has been the impulse of the Church all
these years is an impulse that has hit a dead end? We do not see the
evangelization of the world according to the Gospel of Christ. We see the
resurgence of the great world religions.
We live in a global community that must increasingly become a community of
communities. We are able to communicate together in the world that has become
a neighborhood; we are learning the insights and the sensitivities and the light
that has dawned on others. Are we not being challenged to go into the arena and
share our insight and our light that has been God's gift through Jesus Christ with
others who share their gifts, as well? On the edge of the third millennium, should
we not be facing the reality of global consciousness and working out the
implications for our pluralistic world? Paul was confronted with a new situation a new door opened and Paul had the courage to go through that door. It is time
for someone to recognize that the mystery is even deeper, grander, and brighter
than even Paul understood, that God has a grander scheme, and that we have a
treasure in Jesus Christ to bring to the table in a world that sits down and
discusses the respective riches of the traditions, bringing together the Light that
God has given.
It's one thing to say the Light has dawned. It's another thing to have the courage
to live out its implications, and it does take courage. Such courage is exercised
only at considerable cost. That's the reason that the world is not transformed. It's
not a lack of light; it's a lack of courage.
I got a letter the other day from an old friend. Really a dear letter. Worried about
me, he says after a bit, "What if you've been wrong? What if the faith you once
held but have moved more and more away from is true?" He's a friend saying to
me, "What if you're wrong?" Well, he says I hear you say I'm willing to take that
chance. Finally, he says, "So, I invite you to take a fresh look, to ask again for
God's light." I say, "Fine. Don't think I don't."
I know that there is insight out there; there's a sense down deep in the core of
many people that the kind of things I have said publicly are what any reasonable
analysis would conclude, but it's costly and it takes courage to say it. That word
has appeared in letter after letter from around the world. "Thank you for your
courage." Do we have the courage to follow the light? How long will we bask in
the Light that has dawned without doing something about it because, without the
courage to act on the Light, the world will not be transformed.
© Grand Valley State University
�Dare to Follow the Light
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
The issue that got us into controversy a year ago was the issue of sexual
orientation and my recognition because of the growing light, knowledge, and
experience, that sexual orientation is not a moral issue. I have in my hands a
book which is brilliant. It's called Virtually Normal, written by Andrew Sullivan,
who is the editor of "The New Republic." It is splendidly written and beautifully
argued, and Andrew Sullivan, dealing with the whole matter of sexual
orientation, himself being a gay man, speaks about various groups lined up on
this issue - the prohibitionists, the liberationists, the conservatives, the liberals he comes to the liberals, and one would think that he, being a gay person, would
affirm the liberal attempt to create space for the gay/lesbian community. He is
appreciative of the legislation that seeks to rule out discrimination and that kind
of thing, but he says finally the liberals who believe in freedom are denying their
own most fundamental principles because this issue is not something that can
finally be legislated and it cannot be fixed by law. Then speaking for himself, but I
think speaking out of a profound experience and a brilliant insight, he says that
the key to the healing and liberation of any person of homosexual orientation lies
within themselves. He points to the civil rights movement of the 60s and he says
perhaps the most enduring legacy of the civil rights movement was not its
panoply of complicated and cumbersome laws, but the memory of the simple
courage of those who stood up in the face of considerable danger for their dignity
and equality. "What one remembers, what will never be erased from human
consciousness was the gleam of integrity in the eyes of those who took it upon
themselves to change their world, expecting no protection and no applause for
doing so. It is courage that gets noticed and courage that changes the world."
The pain of the homosexual experience requires that kind of catharsis to be
healed. Nothing else can replace it. That is the case with Jerry Crane, the teacher
in Byron Center who declared who he was in his faithful covenant relationship
with another, who to be sure was hounded out of his teaching job and who had to
endure two and three and four times as much press as I have, but who
nevertheless as a dignified human being, as a man of class and culture, had the
gleam in his eye because he was who he was and he stood there exposed in his full
humanity. He died this week, but his courage will change the world.
I'll tell you there are all kinds of us crouching in the bushes, and I'm not talking
now about sexual orientation, I'm talking about the things, the core values by
which we live - there are all kinds of us who believe things deep down that we've
never had enough courage to stand up and speak for. And there's only one thing
that really liberates the human soul; there's only one thing that brings us into the
fullness of the human experience - it is when we are true to the light as it has
dawned upon us. When the light has dawned upon us and we are true to it, we
may find ourselves in Ramah, weeping for our children, not able to be comforted.
But we will have been true, and when we will have been true, that will be enough.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/482a107479c0f0dee2a4cc8fab1ca231.mp3
3c84ed5ea3e120e9c0c42966d8e7c48f
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
Epiphany I
Scripture Text
Isaiah 60:6-7, Ephesians 3:9, Matthew 2:2
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-19970105
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1997-01-05
Title
A name given to the resource
Dare to Follow the Light
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on January 5, 1997 entitled "Dare to Follow the Light", on the occasion of Epiphany I, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 60:6-7, Ephesians 3:9, Matthew 2:2.
Epiphany
Light of God
Pluralism
Universal Grace
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/58cbc752fc19a8f4a296703f1a919ffb.mp3
c368ecc2b174bd1dd13484a4ac66ca9a
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549fb85b9ce91a3392929dfc85828974
PDF Text
Text
God’s Love: A ‘Yes’ That Conquers Our ‘No’
From the Lenten sermon series: Love Story
Text: Corinthians 15:21, 22, 28
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Easter Sunday, April 15, 1990
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Has our Lenten experience convinced us that the universal human response to
God is “No”? Have we faced the issue squarely? Have we come to see that the
crucifixion of Jesus was not an aberration, an exception to the rule of the way of
human history? Have we come to see that there is more of Caiaphas and the
dignitaries of the Sanhedrin in us, in our religious institutional selves, than of
Jesus? Have we come to see that there is more of Pilate in us, in our national
identity as Americans, than of Jesus? Have we come to see the human situation is
hopeless?
I hope so.
That is not just pulpit talk intended to beat you down. It is an honest conclusion
reached on the basis of the whole tragic tale of human history. Power politics,
coercion, oppression, injustice resulting in human suffering, helplessness, fear,
despair, the violence of terrorism perpetrated by those who have nothing to lose.
That is the human story.
In the biblical narrative, Israel’s history is not just one history among others; it is
a special history because Israel was a specially chosen people living in the light of
God’s revelation - a representative people on behalf of all people. God’s purpose
in calling Abraham and Sarah and from them forming a special people, was not to
leave the rest in their alienation and darkness, but, rather, that Israel might be a
light to the nations and that all nations might come to Mount Zion to learn God’s
Law - the Torah - the way of life.
But it was not to be. The story of God’s special relationship with Israel – the
Covenant of Grace – was the story of a broken covenant and that history ended in
deadlock, impasse. It was obvious that Israel would not be the historical
demonstration of God’s Kingdom as God intended.
© Grand Valley State University
�God’s Love: A Yes That Conquers Our No
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
During our Lenten biblical journey we have reviewed the one story of the Bible.
In Genesis 1-11, the first section of biblical narrative dealing with the great
universal themes of creation, humankind, judgment and grace, we saw at least
once that God brought judgment and started over.
Remember the story of Noah and the Flood? Did not God begin again with
righteous Noah? But it was to no avail.
And then, as I just mentioned, the call to Abraham was a new beginning, a new
strategy, through the one to win the many. But the result was dismal.
Finally, when it seemed hopeless, God loved the world so much that God gave a
Son - Jesus. John’s Gospel has given us our series’ theme - God loved the world
so much that God gave... From the first letter of John we heard those simple and
profound words,
“God is love. And God’s love was disclosed to us in this, that God sent his
only son into the world to bring us life.”
We followed the story of Jesus which reached its climax this week past. He
entered Jerusalem amid the clamor of the Passover pilgrim crowd, hoping he
would be the national liberator, and Friday we remembered his death by
crucifixion. He had come in God’s name; he had proclaimed God’s Kingdom; he
had fully followed the will of God as he understood it, even when it was leading
inevitably to his death. He did not swerve from the course, although he pursued it
with fear and trembling.
And he died.
Jesus, the revelation of God, the one righteous person ever to live, the disclosure
of God’s radical love, crucified. Love is vulnerable and crucified in history
because history is not about love; it is about power and coercion and oppression.
Jesus was crucified.
But, that death, rather than the tragic end to a noble vision, was perceived and
proclaimed as the supreme demonstration of God’s love and in that death God’s
love is seen in all its radicality. The death of Jesus has become the proclamation
of the most radical love possible - God’s love for the ungodly, for God’s enemies.
God demonstrated His love for us in that while we were yet sinners,
Christ died for us.
But, the death of Jesus as the supreme disclosure of God’s love redeeming the
world was not evident on Good Friday. Darkness covered the earth as Jesus died,
symbolic darkness – for the crucifixion of Jesus by Jerusalem and Rome, by
Caiaphas, the High Priest, and Pilate, the Roman official, representing the whole
© Grand Valley State University
�God’s Love: A Yes That Conquers Our No
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
world, was the final human “No” to God, to God’s way, to God’s Kingdom, to
God’s love.
If Jesus had died and only died,
if the biblical story had ended in darkness on Golgotha amid the jeering
crowd, the heart-broken disciples and women,
the anguished groaning of the victims,
then the story would be simply one more episode in human history
of goodness rejected and righteousness crucified,
of a visionary tragically cut down.
But the story did not end on Friday. After an interlude of numbness during which
the disciples cowered in fear and the faithful women awaited opportunity to do
their final loving service, God, the Source and Grace of Life, raised Jesus the
crucified to life. To the resounding human “No” God gave an even more
resounding “Yes,” and the destiny of the world was changed from darkness to
light, from death to life.
Paul put it this way as he reflected on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus in
light of the whole biblical story:
It was through one man that sin entered the world, and through sin
death, and this death pervaded the whole human race... But God’s act of
grace is out of all proportion to Adam’s wrongdoing. For if the
wrongdoing of that one man brought death upon so many, its effect is
vastly exceeded by the grace of God and the gift that came to so many by
the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ (Romans 5:12-15)
Or, to bring it to the proclamation of the event we celebrate today, the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, we hear the words of St. Paul in our
text taken from the Epistle, reading,
... Christ was raised to life – the first fruits of the harvest of the dead. For
since it was a man who brought death into the world, a man also brought
resurrection of the dead. As in Adam all men die, so in Christ we will be
brought to life.
Then follows Paul’s vision of what is presently occurring, Jesus, the risen,
reigning Lord, putting down the enemies of God’s Kingdom. Finally Paul affirms
this triumphant faith:
God will be everything to everyone.
Paul’s discussion of the resurrection of Jesus in I Corinthians 15 is long and
involved and I will not attempt to give a detailed analysis of it, but rather simply
concentrate on this one brief paragraph. The 20th verse is the clear, unequivocal
statement.
© Grand Valley State University
�God’s Love: A Yes That Conquers Our No
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
But, in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead.
This is the central affirmation of Christian faith. This is what makes Christian
faith gospel – good news. That God raised Jesus from the dead is the ground of
our hope. It is the ground of our hope for the redemption of the world – for a new
world, a new day free of all that saddens us, hinders us, defeats us. In a word,
the resurrection of Jesus gives us hope in our hopelessness.
Let me run the scenario past you one more time. Established political power and
institutional religions combined to crucify Jesus who lived out in concrete human
existence the love of God. And, as we have seen from week to week throughout
the season of Lent, what happened in Jerusalem on Good Friday has happened
over and over again in human history and it is happening still today.
What will be Lithuania’s fate?
We entered this season with Allan Boesak in this pulpit in the euphoria of
breakthroughs in South Africa. Will our hopes be realized? Will our prayers be
answered for justice and peace in that land?
Will Iraq threaten the Middle East with a new wave of terror with germ warfare?
As I raise this question, and they could be multiplied, is it not obvious that as
much as we pray for peace and justice and work for the humanization of this
world, our hope must be grounded in something or Someone beyond the roller
coaster of history, beyond the fickleness of popular movements, beyond the selfserving egotism of world leaders? Must we not trust something more substantial
than the present popularity of a world leader, the cleverness of human planning,
the good will and faith of nations to treaties, world organizations such as the
United Nations? Is it not obvious that any arrangement that rests alone on
human capacity or human decency is no solid ground for human hope?
If you have followed me through the Lenten Season, you might conclude that I
am a pessimist; that I do not belong to the positive thinkers’ club. And you would
be right. I have done my best honestly to mirror the human situation, the real
historical condition and I can only conclude that the human situation in and of
itself is hopeless.
But, I am not without hope. I am rather filled with hope. But only because my
hope is in God. And my hope is in God because God raised Jesus from the dead.
When we said our final “No” to God Who visited us in Jesus, we undercut any
possibility of hope in any purely human project. And precisely at the point of our
final “No”, God uttered a resounding and irreversible “Yes”.
© Grand Valley State University
�God’s Love: A Yes That Conquers Our No
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
God’s “Yes” conquered our “No” because God raised to life the one our “No” had
crucified. And just as God conquered death in giving Jesus life from the dead, so
God’s “Yes” proves stronger than our “No.”
As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive.
What of our world, then? What can we expect as the drama of history goes on its
perilous way? We cannot set any dates. We cannot predict the immediate
outcome of the tensions in South Africa, the Middle East, Latin America. We
cannot foresee the consequences of the democratization of Eastern Europe or the
apparent unraveling of the Soviet Union. We pray for wellbeing. We know that, as
quickly as barriers fall and walls are torn down, new crises could develop. But we
also know that outside Jerusalem when Church and State – representative of the
whole world – crucified Jesus, God raised him up as a sign that God will not give
up on this world. With the writer of Revelation, therefore, we look for and pray
for and hope for the day when
The Kingdom of this world will become the Kingdom of our God and of
His Christ and the angelic hosts sing in chorus,
“Hallelujah! The Lord God omnipotent reigns!”
We live that vision - in hope.
But, as we gather to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, it is not only the broad
world scene, not only the matters of cosmic dimension that press upon us,
important as those are. As we gather, we are a people who all have a story that is
being written.
For some of us it is the pain of one we love that we carry in our hearts. A daughter
calls, crying convulsively because her heart has been broken, her love betrayed
and a parent’s heart is crushed wishing somehow that he could take that pain
from her and make it all right. In the abyss of hurt and brokenness, when there
are no words to assuage the pain, wherein does one find hope to go on?
The nation was inspired by the courage and grace of Ryan White who this week
died of the AIDS virus contracted through a blood transfusion. In his dying, the
nation was galvanized in grief. And what do we say? Was that life worth the
living? Certainly. Was that life fruitful in its impact? Surely, more so in his brief
life than most of us who will live to an old age. But, is that all? Is Ryan dead and
any remainder of his life will be through the remembrance of those on whose
lives he had an impact? Is that all there is?
The question is much more poignant for some of you, for since Easter last you
have stood by the casket of one dearly loved and sorely missed. Is there now only
the memory and the void? Is dead simply dead?
© Grand Valley State University
�God’s Love: A Yes That Conquers Our No
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
Some of us have received a serious medical diagnosis since last we gathered in
Easter joy. All of us carry within our bodies cells potentially lethal, but for some
of us at this time they are latent; for some, they are ravaging. What does one say
when one’s mortality is not simply part of the general universal reality of all
humankind, but when one is faced with one’s own personal, lonely encounter
with death? Life is a precious gift and fiercely clung to. Is there some way to relax
one’s grip or, better, to grasp with hope something made of surer stuff?
Each of us is writing her own storyline and few there be that escape the
interweaving of that tragic thread which is so ubiquitous in the human tapestry,
so dominant in the plot of our personal stories.
Wherein then lies the ground of hope? How can one escape cynicism, despair,
futility? How does one cope when faced with betrayal, brokenness, loss and the
last enemy, death itself?
For Christian faith, that ground of hope is in the God Who raised Jesus from the
dead. For Christian faith, the ground of hope is the God Who, in the text from St.
Paul,
will be everything to everyone,
because that God refuses to give up on this world; that God will never give up on
you. That God’s “Yes” was spoken on Easter morning in response to the final
human “No” spoken on Good Friday.
Who is this God?
This is the God Who loved the world so much that He gave His only son – not to
condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. This is the
God Who is love and Who disclosed the radical nature of that love in sending
Jesus who lived out that love so that in his life one sees into the very heart of God,
the God Who was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, going to the limit in
that while we were yet enemies, Jesus died for the ungodly, thus disclosing the
radical, unconquerable love of God.
God is love and God is writing a story, too; it is a love story, a story of an amazing
love that simply will not be turned away, a love that will never let up, a love that
will never let you go. Whoever you are, wherever you are coming from –
returned on Easter from a long dropout,
cynical in general, but find the music and flowers inviting,
despairing, almost going under,
hoping against hope,
seeking, longing to believe –
© Grand Valley State University
�God’s Love: A Yes That Conquers Our No
Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
God loves you and God would write you into the script of the love story He is
writing. God offers you life, having promised through Jesus Christ forgiveness,
peace, joy and the assurance that you will be kept by God’s power now and
forever.
God has spoken a “Yes” that conquers our “No.”
I invite you to say “Yes” to the God Who has said “Yes” to you through Jesus
Christ our Lord.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
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Event
Easter Sunday
Series
Love Story
Scripture Text
I Corinthians 15:21, 22, 28
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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1990-04-15
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God's Love: A "Yes" That Conquers Our "No"
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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Sound
Text
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
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A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on April 15, 1990 entitled "God's Love: A "Yes" That Conquers Our "No"", as part of the series "Love Story", on the occasion of Easter Sunday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: I Corinthians 15:21, 22, 28.
Easter Sunday
Forgiveness
Love
Resurrection
Transformation
Universal Grace
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e44487514c6a36c8dd97cc8de23ea6a2.pdf
2867cd20f3a929ab0582891e44326fd1
PDF Text
Text
Good News of Cosmic Dimension
Eastertide I
Text: I Corinthians 15:22; Matthew 28:19
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
April 6, 1997
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Easter is focused on Jesus. That's quite understandable, because Jesus is the one
who was raised from the dead, and so our liturgy, the music, the anthems - all of
it is very much focused on the risen Lord. That's understandable. But, I want to
say to you this morning that Easter is not so much a matter of Christology, that is,
the doctrine of Christ, as it is theology, that which is about God and that which
God has affected. Resurrection was God's mighty act. Resurrection was God's
sign, a sign in the midst of history of cosmic significance and eternal dimension.
Easter is good news. Good news for the cosmos about God's intention, God's
"Yes" to life, God's "No" to death, God's "Yes" to love, God's "No" to hate, God's
"Yes" to light, God's "No" to darkness. It is understandably a story that lifts up
Jesus, but it is more profoundly a story about God.
Jesus died. If you followed or participated in the drama of Holy Week, if you were
here on Maundy Thursday when the sanctuary grew dark and the altar was
stripped and we left in silence, if you were here in the meditative, somber mood
of Good Friday, if you came to the Easter Vigil and saw the sanctuary engulfed in
darkness, then you know that Christian faith acknowledges that Jesus died. Jesus
died a human death. Jesus as a human person entered into the powerlessness of
death. As far as Jesus was concerned, it was over, which is why the brightness of
Easter Sunday is not because of something intrinsic in Jesus, but of something
intrinsic in God, the Creator, the One Who will not allow death to reign. God's
way is life. That is Easter. It is a theological affirmation. It tells us something
about God and it is the good news that in the end, there is life !
Paul understood that. Paul was one who was absolutely gripped by that vision of
the risen One whom he knew had been crucified but now knew to be still living,
and who had called him to tell this good news, particularly to the Gentiles. After
he founded the Church in Corinth, he kept in touch with them via letters, like the
two epistles to the Corinthians. They were raising some questions, and so, in his
letter, the one we call First Corinthians, he deals with this matter of resurrection.
He cannot express its truth, its mystery. He stumbles and stammers around as he
tries to give expression to it, but of this he is quite convinced - that the whole of
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the Christian Gospel, the "Good News" has to do with the fact that God raised
Jesus from the dead. He tries to explain the magnitude of what has happened by
borrowing from the Genesis story, the Creation Story, the story out of Israel's
tradition where, through the disobedience of one man, Adam, death came upon
all. He says, as it were, Jesus is the new Adam, the second Adam, and as death
came to all through one man, so life comes to all through one man. As in Adam all
died, so in Christ shall all be made alive.
Notice that the Hebrew thinking was always corporate, always concerning the
total community. So when he said, "in Adam all die," he meant all humankind
die. There was a commonality of the human story, which was under the sentence
of death. In the light of God's action, raising Jesus from the dead, Paul saw a sign,
a sign that that sentence of death was not ultimate. Rather, the ultimate, final,
last exciting word was life. As in Adam all die, so in Christ all shall be made alive.
It is as inclusive on the one hand as it is on the other - and here is where we sense
Paul's strain of universalism. For what he is saying is that God's action in Jesus
has implications for the whole human family. This Good News, the raising of
Jesus by the power of God was a sign, a light, an indicator, a marker, something
that could be laid hold on and believed in and hoped in for all of us. Paul had had
a particular revelation, but he understood it to have a universal application. A
transformation of the whole of reality, which he understood to embrace the whole
of humankind.
Now Matthew had a similar understanding of the momentous transforming
power of the resurrection. Matthew's Gospel is the only Gospel that sees Jesus'
ministry, pre-crucifixion, as focused strictly on Israel. Did you know that? The
reason we don't know that is that we don't study these Gospels as units having
their own context and their own message. We throw them all into the blender and
pour out a homogenized Gospel. We pick up a little of Matthew, a little of Mark, a
pinch of Luke and a dash of John, and we get one blended picture. But, Matthew
has Jesus, pre-Easter, interested only in Israel, the Jewish people. He only talks
to two Gentiles in Matthew's Gospel. One is that Syro-Phoenician woman.
I love the way Krister Stendahl talks about that story. He tells it as one of his
students preached it one day. Jesus and his disciples needed a retreat, so they
journeyed into the countryside, beyond the precincts of Israel. A woman
approached them there, pleading with Jesus to heal her daughter. The disciples
said, "Go away. We're on retreat. The master said if we don't do this once in a
while, we'll burn out. Go away." Well, she was not going to take their "no" for an
answer. They said to Jesus, "Do something about this woman." So he says, "Look,
I am sent to none but the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Can you imagine
Jesus, meek and mild, shunning this woman, saying, "Look, it's Israel, not you"?
She said, "But I have a great need." He said, " I can't give the food on the table to
the dogs." This is Jesus, now, referring to the woman and Gentiles as dogs. She
was quick. She responds, "Look, under the family table there are crumbs which
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the dogs may eat." Jesus is taken aback and replies, "Woman, that's some faith. I
have never found such a faith even among my own." And he healed her daughter.
There was one other exception he made, and that was for the servant of a
Centurion who was ill. He healed that servant. That Centurion also demonstrated
great faith. If you read in Matthew's Gospel, you will find the story, but you don't
find the reason that Jesus responded to that Centurion. You have to go to Luke
for that. But, it's obviously the same story. Luke says, when the Centurion came,
the elders of the synagogue came over to Jesus and they whispered in his ear,
"Help him out. He paid off our building debt." True. True story. Luke 7:1, you can
read it yourself!
Two times only he addressed Gentiles in the book according to Matthew. For the
rest, the pre-Easter Jesus was interested solely in Israel. When he sent out the
disciples on their missionary journey, he said, "Go through the cities of Israel. Do
not go any place where there are Gentiles." He said, "You're going to have enough
to do before the end comes. You won't get through all the cities of Israel."
Yet it is this Gospel, Matthew, that concludes with what the Church always calls
The Great Commission: "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every
creature, to the nations, to the Gentiles, teaching them, healing, baptizing them
in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost." That's the conclusion of
Matthew's Gospel, post-Easter.
Now remember, this book is written six decades down the line. There's already
now a Christian Church, a Christian community. I think we have to admit that the
resurrected Jesus did not gather with those disciples and say to them, "Go to all
the world and teach the Gospel and baptize them in the name of the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit." If that had been done, if it had been that clear a few days after
Easter, there wouldn't have been such a struggle in the early Church to find out
who they were and what they were supposed to do. Obviously, Matthew is taking
the whole story of Jesus and then he's giving a distillation of what now is his
understanding of the resurrection, what the implications were. For Matthew, the
implications of Resurrection were that this one who had been focused strictly on
Israel had now, by the power of God, been raised up to create good news for a
broader community. Now was the time to break out of Israel's particularity and to
create a community universal and inclusive, of all the nations, of all people. This
Good News had universal implications for the building of another community.
Krister Stendahl likes to say that Israel was Laboratory One. God's Laboratory
One. Israel understood itself as a particular community that was, in its life, to be
a light to the nations. And now it was time for Laboratory Two; now it was time to
break out of that narrow community and to have, well, Gentile time. It was a
broadening, a building of a new kind of community that was inclusive, that was
universal, that was for all.
Stendahl also notes that the Jewish people believed itself to have a particular
revelation of the one true God, and the truth that it understood was the truth that
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impinged on all people, but what Israel never expected was that all people would
become Jews. Israel was content to be Israel, to live in the light of its revelation,
to witness to that revelation, and to let the positive effects of its witness wash off
on the world, but not everybody was supposed to be a Jew. There was never a
movement to make the whole world Jewish. They were a particular community
with a particular revelation and a particular understanding of salvation, and they
shared it far and wide, but people could receive that light and remain in their
respective communities.
Stendahl believes that Matthew had the same kind of an idea for the Christian
movement. Once again, it had a message, a particular message, a particular
revelation, and it had universal implications. It was for the broadening of that
community of faith, but it was not as though now suddenly the whole world
would have to become Christian. The whole world should be told the good news
and the Good News was for the whole world – Good News, that is, that God, the
Creator, is a God of life and not death, that God is for us, that God has an
intention for the cosmos. And all of that was and is enough to make you dance
and sing, because the news is so good. That in this world where death and decay
are all about us, the ultimate word is life and light and love and community! So,
go tell the world!
With the Christian movement, that's very likely the way it began. Now, the news
was brighter. Now there was an exuberance, there was an excitement, there was a
joy, there was a confidence, so that, in the wake of the resurrection of Jesus, a
movement developed. Have you ever been part of a movement? Movements are
spontaneous. Movements are powerful. Movements are confident. Movements
are passionate! And in the wake of the resurrection of Jesus, recognizing now that
this good news is about God Who says "No" to death and "Yes" to life, this good
news was to be spread everywhere. It was for everybody. It was for the whole
world. For anybody who would hear it and heed it and become a part of it - it was
an open community now.
But, that movement was so powerful, so full of fire, it gained such ascendency
that within two or three centuries it became a force to be reckoned with. And as it
gained in dominance, it became domineering. Then, contrary to the model of
Israel that shared its witness but didn't force everybody to become a Jew in order
to have access to God, the Christian Church linked its particular revelation with a
universal mandate to make everybody like we are. Eventually it gained great
power in its association with the state, with the Roman Empire. And over the
centuries, for 2000 years, it has grown, it has become powerful, and in its wake
we have a tragic history that I think as a Church we've never fully owned up to the Crusades and its brutal intolerance; the Inquisition with its burning of
heretics and forced baptisms; pogroms, anti-Semitism, creating the soil for the
horror of the Holocaust. Why? Because a movement became dominant, powerful.
It had this wonderful vision of God, the God of life; it had this vision to share with
all, but rather than remaining a witnessing community, it became a domineering
© Grand Valley State University
�Good News of Cosmic Dimension Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
community, coercively using its power to enforce conformity to its particularity as
though that particularity was to be of universal application rather than simply a
universal witness, an invitation.
And now, after almost 2000 years, the Christian Church, which has been so
dominant, is tired. The Church is sick at soul today. Its shrill rhetoric only betrays
its lack of confidence. In those early centuries, it was a movement of joy, it had
power, it was soulful, it was exuberant, it was strong, it was empowered, it was
open, it was excited, it swept the world! But, it's not a movement anymore, not
really. It's an institution. It still has a lot of resources, it still has a lot of wealth, it
still has a lot of numbers, and it can linger perhaps for a long time. But, it's not a
movement; it's not strong, it's not vibrant, it doesn't have soul, it doesn't have
passion, it doesn't have joy unspeakable, full of glory! It is a skeleton of itself. Its
life is a denial of its message and a betrayal of the one who is its founder, who
reached out in compassionate embrace to all.
But, I think we're on the threshold of something new that's breaking. I think
there's going to be a groundswell in this old world of ours. It's breaking out
because good news cannot, finally, be kept under. And the good news is that the
dream is bigger, that the cosmos is one and that all people belong together. There
is underfoot something that will transform the face of the earth. And God knows
if it doesn't happen, we'll destroy each other. Witness our history of divisiveness,
violence, war and devastation. But, we're learning. Here and there, there's a straw
in the wind.
Last Sunday evening we finally made ABC News. Perhaps you've heard. We were
linked with Mohammed Ali, this noble human being who can no longer articulate
for himself. But there he sat, his wife next to him, who said for him, "Muslim,
Jew, Christian - they're all God's children." And then we came on, 9 ½ seconds!
We, too, articulating that the eternal embrace is inclusive. That it is arrogance to
proclaim otherwise. Then later in the evening I caught the last half of the film,
"Gandhi," and I was deeply moved again as that man of India who was so
impressed with Jesus said, "I am Hindu, I am Muslim, I am Christian." And
single-handedly, through a spiritual power, changing the landscape of that nation
with all of the chaos and all of the death that ensued, nonetheless, affecting a
transformation through a kind of spiritual vision and methodology that he
learned from Jesus, among others. And, of course, Gandhi influenced Martin
Luther King and there was in this nation a significant address of the evil of
racism. And, as the second millennium is coming to its end, after 2000 years, this
dynamic movement of Jesus People which has become a tired institution,
wondering if it can survive, will yield up its arrogant exclusivity and there will be
a joining of heart and hand, of all people of good faith who believe in God the
Creator of all, Whose intention for all is life and not death, love and not hate, light
and not darkness. Now, there's good news! It is news of cosmic dimension and
eternal significance. And when we catch it again, the passion will return, the
© Grand Valley State University
�Good News of Cosmic Dimension Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
confidence will return, the joy will return, the power will return, and the world
will be changed! Alleluia!
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/72d150ea76bf119172e7c096ee95f092.mp3
a9e6a71dcac5909f8b355f5377d5bf80
Dublin Core
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
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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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
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Event
Eastertide II
Scripture Text
I Corinthians 15:22, Matthew 28:19
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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KII-01_RA-0-19970406
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1997-04-06
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Good News of Cosmic Dimension
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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Text
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on April 6, 1997 entitled "Good News of Cosmic Dimension", on the occasion of Eastertide II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: I Corinthians 15:22, Matthew 28:19.
Eastertide
Global Community
Inclusive
Universal Grace
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/73bcbcff0c694e4a78d76b3685075f55.mp3
ea0ace3691c9cc1427f1a05b10d188ea
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7a10edce973ae95b1a87853834f0bf3c.pdf
2ae4a2b011edb36d54983b4229ea6326
PDF Text
Text
How Do You Respond When Truth Dawns on You?
Text: Isaiah 49:6; Luke 2:32, 34-35
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Epiphany, January 18, 1987
Transcription of the spoken sermon
…I will make you a light to the nations, to be my salvation to earth’s fartherest
bounds. Isaiah 49:6
…a light that will be a revelation to the heathen… Luke 2:32
…This child is destined to be a sign which men reject…many in Israel will stand
or fall because of him…the secret thoughts of many will be laid bare. Luke 2:3435
How do you respond when Truth dawns upon you? That is the question posed by
the title of the message. The question needs some explaining.
"When Truth dawns upon you," already says something about my understanding
of how we come to a knowledge of Truth – insight into the deepest levels of
Truth, the Truth about our identity and destiny, about the world and history,
about God as a "given." It is given in a moment of unveiling when Truth shows
itself. The deepest Truth is Truth of revelation.
This is not to disparage or denigrate patient experimentation, exploration and
research; it is only to affirm that the secret of deepest mysteries of life, of the
world and God are not at the conclusion of a mathematical computation nor a
logical syllogism; rather, in a flash of insight, the Truth shows itself.
Thus, I ask about Truth dawning.
I ask also about response to Truth; how do we respond to the Truth that shows
itself, manifests itself? Do we yield to it, allowing ourselves to be changed by it?
Do we resist it? Deny it? Close ourselves against it?
The question arises in this season of Epiphany. God is manifest in our world; we
have seen the light of revelation of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
© Grand Valley State University
�How Do You Respond When Truth Dawns on You?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
The Prophet understood that God would bring the light of truth to the world. He
understood that Israel had been the "place" of revelation and also that it was
Israel's role to be the Servant of the Lord to bring light to the nations. The
universalism present already in the call of Abraham would be effected – through
the Servant of the Lord – Israel and, specifically, one who would arise from
Israel.
Reflect for a moment.
Advent - Coming. The Lord's coming.
The Prophet sensed the Kingdom was dawning in the release of the Exiles.
Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people. You who bring Zion good news, up
with you to the mountaintop; …cry to the cities of Judah, your God is
here.
Last week we heard that beautiful word from Isaiah 42:
Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight.
…He will not break a bruised reed, or snuff out a smouldering wick…I
have formed you, and appointed you to be a light to all peoples, a beacon
for the nations…
The Old Testament Lesson repeats the Servant's calling —
I will make you a light to the nations, to be my salvation to earth’s
fartherest bound.
Israel lived in expectation of One who would come, who would bring salvation to
the nation and to the nations.
Christmas - the birth of the Promised One - a Saviour; good news of a great joy to
all people. The Light shines in the darkness for the Word becomes flesh, full of
grace and Truth.
Epiphany - unveiling, manifestation, revelation; Light has come into the world.
Jesus said, "I am the Light of the world."
Now, the question is how will we respond? The Gospels tell us that the presence
of the Light elicits a double reaction: some receive the light with joy and find
salvation; some resist the light and miss God's gracious gift.
Already in the Nativity stories we are forewarned that the response to this child
will be mixed.
Matthew recorded that as we saw last week; the wise men stopped at Herod's
Court to inquire where the child was born whose star they had seen. Herod's
© Grand Valley State University
�How Do You Respond When Truth Dawns on You?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
response was not joy that the Earth had received the gift of a child who would be
a King. Rather, he searched for the child to destroy it and, failing to find it,
slaughtered all male children two years old and under.
Hostility already at the beginning!
The Wise Men worshiped; Herod murdered.
Luke gives us a shadow of foreboding at the beginning, as well. Old Simeon, a
devout and trusting servant of God, was waiting for that dramatic movement
through which God would redeem His people and bring light to the world. As the
child was brought to the Temple, the Spirit nudged old Simeon. He took the child
in his arms and uttered those familiar and beautiful words.
Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace … for mine eyes have seen
thy salvation … a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to thy
people Israel.
A beautiful response, indeed. Simeon had prayed and waited and one day,
holding the child, the truth dawned on him. He embraced the child and embraced
the Truth.
But Simeon had more to say; he went on to say,
Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a
sign that is spoken against … that the thoughts out of many hearts may
be revealed.
A sign spoken against, a sign of contradiction. This child would elicit a double
response: some would fall, some rise.
Epiphany is a season that reminds us that God is manifest in the world -that He
came to us in Jesus Christ, whose birth we celebrated so recently and whose
passion and death we will be all too soon remembering. Epiphany is a bridge
period in which we recognize the presence in our world of Truth and light and
move from the joyful celebration of its dawning to the awful remembrance when
we did our best to douse the light by killing the one in whom it dawned. It is that
sobering reality that we confront in this message. We are always placed before the
choice to walk in the light or to choose the darkness.
I have a book on my desk entitled, Jesus, Inspiring and Disturbing Presence. We
have been celebrating the inspiring side of the equation, the joy, the hope, the
love that came to us in Jesus. But, there is the other side – the call to decision, the
call to repentance, the call to die to self and follow Jesus in the life of service and
sacrifice.
© Grand Valley State University
�How Do You Respond When Truth Dawns on You?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
Jesus is not an interesting figure of the past; he is very much the present, living
Lord. In the Atlantic Monthly of December, 1986, there is a lengthy essay
entitled, "Who Do Men Say That I Am?" It is a superb summary of the
understanding of Jesus through the centuries. David Tracy, theologian at the
University of Chicago, is quoted as saying that more has been written about Jesus
in the last twenty years than in the previous two thousand.
"Jesus is very much a figure of discussion and controversy in our present
world and the followers of Jesus to the extent that they are true to what
came to expression in him will be at the center of controversy in the
world."
He is absolutely right. Our world is not through with Jesus. It is very easy for us
to slip into a mode of thinking that Jesus is a figure of the past. Christmas with all
of the beautiful pageantry, and all the sentimentality that arises in our hearts,
sometimes veils from our eyes the reality of the living Jesus, the living Lord in
our world today. And, as a matter of fact, Jesus Christ continues to be the
linchpin of history, and the very center of our world.
John said of him, “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never
overcome it.” But the darkness has never ceased trying to overcome it. Matthew
tipped us off in the very beginning, just like Luke. He told about the worship of
the Magi. And in that he saw the coming of the Gentiles to the light of Christ, but
in the course of that narrative, he recorded the stop in Herod’s Court, and
Herod’s fear and paranoia and Herod’s slaughter of the innocent children. In an
effort to wipe out this child whose birth was announced with a star.
So, at the very beginning of the gospel, there were already foreshadowings of that
which is to come. We are warned by both Matthew and Luke in the very nativity
stories that this child will be a source of contradiction in the world: that there is
something in Jesus that will cut against the grain of this world, that there is
something in Jesus that will encounter us and confront us and judge us, that
there is something in Jesus that will call us to die in order to be made new and to
follow him as his disciple. It is not all sweetness and light! There is violence, there
is darkness, there is the hostility against the light already in the gospel narrative
of his birth. And so I ask you this morning, on this second Sunday of Epiphany,
the light that shines in our world: How do you respond when truth dawns upon
you? What difference does it make in your life that Jesus has come? What
difference does it make in your living, that you claim to be a disciple of Jesus
Christ? How are you different? What decisions do you make and what
transformation has occurred because you follow Jesus? That’s the question of
Epiphany. For it is one thing to celebrate the presence of the Light and it is
another thing to ask ourselves how seriously we walk in the Light.
Our world is not done with Jesus Christ. And, as those who claim him as Savior
and have pledged to follow him as Lord, let me ask you. How do you respond
when light dawns on you? Well, let me ask it this way. When is the last time you
© Grand Valley State University
�How Do You Respond When Truth Dawns on You?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
had a new thought? When is the last time you found yourself confronted with an
insight that challenged a long-held conviction? How long has it been since in the
presence of Jesus Christ or contemplating who he is and what his word says, that
you have changed an opinion, that you have altered an attitude, that you have
found your lifestyle modified by the fact that the light has dawned upon us? Our
world is not yet done with Jesus Christ. And it is one thing to believe in Him; it is
another to follow Him! It is one thing to have a kind of intellectual assent to the
fact that he lived and died and maybe rose again. It is another thing to have him
be the pattern of our living and to pattern our living in the light of who he was
and what he calls us to be.
Our world is not yet done with Jesus Christ. He is still the center and he is still
full of controversy and he is still full of contradiction. If we have not found our
lives contradicted by Jesus, we can be sure that we have not heard the gospel. We
have a way in this twentieth century, in this affluent America, in this Christian
church, we have a way of domesticating the gospel, of taking the sharpness off the
corners, and of trivializing the message. We forget the radicality of the things that
Jesus stood for. It is not easy to be a twentieth-century American and to follow
Jesus. Much easier, I believe, to have been a peasant in Palestine, much easier to
follow Jesus if one is disinvested, disenfranchised, if one is oppressed, if one has
no vested interest in anything, if one has no place to go but up. Then it is not hard
to forsake everything and follow Jesus. But how does one follow Jesus when one
is a member of western civilization, of American culture, of the most affluent
society the world has ever known? The most educated, the most sophisticated,
the most resourceful, technically and scientifically most advanced? What does
one do in a society like this when one is called to follow Jesus?
What does one do when one is confronted by Jesus and contradicted by Jesus,
when that contradiction and confrontation run against the grain of everything
that is American value, that is western value, that is Christian value. The moment
there is a nation, it becomes institutional. The moment there’s a church, it
becomes institutional. The moment there is any kind of structuring in society, we
get institutionalization and as soon as there is institutionalization we all have our
vested interests and in maintaining the status quo. It’s true of our government.
And we ought not be too hard on our leaders. They are people just like us. And
what are they trying to do? They’re trying to do the same thing that Herod was
trying to do. In the Pentagon and the Reagan Administration: messing around
with Iran and Iraq, meddling around in South America, fiddling around in South
Africa – what are we trying to do? We are trying to maintain the balance of
power; we are trying to preserve the edge of power; we are trying to preserve the
place of preeminence. And after all, isn’t that why we elect our officials: in order
to keep the American way of life, in order to keep the economy booming, in order
to keep the military strong enough so that we’ll be invulnerable to attack? What
do we expect of our leaders if not that? Do we not charge our President with the
necessity of enforcing the Constitution?
© Grand Valley State University
�How Do You Respond When Truth Dawns on You?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
And it’s not only in the state; it’s in the church as well. As soon as the church
becomes an institution, then we are more concerned about the perpetuation and
the preservation of the institution than we are the questions of truth or
obedience. And that comes right down to the local level and comes right down to
the local congregation and it comes right down to Christ Community Church. And
do we make our response in terms of what is a responsible obedience to following
Jesus or do we make our decision in terms of what is good and enhancing for the
institution?
And it comes, of course, right down into our personal lives. Not so much what we
believe, but the extent to which our belief alters the way we live. There is a
structure of belief which we all have and profess and then there is an operational
level of belief – that upon which we function. And we function most of the time in
terms of self-interest, in terms of vested interest. In terms of our own wellbeing
and our own welfare. And that’s human and that’s natural, but every once in a
while we need to step back and say, Jesus: sign of contradiction. Jesus: sign
spoken against. Jesus, what does it mean to follow you today in America in 1987,
in Grand Haven in Spring Lake, in comfortable western Michigan, where nature
smiles for seven miles. What does it mean, Jesus, what difference does it make
because I belong to you?
In all of my relationships, all of my business, all of my pleasure, light has dawned
upon the world. How do we respond to the fact that Light has dawned? The world
is not done with Jesus. More has been written in the last 20 years than in the
previous 2000. Jesus is still very much living Lord and he proclaimed a kingdom
and has a salvation to bring to earth’s fartherest bounds. The church is not to be
some little backwater ghetto. It is not simply to be a cozy little community of
people who are weak and who still need God in order to get by. The church is that
revolutionary group gathered around that revolutionary person whose radicality
in the midst of human society got him crucified. Tomorrow Martin Luther King’s
birthday was celebrated. I repent that while he was leading the civil rights
movement, I did not pray for him. I think I was rather irritated by him. When he
spoke out against the VietnamWar, when it was unpatriotic to do so, I’m sorry I
was not prophetic enough to understand and to lend my voice. And when I read
his sermons and speeches I know that they were inspired by Jesus, who was
always against the oppressor and always to set the oppressed free. Last year the
Catholic bishops came out with a paper on nuclear disarmament. You may agree
or you may disagree with their conclusions, if you follow Jesus, you can not
question that church leaders – all Christians – have an imperative to address
themselves to an issue which has brought the whole human race, for which God
intends salvation, into jeopardy. This year the bishops come out with a paper on
economic policy. You may think they’re wild; you may think they’re in left field;
you may question their conclusions, but you may not question that the church of
Jesus Christ and those who lead in Jesus’ name have a right and a responsibility
to address the economy in order to ensure that there is some measure of justice in
this world. Jesus was revolutionary – not in terms of the zealots who wanted
© Grand Valley State University
�How Do You Respond When Truth Dawns on You?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
simply to throw off the Roman yoke, and who would have come in with their own
regime which would have been just as oppressive – but Jesus was revolutionary
in that he stood against everything that seems to drive the human spirit. Jesus
was the one who said if you want to live then you must die. Jesus was the one
who said love your enemies, pray for your enemies, pray for those who
despitefully use you. Funny man, funny man! Strange person! He is like a knot
that will not be dissolved in the middle of the human family. And those who
follow him may not be simply a comfortable community who use God for their
own tranquility. Those who follow Jesus are called to be a community of people
who are as radical and as revolutionary, who can never adopt any political
platform, who can never be at ease with any creed or confession, who can never
give absolute loyalty to any state or to any church because they are a people who
will give ultimate allegiance to God alone, following Jesus. No matter what the
price.
Can you remember the last time in the presence of Jesus you ever changed your
mind? Has a prejudice ever melted away? Has an opinion ever been altered? Has
a conviction ever been changed because you held it up in the light of his face and
felt judged and repented and experienced the liberation, the freedom that is the
consequence of the Truth? I’m afraid for most of us our religion is a cultural
matter. For most of us God is one to be used and religion is for comfort. I have a
book on my desk that says, Jesus: Inspiring and Disturbing Presence. Oh,
inspiring to be sure, inspiring to be sure – and disturbing. Because to follow him,
to be faced with a decision and to ask what would Jesus do, is a very radical thing
to do. I don’t do it very well. I repent and pray that I may follow him.
Let us pray. Lord Jesus you said you came into the world not to condemn the
world but that the world through you might be saved. Then the gospel record
goes on to say that this is the condemnation: that light has come into the world
and men love darkness rather than light. God forgive us. And enable us by your
grace to rise up and follow the light where ever it may lead, following in the
master’s steps, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we pray. Amen.
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981-2014
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Epiphany II
Scripture Text
Isaiah 49:6, Luke 2:32, 34-35
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01_RA-0-19870118
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1987-01-18
Title
A name given to the resource
How Do You Respond When Truth Dawns On You?
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
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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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A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on January 18, 1987 entitled "How Do You Respond When Truth Dawns On You?", on the occasion of Epiphany II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 49:6, Luke 2:32, 34-35.
Epiphany
Followers of Jesus
Light
Radical Truth of Jesus
Revelation
Servant of the Lord
Universal Grace
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/400b6fee964a463d0ef9139a444576b4.mp3
576217d73a38da97b32207c8b717d5d6
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c0a6dba73158f64053f12f78f0532703.pdf
cbb3b4a59a9429648b0a24d5ab6ee438
PDF Text
Text
In the End, God
Text: I Corinthians 15:28
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Advent I, December 4, 1988
Transcription of the spoken sermon
In the year of our Lord 1988 and the fifty-third year of my life, I finally got fired.
And I think congratulations are due. Well, I didn't really get fired, but I did lose
my job. Well, I actually took the initiative to remove myself from the teaching
position at the seminary at the conclusion of this academic year. And I did that as
a consequence of my feeling that my remaining there could have serious
consequences for the seminary. Actually, I went to the Exec. Comm. and asked
them simply to agree to my demise at the end of this year in order to avoid what I
felt would be a serious conflict that would be damaging to the seminary. You
should know that I did have more than enough support on the Exec. Comm. to be
sustained and supported, but that probably would have been unwise and I judged
that it was better to yield this round than to exacerbate the situation. For those
who made the move upon me, being frustrated because they have a sense of being
outside of power and disenfranchised, were they not successful this time, they
would only have accelerated the move on the seminary.
The controversy arose because of an article that I wrote in the theological journal
of the Reformed Church called Perspectives. I have a couple of issues here. You
perhaps know that I am on the board of editors of this theological journal. It is a
journal of modest proportion. It is mailed to all pastors, college and seminary
faculties, people in leadership positions in the Reformed Church, college and
university libraries, and other persons who might desire to be on the mailing list.
We have a circulation of about 4100, and its founding three years ago was for the
purpose of stimulating theological discussion and thought within the Reformed
Church, to push the limits a bit, to stretch the Church, to seek to nudge the
Church forward in its theological endeavor, and to create a forum in which the
leadership of the Church could exchange views and reflect together on the nature
of the faith in the context of the contemporary world. Being a part of this editorial
board has been a great experience for me, because it has given me the
opportunity of writing and bringing to expression many of the things that I have
worked through over the years, things which I preach, things which I have shared
with you. I have written nothing that I haven't first preached here, so you
wouldn't have any surprises, but apparently there were some surprises out in the
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Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
larger Church, which doesn't surprise me. But let me give you a little overview of
how we got to this point.
It was five years ago that you gave me the opportunity to go on Sabbatical and to
do some serious study. I began that experience by going to the University of
Michigan for two days a week to be with Professor Hans Küng, the Catholic
theologian. I was admitted into a seminar with him on Tuesday afternoon, and on
Monday nights he delivered lectures which have subsequently been published
under the title Eternal Life?. In those lectures, he dealt with all of the questions
of The End, the questions concerning the “last things.” He dealt with the neardeath experiences of those who have seemed to move into death and then back to
life; he dealt with the great religions of the world and how they answered these
ultimate questions; he dealt with the Old Testament and with the New
Testament, the biblical record of resurrection, and questions of judgment, of hell,
of purgatory and of full redemption.
The University of Michigan is a vast institution of higher learning and it is a
largely secular institution. There is a one-half time professor who has a half-time
secretary who runs a Program on Studies in Religion. That's it. For the rest, that
vast university is totally secular in its endeavor. There was some pressure on the
university to take more seriously the whole field of religion, and Hans Küng was
the first world-renowned lecturer brought in for a term in a new program that has
brought others in the wake of that first year. It was a privilege to be with him, and
as I listened to him on Monday nights deliver these lectures on themes of death
and hell and resurrection, judgment, purgatory, I was amazed that the vast
Rackham Auditorium was filled and sometimes filled to overflowing. There were
students and faculty, the total academic community drinking in these learned
discourses on these questions, sitting for an hour and a half to two hours to a
lecture read with a heavy, Swiss-German brogue. And I said to myself, people are
really interested in questions about the End. I admitted to myself that I hadn't
really dealt with them in depth. You can preach pretty much your whole ministry
and avoid some ticklish subjects. Just talk to me about it, I'll tell you how you do
it. It was a moment for me when I recognized that these questions were very
much a part of the secular person's agenda - that there were questions in the
depths of the human person, existential questions about life and death, that
people wanted to talk about and have some light about.
So, I came back that very Fall, Advent season, exactly five years ago today,
December 4,1983, and preached for the first time in this area. The Season was
Advent when our focus is again the coming of the King and the End, and I
preached on the double-image of the End, heaven and hell. I continued to think
about it and study. I didn't really address it again in the pulpit until Advent, 1985,
and then I did so seriously, with three messages - “Life Hereafter - Wishful
Thinking?,” “The Images of Heaven and Hell,” and then the sermon, “Why I
Believe in Purgatory,” which was a strange sound in a Reformed church. But, it
© Grand Valley State University
�In the End, God
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
began to raise the questions that I was thinking about and we thought about
together.
The board of editors of Perspectives, of which I am a member, meets twice a year
in a kind of “think tank.” It's a wonderfully stimulating experience. And we try to
determine what's going on in the world, what's going on in the Church, what the
questions are, what the issues are that need to be addressed. How can we move
the Church along in its own responsibility to translate the Gospel in the present
age? In those discussions, I am sure that my experience with Küng and my
conviction about the importance of these last things was a part of the mix that
issued in the determination to have an issue on Purgatory. I have it here.
“Purgatory-a Fresh Look at the Final Transformation of Life,” January of 1988. It
was just a scholarly dressing up of the message I preached in 1985. We only got
one response, I think. One person said you don’t have to send the journal
anymore. For the rest, no reaction. Purgatory in a Reformed Church journal - no
reaction? Maybe the Church is dead. So, as we came together again and
continued to plan our issues we were talking about the triumph of God's grace,
the covenant of grace as it is rooted in the Old Testament and finds expression in
Jesus Christ, I think it was probably Gord's brother, Jim, who is our editor, who
said to me, “Why don't you write an article on the covenant of grace and the
triumph of grace,” and so I said, “Okay.” Over the years I have been working
through this material theologically and biblically. Last spring as we were about to
make our major plunge with our capital funds drive, I was so concerned during
Lent and Easter not to become a promotional institution, but to make sure that
our decision to move forward would be rooted in our understanding of who we
are as a people of God.
I put together a series for Lent and Easter very carefully. It was the major
occupation of my winter vacation, and in March I preached a sermon simply
entitled, “Universal Salvation” based in those chapters 40 to 55 of Isaiah and the
Letter to the Ephesians and the Gospel of John. In that biblical study, in my
theological reflection, I was becoming more and more convinced of the universal
triumph of the grace of God, that what God began in the beginning, God would
bring to consummation in the End, that the creation that had gone awry, would
be reclaimed by the God Who would not give up until there was a conquest by
love of all of those set in opposition against Him. It was in the sharp focusing of
that, and then the series this summer on the foundations of faith and the
understanding of the covenant of grace, that I came to the clarity that issued in an
article in the September issue called “The Habit of God's Heart,” the habit of
God's heart being to save.
Well, if in January Purgatory didn't percolate a purr, in September, the
suggestion that we might be able to close hell down caused a sharp reaction. Now,
you have to understand that there was a theological issue here, and there were
those that were concerned about that issue, but the larger picture concerned a
growing discontent with some things at the seminary. Those things didn't really
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
involve me, except that as I had been on the board for a number of years before I
went on the faculty and had tried to push the seminary in the direction that I felt
it should go; but the issues that were a source of growing discontent were not
really my issues at all. But, I, with my article, threw a spark into a room loaded
with fumes, and it exploded. I gave, with my article, my suggestion of the triumph
of God's grace, an understandable, easy-to-grasp handle by which various
disparate elements galvanized in a move on the seminary. It was, as I said a
moment ago, my best judgment that the way to defuse that move on the seminary
was to remove myself as an issue because my brothers in the faith were playing
hardball and the threat to withhold funds from a small denominational school is
a rather powerful weapon. You can be “dead right.” So, I simply felt that if I
removed myself, the seminary would not be in jeopardy and we would not
exacerbate the controversy, but be able eventually to recoup and hopefully regain
the initiative. You have to understand that there was sufficient support in the
Executive Committee to sustain me. I asked them not to, so in a very real sense, I
didn't get fired, but I have lost my job.
Now, that's a little bit of background. There are a couple of things that I want to
say about that. The first is that through this experience I have been wonderfully
supported. I have been supported by many people out in the Church who have
written, who have spoken to me, who are grieved by what has happened and who
have encouraged me. I have been marvelously supported by this community of
faith. The Personnel Committee, Consistory, and right across the board - all of
you who were aware of it have been forthcoming in your expressions of trust and
confidence and love, and for that I am deeply grateful. I have not felt isolated,
alienated or alone for one moment.
I also want to say that this is a wonderful place to be able to come back to. Going
through this experience I learned that at the seminary they really thought that I
would eventually slide down there. Because I think, there no one can believe that
someone would choose to be the pastor of a congregation if one could be a
professor in the seminary. I tried to be clear when I went there, but I don't think
they really believed me. But, for me to remove myself from there and to be here
again fulltime is a bright prospect. I enjoyed the teaching very much. I really
enjoyed the engagement with the class. But, I have been stretched, and I have
been dissatisfied with my inability to do everything here I have wanted to do in a
pastoral way. You have not complained; you have been gracious and supportive.
But, I have not been satisfied. I was trying to do probably too much and I am not
content simply to appear here on Sunday and to be incomprehensible and
disappear on Monday and be invisible for the rest of the week. I want to be here,
and so I am grateful for the fact that I can return in full power to this place.
But, where do we go from here? There's never simply a going home. It cannot be
just “business as usual.” And I want you to reflect with me about what this
experience says to us as a community of faith. I have encountered the ugly face of
the Church. I have run head on into the defensiveness, the tearfulness, the
© Grand Valley State University
�In the End, God
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
experience of threat, which is so much a part of so much of the Church. It's not a
pleasant picture. And I am convinced that as Christ Community we must not
retrench, we must not recant nor repent. We must not back down. We must
become more of what we have been trying to become over these many years. I am
convinced through this experience that far too many pastors stop thinking when
they get out of seminary, and probably don't engage in serious theological
wrestling beyond those years. It has become obvious to me that to engage in indepth theological discussion in the Church in general is almost impossible. The
reaction of fear, defensiveness and threat is so strong that one does so at one's
risk and peril.
That tells me that Christ Community must not be less, but more of what we have
become. That it is incumbent upon us to be a community that continues in that
which has been our aim for eighteen years to combine intellectual integrity and
evangelical passion: to bind together mind and heart, to be fully convinced of the
glorious gospel of the grace of God in Jesus Christ, to be totally at home in this
present age and day in this world translating the gospel for the last decade of the
20th century, preparing for Century Twenty-One with hearts full of hope, with
confidence and with joy. It seems to me that what we have to become is even
more of what we have been - a model, an island, if you will, a concrete, tangible
community of faith in this place where we live out the gospel, where we incarnate
the grace of God. We can become even more of a stimulus than we have
heretofore. It is obvious that out in the broader structures of the Church one
walks at one's peril. But, here, where we are in full trust and love in community,
we can think together, reflect together and find new ways, other avenues, for
impacting the larger Church. I think we cannot be content simply to have a good
thing amongst ourselves. I think we must seek to continue to create here a
community of faith that incarnates the gospel and that becomes a translator of
the tradition in such a way that it may impact our day and our generation, and
thereby become a stimulus to the whole Church.
How can we do that? Well, I'm not sure, but there must be some ways, and I
invite you, with me, to think about how as a local congregation we can have a
larger vision and a greater mission. It's not an accident that all of this stuff was
born in Advent, for Advent is the season in which we celebrate that the King Who
came is the King Who is coming. It is the season in which we celebrate that the
Kingdom inaugurated in Jesus' first coming is a Kingdom that will come to its
consummation in the fullness of time. It is the season in which we think about the
End, in which the last things come into sharp focus for us.
John A. T. Robinson, a rambunctious bishop in the Church of England, now
dead, was one of those people who was always stretching the Church, and he
wrote a little book some years ago, In The End, God, in which he suggested that in
a secular age the entree to the secular person with the gospel of Jesus Christ may
well be through the avenue of the questions concerning the End. As I found at the
University of Michigan in the secular campus, people, whether they were related
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
to the Church or not, still have some kind of haunting question in the midst of
their being about what it means to live, what it means to die, and what there is to
look forward to beyond. What is the meaning of life; what is the meaning of
history; whence have things come; whither are things going; and what does it
mean to me here and now? I am convinced that when that impacted me then, I
was right. Robinson says that is the very avenue through which to approach the
secular age.
The world is secular. The Church isn't doing it. Look around you at congregation
after congregation after congregation! Friends, it's survival. It is maintenance
mentality. There is no real dent on the modern age. There is no real mission, no
real thrust, no real penetration. It is the reiteration of ancient thought forms, of
classic statements of doctrine that in their own time of formulation were historic
statements that impacted, but have become mere empty slogans in our day. How
do we say Jesus Christ today? How do we spell hope today? How do we bring joy
today?
Well, the season of Advent is the season in which those very questions occupy us,
and we have a message. It's a biblical message. Isaiah the prophet lived in the
midst of human darkness and anguish. He lived in human situations where
infants died in infancy, and where old men failed to fill out their days. He lived in
the midst of human tragedy where people built houses and never lived in them,
planted vineyards and never harvested them. He saw a day coming when things
would be different. He saw a new world, a new heaven and a new earth. He saw
the day when the lion and the lamb would lie down together and when they
would not hurt or destroy in all God's holy mountain. He lived by a vision; he
believed in God, the God of covenant grace.
Paul knew that, and he was encountered by Jesus Christ, the risen Christ, and he
was convinced the Jesus of Nazareth, crucified, had been raised by the power of
God. He wrote to the Church in Corinth: “If Christ is not raised, you are yet dead
in your sins. But, as a matter of fact, now is Christ risen from the dead, and as in
Adam all died, so in Christ shall all be made alive, and he will reign until he has
subjected all rule and authority and power and finally the last enemy, death itself,
and when Jesus has subjected every rule and authority and power set in
opposition to God and His Kingdom, then he will yield up the Kingdom to God
and the Father, and God will be all in all.” Or as the RSV has it, “Then God will be
everything to everyone.”
Well, I've got a lot of questions about that. There are a lot of things I don't
understand. There's a lot of Bible to bring into dialogue. There are many
mysteries that elude my insight and understanding at this point. But, this I'll tell
you. I am gripped by the good news of the triumph of the grace of God. I don't
know how, but I believe that God will be all in all, and consequently, I am saved
from despair even now in the face of the historical scene because Jesus reigns,
Jesus is Lord. And I am saved, as well, from a kind of superficial optimism that
© Grand Valley State University
�In the End, God
Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
fails to reckon with the present opposition to the Kingdom of God. Saved from
despair, saved from superficial optimism, by faith I believe in God.
I don't believe that the kingdom will fully come and God will be all in all because
there is something wonderful about human nature, that there is some kind of
potential in the human person that through the evolutionary process will blossom
into full bloom. I don't believe we have it in ourselves; I don’t believe that there is
some seed of perfection in history; I don't believe that this old world can be
transformed through any human possibility! But, I believe in God! And I believe
that God, in His grace, has intervened in our time and our space, and I believe
that God's triumph of Grace will be the realization of His purposes of love and
thus in the face of the darkness of this world I can bring light, and in the face of
the futility of this world I can bring hope, and in the face of the despair of this
world, I can bring joy - because God will be all in all.
I don't know how. I don't know when. But, I believe that, and that's the Advent
hope; that is the vision; that is the dream and we can trust God for it. And in the
meantime, live as a community of graced and forgiven people, full of love and
care for the world, being here a beacon light, looking for the day when salvation
will be brought to earth's fartherest bound. Thanks be to God who gives us the
victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Let us pray.
Our Father, our understanding is so small; we only see as in a mirror dimly, but
we believe the day is coming when we shall see face to face. We only know in part,
but we believe the day is coming when we shall know, even as we are also fully
known. And in the meantime, we know that faith and hope and love abide. And in
Your love, we rest, clinging by faith to the promise, with hearts filled with hope,
through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Reference:
Richard A. Rhem, “The Habit of God’s Heart,” Perspectives, September, 1988.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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Event
Advent II
Scripture Text
I Corinthians 15:28
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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KII-01_RA-0-19881204
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1988-12-04
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In the End, God
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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
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
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on December 4, 1988 entitled "In the End, God", on the occasion of Advent II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: I Corinthians 15:28.
Advent
Community of Grace
Eschatology
Universal Grace
-
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036dd1371e8661f5c65743a4bf021536
PDF Text
Text
On Being Civil and Committed:
Reclaiming a Great Tradition
Lecture By
Richard A. Rhem
Minister of Preaching and Theological Inquiry
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
At
United Church of Christ Fall 1996 Conference
St. John’s United Church of Christ
Grand Rapids, Michigan
October 6, 1996
Prepared Text
I am honored to be invited to address you at this Fall Conference. I come to you
as one recently released from a denominational affiliation, which I am certain is
no news to anyone here. On Tuesday of last week, the Classis of Muskegon, RCA,
signed a separation agreement with Christ Community and accepted the
resigning of my ordained status within the Reformed Church in America. I
mention this because it gives me a new sense of freedom. The experience is one of
being unleashed and, with that, a sense of entering a much larger world.
This sense of release has been mine now for some time as I have been
emotionally removed from the RCA since February when the Classis judged me
out of bounds. And I have found that I have moved into a state of being able to
identify with a much larger community of faith than ever before.
In the 60s, I spent four years in Europe. I found that a richly enlightening
experience as I was able to look at my own nation from afar, from a distance.
Being immersed in the culture of The Netherlands, I was able to view my own
country with the eyes of my Dutch neighbors. That was a transforming
experience. I came home, but I've never been the same. I had been broken loose
from a narrow nationalism and had come to appreciate another culture, people,
way of structuring government, society.
I tell you this because it reflects something of what I feel as I come into your
fellowship today. I come with a deep appreciation for who you are as the United
Church of Christ. I have been aware of you, knowing a few of your clergy, learning
much from the work of your Walter Brueggemann, being aware of the cutting
edge positions you have taken as a denomination. But, more recently, I have had
© Grand Valley State University
�On Being Civil and Committed
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
a more intimate look at the UCC. Over these past months I have received several
letters of encouragement from UCC folk and I am indebted to your Conference
Minister, David Reece, for his supportive presence and counsel. I have had the
sense that I am not alone and that I am not outside the great mainstream of the
Christian tradition. In your fellowship I would never have been called in question.
I never suspected I would be in my present position. Over the past twenty-five
years I have carried out my pastoral ministry, nurturing and shaping a faith
community as I myself have continued to probe the biblical story and reflect on
Christian faith formulation in light of our contemporary context. I have been
straightforward in my preaching and teaching at home and I have attempted to
engage the RCA in theological reflection through my writing in Perspectives, a
journal founded by the RCA in 1985 to stimulate theological discussion. I carried
out my calling to think the faith seriously and responsibly and I had a genuine
concern to effect theological renewal within the RCA.
Suddenly that was challenged, not because of theological positions set forth in
writing, but because at Christ Community we offered our chapel for use by the
Metropolitan Community Church of Muskegon, a denomination that ministers to
marginalized folk, especially the Gay/Lesbian community. Once the investigation
of our ministry to that community began, it soon broadened to my theological
positions, which had been in print in the journal of the RCA for a decade. The
investigation became a nightmare; the matter took on a life of its own. The result
was that I was judged outside the parameters of RCA confessional statements. I
resigned my ordination in the Reformed Church in America, which has, after
some months of negotiation and a good deal of anguish, now been recognized by
the Classis of Muskegon.
You did not gather today to hear my story, but that recent experience is so fresh
and vivid in my mind that you must recognize that it forms the context of what I
want to say to you today. My experience causes me to want to affirm the spirit
and posture of the UCC. All human institutions have strengths and weaknesses
and I'm sure as you experience the UCC from the inside there are elements you
value and aspects you might want to change. But, as one who views you from the
outside, let me call you to appreciate and value the liberal spirit that marks you as
a denomination. I use liberal not as a catch word or as a label for a certain
theological persuasion, but in the sense of a spirit of openness; liberal as large,
broad, generous in contrast to narrowness of outlook, of mind; in contrast to
meanness of spirit, to bigotry and dogmatism. I use liberal in the sense of
magnanimity.
It is that spirit that I find marking you as a people and I want to suggest that,
because that is so much a part of your culture, you might take it for granted, but
you must never take it for granted. And beyond that, Liberalism as a name for
that 19th-century theological development that marked the progressive wing of
© Grand Valley State University
�On Being Civil and Committed
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Protestantism in its mainline expression has taken a beating in the last half
century and especially in the last couple of decades.
One hears the claim, "Liberalism is dead," and not infrequently there is a certain
satisfaction in that claim as though what Liberalism's critics always claimed has
proven true - that it held forth an inadequate Gospel, a faulty view of scripture
and a flawed theological vision. As sign of Liberalism's naiveté concerning the
radical darkness that again and again erupts into the human scene, the demonic
that lurks in the wings of historical movement, one hears reference to the
preeminent journal of liberal Christianity, The Christian Century, named around
the turn of the century that was to be the century in which the Kingdom of God
came to flower - The Christian century. Then one is reminded of the bloodshed,
violence and horrendous evil that has manifested itself in this century now
nearing its close, and one hardly dares confess the least affinity with the great
Liberal ideals that fired the imagination of the spokespersons of that movement.
Add to this century's bludgeoning of the liberal vision the rise of the Religious
Right with its rhetoric of righteous indignation over the societal chaos and
turbulence coming to expression in the 60's - the collapse of values and
crumbling of the foundations of family, church and nation, and it is clear that any
claim to hold and advocate the Liberal vision is a sure formula for being written
off as a hopeless Don Quixote, dreaming an impossible dream.
Perhaps it is best to begin with the admission that the classic Liberal vision was
flawed. Under the spell of evolutionary development that so permeated every
sphere of the human endeavor as this century dawned, there was a dangerous
naiveté and shallow optimism that marked the thought of Protestant liberalism.
The Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man was as glaring in its sunny
optimism as in its sexist expression. The Kingdom of God was coming through
rational human effort and goodwill. The arrogance of Western civilization's
paternalistic attitude to the rest of the globe and the exploitative colonialism were
well masked under a facade of good will, for the most part sincere, of bringing
light to the nations, liberation to those enslaved in heathen darkness. The
darkness would retreat before the dawning of the light of the world, Jesus Christ.
John S. B. Monsell caught the spirit of the 19th century in his hymn, penned in
1863:
Light of the world, we hail Thee,
Flushing the eastern skies;
Never shall darkness veil Thee
Again from human eyes;
Too long, alas, withholden,
Now spread from shore to shore;
Thy light so glad and golden,
Shall set on earth no more.
© Grand Valley State University
�On Being Civil and Committed
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
There is something here that stirs the soul. There is a grand vision of light and
love enveloping the whole human family. But then this "Christian Century"
moved into unprecedented darkness and the manifestation of the demonic such
as could not have been imagined. The great wars, the Cold War, the anguish of
the Middle East, the agony of the Balkan countries - as this century draws to its
close, we must recognize that the amazing breakthroughs in science and
developments in technology have only increased exponentially the potential for
the human family to destroy itself, its environment and its grandest vision.
Liberalism reacted against the orthodoxy locked in a 17th-century paradigm of
Protestant scholasticism which was defensively reacting against the rise of the
modern in the wake of the Enlightenment. Liberalism scrubbed the dour doctrine
of original sin, emaciated the Evil One with the promise of progress through
education and saw everywhere in historical development the upward movement
of the evolutionary drive.
But, instead of the Kingdom of God - disaster dawned.
I cannot rehearse the whole theological, social history of the last half of our
century, but only mention the names of Karl Barth and the reversal of the liberal
tide on the continent with his Theology of the Word and God - the "Wholly
Other"; Reinhold Niebuhr and his powerful recognition of the darkness that
continues to threaten and the demonic that breaks out again and again.
Liberalism has been chastened and put on the defensive. And we are now faced
with a vociferous Religious Right marked by fundamentalism in biblical
interpretation, arrogance in claim to be the Christian voice and belligerence in
claiming its right to determine "Christian values," willing if possible to legislate
its social agenda.
Well, before we dispose of the Liberal vision, let's take a closer look at where we
are in the cosmic journey and whether or not there are contained in that vision
essential insights and attitudes that cannot be lost if we are to fulfill our calling to
follow the way of Jesus, live under the reign of God, and be agents of Shalom in
the world.
In a society locked in culture wars where reasoned discourse and respectful
dialogue is all but a lost art, I believe there is a critical need for a resurgence of
the liberal vision, duly humbled by the experience of this century, taking account
of the reality of historical existence as it has been experienced in this century, the
most violent ever. My contention is based on my conviction that a world marked
by global consciousness, technology that has made the world a neighborhood and
the fact of religious pluralism demands an open mind, a gracious spirit and an
all-embracing compassion.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
Global consciousness marks our world. For the first time ever, humankind is
experiencing a common history. The beautiful picture of this lovely planet
suspended against the black background of spacial darkness is reproduced on
posters and postage stamps. Our kind has set foot on the moon and looked back
on the earth - beautiful, fragile and obviously an interconnected whole. That view
of our world from beyond us is a symbol of the reality of our human existence.
We are one and belong to each other and all the barriers that divide - national
borders, tribal turf, religious enclaves – erode before the compelling reality of one
world spinning out its destiny in cosmic space.
The image of the planet as one, indivisible whole is being translated into
existential experience through the marvels of the electronic age, the wonders of
global communication. Being one of the few human creatures remaining who
owns not a computer and cannot even type, I am an anachronism, a dinosaur, left
in amazement before it all. Through the enthusiasm and genius of one of our
young members, Christ Community has a Web Site. On August 22,1996, an
article appeared on the front page of The New York Times describing our
controversy with the Muskegon Classis. The Times puts their copy on the Internet
and they referenced our Web Site. Within the next 12 hours, our Web Site went
crazy recording over 200 'Visits" from around the world. There are no walls high
enough or impermeable enough to stifle the word that goes out into space and
returns to earth as the falling rain.
A world marked by global consciousness, bound together in community through
communication and bowing in worship to God in churches, temples, mosques,
ashrams and a variety of shrines - that is our present state.
In her book, Encountering God, Diane Eck narrates her own pilgrimage from
Montana Methodism to immersion in Hindu religious culture in the Holy City of
Banares. Teaching at Harvard, she has a task force of students fanning out over
this nation of ours taking photographs of the places of worship of the multiplicity
of faiths that are now a part of the American scene. The landscape is marked by
religious pluralism - that is the fact of our time.
How will we respond to our time - named by many as Post-Modern? That term
becomes almost useless because it is attached to such diverse dimensions of the
present, but it may yet be usable for us if we define it in the context of our present
focus on the movement we have described as Liberalism.
As mentioned above, Liberalism reacted against the stubborn orthodoxy of the
17th century. It welcomed the throwing off of authoritarianism and the
ascendency of human rationality as it emerged in the Enlightenment. But the
Enlightenment reduction of reality to the measure of human rationality proved
inadequate. There was a loss of the Mystery of the transcendent and the rule of
human rationality was proven false by the eruption of evil in our century. The
Modern period, marked by confidence in human reason to shape and control
human destiny, gave way to a post-modern era, which in some forms denies the
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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existence of absolutes and dissolves into an abyss of relativism which allows of no
claims to absolute certitudes.
In a more humble expression, post-modernism is marked not by the denial of the
Absolute or of absolute truths, but by the denial that humankind rooted in
concrete historical circumstance is able to grasp the Absolute or formulate
absolute truth statements. Rather, there is a recognition that being human is to
be limited to a relative grasp of the Absolute and that every truth claim is
provisional, that human knowledge is cumulative, growing, and that human
religious tradition must be living, open-ended and in need of constant revision.
If our world and our age is at all as I have set it forth, then it must be obvious that
a brittle orthodoxy that claims a revelation of propositional truths that move
through history unaffected by development and a strident fundamentalism that
reiterates yesterday's answers to today's questions cannot meet the challenge of
the reality of our world, cannot address with openness and sensitivity the moving
target of the human condition.
It is for that reason that I affirm the posture and spirit of the UCC and urge you
not to take it for granted and not to be intimidated by the raspy rhetoric of the
Religious Right. I would encourage you, rather, to be faithful to your vision and
be firm in your resolve to stand for those causes that represent the grace of God
as it was embodied in the way of Jesus.
It is not for me to set your agenda; I call you, rather, to confidence in your
historic posture and spirit. Yet, lest I leave everything vague and fuzzy, let me
suggest some concrete challenges that will concretize how your posture and spirit
might find expression.
Continue to lead the way in the matter of the ordination of gay/lesbian persons. I
really do not know the history of how you came to your prophetic stance, but you
lead the way on an issue that vexes those church bodies that are wrestling with
the issue, to say nothing of those bodies that have not yet openly dealt with the
issue. You are in ecumenical discussions with Lutheran and Reformed bodies and
I know from my former church body you have been called to turn from your
practice before some kind of union would be considered. Stand firm. Continue to
lead the way.
The matter of sexual orientation tears the Church apart. Homosexuality is one of
the most volatile issues with which the Church must deal. I did not choose to
champion the cause of those of homosexual orientation. Ours was an act of
hospitality to the MCC group. But, when confronted with the challenge to our
action, I had to be true to my conviction. And my position is clear:
It is not a moral issue. For claiming that, I have been assaulted by a blind
biblicism that fails both to take seriously the knowledge available to us today
from the sciences and to exercise a responsible biblical hermeneutic.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
In regard to the instance of the Byron Center teacher, also, we see the incendiary
effect of the discussion of sexual orientation. When an issue elicits such response,
one can be sure there is great fear, ignorance, and insecurity operating.
Out of that situation has arisen a group called Concerned Clergy in which the
UCC is well represented. We must continue to stand for reasoned understanding,
justice and compassion. I have been moved by the stories that have been told to
me by those who have suffered from discrimination and rejection, spurned as less
than human. You are the people to take the lead and break down the walls of
suspicion and misinformation and replace walls with bridges of compassion and
embrace.
I mention a second area in which I believe you have been prophetic and call you
to continue - standing for and with the most vulnerable of society.
On the Sunday following the passage of the Welfare Reform Bill, I said in the
sermon, "Congratulations, Mr. President. Congratulations, members of Congress.
You have changed the face of welfare in this country. Now, when will you deal
with the big issues facing this nation?"
Well, I got a little response to that. I was asked if I thought the state of welfare did
not require change - was I arguing for the perpetuation of the current system?
That, of course, was not my point. Rather, I was trying to indicate that we are
selective in our indignation; that a stealth bomber or two would cover all the
abuse of the system. And further, while I'm sure reform is needed, who, in the
meantime, will watch for those who fall through the cracks?
The Church must make its voice heard on behalf of the voiceless ones. While we
must be engaged in concrete aid and support to the poor and disadvantaged, we
cannot make such efforts a substitute for an ongoing struggle for a more just and
humane and compassionate social-economic order.
Finally, let me challenge you to the critical importance of interfaith dialogue.
Hans Küng has said there will be no peace in the world without peace among the
religions. Religion is a powerful force in the human situation and the militancy of
the respective fundamentalism of Christianity, Islam and Judaism puts our world
at risk.
In our world where the other is our neighbor, we cannot continue with a blind
exclusivism that dogmatically affirms its truth to be the only truth, its way to
God, the only way. Not only does that fail to build broad community and mutual
respect, it also fails to realize the enrichment of spiritual insight and the
enhancement of human wellbeing that dialogue affords.
I just returned from two weeks in Spain. I visited Toledo, site of the Council of
Toledo in 589 - an important early Christian center that was conquered by the
Moors in the 8th century, bringing with them their Moslem faith. For centuries
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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the Jewish, Christian and Islamic communities lived peacefully together until the
13th century when Christian forces conquered, driving out the Jews and
Moslems, instituting the Inquisition, where it was convert or be banished or lose
your life. We moved on to Cordoba where, in the middle of a magnificent mosque,
the conquering Christians raised a cathedral towering over the surrounding
mosque, sign of Christianity's triumph. And then it was Seville. There, the
cathedral took over the mosque site. The tower of the mosque was kept intact, but
the huge silver monstrance that served the cathedral was replicated on top of the
mosque's tower - again a sign of the triumphalism of the Church. And when the
Jews were driven out, the Jewish quarter was renamed Santa Cruz - The Holy
Cross. In all of this I was struck by the arrogance of the triumphalist spirit that
has marked so much of Christendom in its history, and I felt deeply the need for a
different spirit to mark the Church in our day.
Just as the early Jesus movement discovered the wide embrace of God's grace for
the Gentiles without demanding they become Jews, so is not the God of Israel,
the God of Jesus calling us today to recognize that the grace that flows from the
heart of God embraces peoples beyond the Christian Church?
These matters I mention are illustrative, not exhaustive. I use them simply as
example of a spirit, a perspective.
My concern is, as I began, to call for a resurgence of a liberal tradition chastened, to be sure - humble, acknowledging our limited insight and knowledge
as part of our human condition; gracious, open to the other, the alienated, the
vulnerable; passionate, finding in the way of Jesus the way of compassion; a
liberal tradition that combines intellectual integrity with evangelical passion.
Intellectual integrity - We need to think the Faith - to reflect on the biblical story
in light of our historical context. We must know the story and the tradition that
has shaped us. And we must be open to contemporary human experience, to all
the knowledge afforded us in the full spectrum of human learning. Out of that
reflection on the biblical story and the faith tradition in light of our present
human experience, we have something to say and action informed by insight.
A mind open to the Word and the world. A heart passionate with the grace of God
embracing the world in all its connectedness. A liberal tradition marked by
humility, passionate, and full of faith. As we traveled through Spain we stopped
in La Mancha and visited the windmills challenged by Don Quixote. Lunching in
the village that was the setting for Cervantes' novel, I had my picture taken near a
bronze sculpture of the strange warrior and I thought to myself, here was a fit
hero for our time - Calling for the resurgence of the liberal tradition in our culture
marked by a conservative tide laced with mean spirit, defensiveness and fear, we
must dare to dream the impossible dream.
Do you remember Eldonza, the kitchen maid whom Quixote named Dulcinea,
against her protest that she was nothing but a slut - no lady at all? Do you
remember that scene where Quixote lies dying, disillusioned? She comes to him,
© Grand Valley State University
�On Being Civil and Committed
Richard A. Rhem
Page 9
now having become the lady he saw in her while still in her rags, saying to him,
"I'm your Lady Dulcinea," transformed by his naming her not as she was, but as
she might become. Be true to yourselves. In an age of quite a different spirit, I
challenge you to make your own these stirring lines from "The Man From
LaMancha."
To dream the impossible dream,
to fight the unbeatable foe,
to bear with unbearable sorrow,
to run where the brave dare not go.
To right the unrightable wrong,
to love, pure and chaste from afar,
to try when your arms are too weary,
to reach the unreachable star.
This is my quest, to follow that star,
no matter how hopeless, no matter how far,
To fight for the right without question or pause,
to be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause.
And I know if I'll only be true
to this glorious quest
that my heart will lie peaceful and calm,
when I'm laid to my rest.
And the world will be better for this:
that one man, scorned and covered with scars,
still strove with his last ounce of courage,
to reach the unreachable stars.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
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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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St. John's United Church of Christ, Grand Rapids, MI
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On Being Civil and Committed: Reclaiming a Great Tradition
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Richard A. Rhem
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Talk created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on October 6, 1996 entitled "On Being Civil and Committed: Reclaiming a Great Tradition", as part of the series "Lecture", on the occasion of Address to Fall UCC Conference, at St. John's United Church of Christ, Grand Rapids, MI. Tags: Universal Grace, Religious Pluralism.
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Religious Pluralism
Universal Grace
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6d849180ee042e274227ca09da5896cc.pdf
e4ad402279d58bd9cd5f11d405cd1975
PDF Text
Text
Re-Imagining the Faith: A Theological Pilgrimage
Richard A. Rhem
Page 1
Re-imagining the Faith:
A Theological Pilgrimage
Richard A. Rhem
Introductory Reflections for the Articles Page
December 12, 2012
At my retirement in 2004, Christ Community Church was exceedingly gracious in so
many ways, one of which was to collect a number of my sermons and publish them
under the title Re-Imagining the Faith. I could not have named it as well; it succinctly
expressed the story of my thirty-seven years as pastor of that congregation. It was at the
First Reformed Church of Spring Lake, Michigan, that I was ordained to the Christian
ministry on June 30, 1960. From 1960, just out of seminary, to 1964 I served that Spring
Lake congregation. During those four years I was in no way seeking to re-imagine the
Christian faith; in fact, I would have been threatened by the thought. My understanding
of Christian faith was orthodox, evangelical in the Reformed tradition as conveyed by
the Dutch Reformed Church rooted in the Netherlands and brought to this country in
the nineteenth century emigration from the Netherlands.
It was, however, in those four years through pastoral experience that my orthodoxy was
being tested. That whole story is critical to my theological pilgrimage, but I won’t go into
it here, except to say that a move to a very conservative, evangelical Reformed
congregation in New Jersey [in 1964] only accentuated my struggle, which was really
about the view and authority of Scripture. I left New Jersey for the Netherlands to
pursue post-graduate studies. I was indeed fortunate to be received and accepted by
Professor Dr. Hendrikus Berkhof, Professor of Dogmatics at Leiden University. As I was
leaving his study after my first appointment with him in the early Spring of 1967, I saw a
piece of paper pinned on a drape, on which was written:
Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be;
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they.
In those lines by Alfred Lord Tennyson I knew I had found my teacher and my task. My
little system had had its day; I longed to find the Sacred Mystery toward whom my little
system, now broken, had pointed.
Though I had earned a Master of Divinity and a Master of Theology following my BA
from Hope College, I was about to embark for the first time in my life on an intellectual
and spiritual quest with an open mind and heart – seeking truth wherever it might lead
me. For the first time in my life I began with questions rather than answers to be proven
and confirmed. It was a liberating moment; finally I was ready to learn.
© Grand Valley State University
�Re-Imagining the Faith: A Theological Pilgrimage
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
Lest I be misunderstood, my failure to gain an education, to learn, was not the fault of
the institutions from which I attained degrees, nor the teachers who taught me. To be
sure, a denominational seminary has not the task to lead students to new visions of the
faith but rather to teach the faith system, the confessional foundation of the church that
supports it and governs it. That being said, I must confess the problem was mine. All my
energy and intellectual gifts were committed to learning and then teaching evangelical
Reformed faith. The last word had been spoken; now it was my calling to proclaim and
teach it. And I was deadly serious about it.
But no longer. After my little system began to break in those seven years of pastoral
ministry, I knew I had to begin again to see if indeed I could come to new insight and
understanding that would enable me still to be a Christian minister with a message in
which I could passionately believe and proclaim.
The fact that at my retirement a book of my sermons was published with the title ReImagining the Faith is the finest tribute I could receive, witnessing to the journey that
began in the late 60’s under the guidance of Professor Berkhof and that continued all the
years after my return to the Spring Lake congregation in 1971. Through all those years I
was about re-imagining the faith and, even in retirement, the journey continues.
As I look back over my ministry that continued in Spring Lake following my four-year
European sojourn, I realize that what I essentially gained was an ability to think
theologically, to think critically. No longer was there a set confessional system of
theological propositions to be explained and defended. I was full of wondering, of
questioning, of questing for a deeper understanding of biblical faith in the context of
contemporary culture.
My new posture found expression in preaching and teaching but it was with the birth of
the journal Perspectives, a Journal of Reformed Thought in 1986 that I began to
articulate that new posture on central theological/biblical themes.
My first article was on the theology of Robert Schuller as I will describe below. But from
then on I addressed some critical themes that reflected my own groping for a new
understanding of biblical faith.
As I was working on the thread of those pieces I received a note from Professor Dr.
Hendrik Hart who had begun reading the articles I had given him. In response to
questions he raised, I gave some background about my experience in the RCA. Our
correspondence I include here:
Email from Hendrik Hart, November 20, 2012:
... I’m reading Dick’s articles in Perspectives. I was entirely unprepared for them because
Dick keeps saying that he was a latecomer in moving beyond conservatism. But the first
piece, from 1987, digs into the God-Jesus-male cluster with a vengeance. And so it is
with most of the pieces. They are radical in choice of topic, position and approach. They
© Grand Valley State University
�Re-Imagining the Faith: A Theological Pilgrimage
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
are not mealy-mouthed either. The language is clear, direct, and hard-hitting. I would
have thought that, early in the game, the pastoral side might emerge, knowing how upset
conservatives might be. Not so. So where’s the conservatism? The only evidence for
Dick’s pleading a late start in getting beyond conservatism is that the style of argument
has not been touched by the then rising postmodern spirit. But that took time for all of
us.
OK, if I’m near the mark with this, how would you characterize where you were in 1987,
Dick? What readings or experiences would have spawned those articles and how did you
expect they would be perceived? By your congregation, by your classis, by Perspectives
readers?
I am curious because, if I go by my own memories, I think there was a mixture of urgency
and naiveté. In 1983 I wrote “Must I Believe in God as Father?” in The Banner. It was a
soapbox piece and the editor and I had previously discussed at length how this should be
done. I think I wrote very carefully, so I was fully unprepared for the storm of invective
that broke over me, as well as for the complete silence of supporters. Only now (right
now!) does it occur to me that the problem may well not have been the piece as such (it
was about praying to God as Mother), but the heading. Why did I not see that 30 years
ago? So, if you can, tell us something about why you may have written things possibly
unaware of how they would be perceived or of how you would endanger yourself. Did you
know you were taking risks?
Reply from Richard Rhem:
Henk, great to hear from you and I am pleased you are reading the articles. It so happens
that I have spent over a week gathering my writings over the years of my ministry post
Netherlands. (I have a few more for you, especially two pieces that appeared in The
Reformed Review, Western Seminary’s journal. In 1972 I gave a lecture at Western
which was published in The Reformed Review – “A Theological Conception of Reality as
History – Some Aspects of the Thinking of Wolfhart Pannenberg.” Then in 1986 I wrote
in a [tribute] for Gene Osterhaven – “Theological Method: The Search for a New
Paradigm in a Pluralistic Age” – which dealt with Küng’s paradigm change in connection
with Tracy and referring to Gadamer, etc. Those three pieces were received quite well.
Then the RCA founded Perspectives. I just found the first editorial by Rev. Dr. James
Van Hoeven – first editor and major figure behind the project. (That he was brother-inlaw to Ed Mulder, General Secretary, got the Journal underway.) Jim wanted me on the
board of editors and immediately asked that I write about Schuller’s new reformation. I
had been inspired by Bob Schuller upon my return from the Netherlands - my leadership
people felt, having been out of the country for four years, I needed such exposure. It
worked. Within four months of beginning again in Spring Lake, the First Reformed
Church became Christ Community and a second service in the morning was added (and
eventually a third). About 28 of our people attended Schuller’s Institute for Successful
Church Leadership. But Bob Schuller was under fire for his book New Reformation and
being too easy on sin!! Therefore Jim Van Hoeven thought I should do an article on
Schuller. It was quite well received. You ask about whether I wrote with awareness of
reaction from the church. I’m sure I was naive but, according to Jim’s first editorial, this
new journal’s purpose was to “engage issues that reformed Christians meet in personal,
ecclesiastical, and societal life.” It also aimed to be in conversations that “help shape the
identity and mission of the Reformed Church in America.”
© Grand Valley State University
�Re-Imagining the Faith: A Theological Pilgrimage
Richard A. Rhem
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Jim continues, “If in the process, Perspectives can enable a community of scholars to be
formed – women and men from within the church who bridge race, region, and
discipline, who enjoy the give and take of thoughtful discourse, and who do not mind if
their Sundays sometimes get pretty rough [an allusion to a Mark Twain quote with which
he opened] – this enterprise will have fulfilled its expectations.”
The editorial moves to a quote from Robert Bly: “Certainty lives on either side of the
border, but truth lives on the border.” Jim continues, “The editors of Perspectives will
push themselves and the church toward that border, theologically. This means, on the
one hand, Perspectives will affirm and deepen the richness of the Reformed tradition.
Tradition tells us who we are, gives us a definition, a point from which to set our course,
and reminds us ‘we belong...to our faithful Savior Jesus Christ.’ And yet truth lives on the
border. The danger of too much tradition is that it turns a good thing into idolatry. The
church’s faith and life must always be creative. …holding to the tradition, being creative,
living on the border is part of what it means to be Reformed, according to the Word of
God.”
That was January, 1986, the first issue. Perspectives was initially sent free of charge to
ministers, members of boards and agencies, elders on request. It was to engage the
leadership of the RCA in creative conversation. I really believed that, naive as I was...
It is coincidental that you raise the questions my writings raised as your brother Peter
has asked me to write an overview of the thread that runs through my articles to
introduce them on a Web site of an archive of my work. I have begun writing after
sorting through piles of files. That piece will answer some of your questions, but let me
respond to your questions regarding my being a late bloomer. Throughout my education
I was trying to reinforce the faith structure of my childhood. I never challenged or raised
a question. Yet, beneath my sturdy dogmatism, there was an insecurity: I wondered if the
faith/church would survive – not because it wasn’t God’s truth but because the darkness
arrayed against the light was formidable. A pastoral experience in Spring Lake showed
me that an inerrant, infallible Bible wasn’t enough. During my last year there, the
Covenant Life curriculum from the RCA/Presbyterians came out. I taught the foundation
papers in Spring Lake and then introduced the curriculum to the New Jersey
congregation. It created an uproar from a few who felt it was weak on Scripture [long
story]. For me – finally owning my own questions – it was very helpful. I knew I would
have to spend years bringing that congregation around or make good on my desire to go
to the Netherlands for postgrad work. Berkhof accepted me and proved a great mentor
and friend. Thus began my first real education because finally I was open to the quest.
But, Henk, I was 32! Four years in Leiden and my return to Spring Lake where I began to
preach out of the reservoir of the Leiden years.
This I knew: the orthodox view of Scripture was the bottleneck. I felt a real freedom to
explore in that marvelous community. I taught Berkhof’s Christian Faith, Küng’s On
Being a Christian and Does God Exist? Coming from a serious study of Pannenberg, I
was ready for Küng whom I came to appreciate deeply. I mentioned my writings/lectures
in The Reformed Review in 1972 and 1986. These were about the theological method.
But, as I wrote earlier, it was Perspectives that gave me the occasion to address issues
before the church. Yes, I was naive, but I was also totally free in bringing to expression
© Grand Valley State University
�Re-Imagining the Faith: A Theological Pilgrimage
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
what I had been thinking about. Now I was 51, Henk: no youngster, but just finding my
voice. I was blessed with a congregation that allowed me to “think out loud”. That was
my preaching style and it was a safe and honest place. Thus when Perspectives came
along I expressed myself quite honestly. The “Habit of God’s Heart” piece I knew was
treading on dangerous terrain, but I tried to be careful, wondering but also being honest
about my hope that God’s grace was universal.
As time moved on I got the assignments that were controversial because I was a pastor in
a safe place. I think there was only one other pastor on the board of Perspectives. The
rest were professors at colleges or the seminaries and were reluctant to take on the
themes I tackled.
So, my conservatism in the traditional form ended when I left for Leiden in 1967. From
there I had to begin again. I consumed book after book. Berkhof would say, “You must
begin to write,” but I said, “I just found six more footnotes leading to a dozen more
books!”
Trying to answer your questions: by 1987 I had been engaged in serious theological
reading/thinking for 20 years. Perspectives gave me the opportunity to bring to
expression all I had been thinking/teaching/preaching about. I felt safe and confident
and thus put myself on the line. Perspectives was not the Church Herald, read by RCA
lay folk. The Banner was something else. You wrote in a very much more conservative
context to a well-informed readership in the bastion of Calvinist orthodoxy.
As for “the silence of supporters,” I know that well. When my Grace article appeared, I
was teaching homiletics at Western. A colleague also on the board of editors, present and
participating in the discussion about the theme, in favor of my writing...but when the
storm rose, in a faculty meeting asked, “Why did you feel you had to write that piece?”
He also, I’m told, said if I had changed six words there would have been no problem.
I must say, Henk, it never occurred to me that I would get into trouble. My congregation
was solidly supportive and I had fine collegial relationships with the RCA leadership and
I honestly felt I was being a positive influence for good in the RCA. In the end it was not
RCA leadership but young, threatened pastors in the Muskegon Classis that spelled my
demise in the RCA. It is all quite a story.
And now to return to the thread of my articles. My second Perspectives piece was
entitled “Karl Barth: Preaching and Theological Renewal.” I set forth Barth’s own
experience of preaching and the high regard he had for the preaching moment – very
inspiring.
But then, in a series of articles, I addressed contemporary issues in the Church and my
own deepening grasp of those issues.
February 1987, pp. 4-6: “An Accident of the Incarnation.” The issue was the male
domination of the church. I argued that the maleness of the Incarnation was an
“accident,” not of the essence of God’s revelation in human flesh.
In the January 1988 issue, I wrote a piece, “Purgatory Revisited.” Hans Küng at the
University of Michigan in the Fall of 1983 lectured on questions surrounding death,
© Grand Valley State University
�Re-Imagining the Faith: A Theological Pilgrimage
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
heaven, hell and the future, subsequently published under the title Eternal Life. Küng
got me to thinking. I suspect it was a beginning step toward the hope of universal grace.
In the September 1988, issue I brought to full expression my hope and growing
conviction that God’s grace would finally bring all God’s children home. The piece,
entitled “The Habits of God’s Heart”, elicited major responses from RCA ministers and
the public readership – positive and negative, the latter predominant.
In the April 1991, issue I became even bolder. I wrote of my growing conviction that my
faith community, the community of Reformed faith issuing from Calvin’s Geneva by way
of the Netherlands had never come to terms with the Enlightenment - the place of
critical rationality and historical consciousness in the understanding of the Christian
credal tradition as espoused by the Reformed community in this country. It was
Hendrikus Berkhof’s Two Hundred Years of Theology that made me aware that the
community of which I was a part “was not even engaged in the struggle.” The article was
entitled “Sleeping Through a Revolution.”
As one can well imagine, I got some serious response, including from my beloved
theology professor, Dr. Eugene Osterhaven – who treated me gently however.
Someone challenged me on biblical grounds, on my use of Scripture. That drove me on
to my next piece, “The Book That Binds Us” in the December 1992, issue. My bold
contention was that the Bible is being misused. It is being asked to function in a way it
can no longer be expected to function, a way it was never intended to function.
In the March 1993, issue I returned to the theme of “An Accident of the Incarnation”
with a focus on God language. I wrote in collaboration with my colleague, Colette
Volkema De Nooyer, who did the major work.
In the May 1995 issue, I “completed” as it were the thread I was weaving with an article
“Interreligious Dialogue – What is Required of Us?” I had recognized long since that the
orthodox understanding of Jesus’ death as atonement blocked openness to the other in
interfaith discussion. In this piece I gave that full expression. The article concluded:
My intention is not to advocate Hick or Ogden or any other thinker who is addressing the
matter of interreligious dialogue. Rather, I wish to point to the necessity of honestly
drawing out the consequences of the recognition that human grasp of the truth develops,
evolves, and needs ongoing assessment and adjustment – and sometimes conceptions
need to be rejected. By use of historical imagination, the originating experience that gave
rise to a theological formulation needs to be recovered in order to express the same
reality differently, in order to make the experience available in a totally different cultural
context.
Rather than seeing this as a burden, a cause for fear and defensiveness, it should be seen
as an exciting challenge. Is not such a pursuit of the truth to love God with mind as well
as heart? And is not the recognition that every biblical and theological expression is
marked by the human and historical limitations that adhere to all human thought the
© Grand Valley State University
�Re-Imagining the Faith: A Theological Pilgrimage
Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
reason there is need for continual reformation? To be Reformed is not to be in
possession of a set of timeless and eternal truths but, rather, to refuse to absolutize any
human arrangement or formulation. It is not to be saddled with a set of truths that were
once new, innovative, and destabilizing of the established order of the sixteenth century,
or the first century. It is an approach, a spirit, a posture that is open to new knowledge,
fresh insight, and cumulative human experience within historical development.
The church has managed to spend the century in a state of schizophrenia, pursuing
research in the academy and sharing the results in the lecture hall, while the liturgy,
prayers, hymns, and sermons have given little evidence of the honest engagement with
insights of the modern period.
My mentor, Hendrikus Berkhof, claimed the only heresy was to make the gospel boring. I
would add another – the heresy of orthodoxy, the evidence of a failure of nerve and lack
of trust in the living God. It is the heresy of an inordinate lust for certitude that seeks
premature closure, the shutting down of the quest for truth and growth of knowledge in
the magnificent and mysterious cosmos by the creatures whom the Creator calls to
consciousness and embraces in a Grace that pervades the unfolding cosmic process.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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Interfaith worship
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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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Introduction to Articles Page in Web Archive
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Re-imagining the Faith: A Theological Pilgrimage
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Richard A. Rhem
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Introduction to the Articles created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) entitled "Re-imagining the Faith: A Theological Pilgrimage", as part of the series "Introduction to Articles Page in Web Archive". Tags: Spiritual Quest, Reformed Theology, Authority of Scripture, Critical Thinking, Universal Grace, Orthodoxy, Nature of Religion, Sacred Mystery.
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2012-12-12
Authority of Scripture
Critical Thinking
Nature of Religion
Orthodoxy
Reformed Theology
Sacred Mystery
Spiritual Quest
Universal Grace
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c46aba8fa9763f10a6f1bc023ce08666.pdf
0a1a0fbe85a5115e186f2d5a1c04e5c7
PDF Text
Text
Regarding the Conflict About Christian Exclusivity
Richard A. Rhem
Minister of Preaching and Theological Inquiry
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Edited Transcript of the Spoken Address followed by Questions and Answers at
The Synod of the Mid-Atlantic, Reformed Church in America
Ramapo, New Jersey
October 4, 1996
Editor’s Note: See “The Church in Conflict – Can Non-Believers Be Saved?” for
the prepared text of the address.
Thank you for the opportunity of being with you today (I think). I want to begin
by saying that I am not here on a crusade. I am here because I was invited to
come and, having taken the stand I have, I feel there is some responsibility to give
an account of myself.
I have all of my life been a part of the Reformed Church in America, and being
outside at this point in my life is the most surprising thing that has ever
happened to me. And yet, I don’t want simply to turn my back on that which has
been my whole life, but continue in a dialogue and conversation to the extent that
that is desired. And so, I am here today to do that very thing. But, I want to be
clear, I am not here because I am trying to win a battle or make a point. I’m not
on a crusade. I was not on a crusade in Michigan, either. I was simply ministering
in my own concrete community of faith, in my own congregation, and there was
no idea ever that what we had discovered at Christ Community to be an effective
embodiment of the grace of God should be exported anywhere, to our local
community or beyond. We simply were trying to be faithful as the people of God
in that place, and what has transpired over the last year has come to us from the
outside; it is not something that originated inside, and it is not something that
has happened because we were trying to move out. I want to be very clear about
that.
I am here to be in conversation with you and to be of whatever help I can be in
lifting up aspects of the question that is before us, namely, that the grace of God
is limited to those who come to God through faith in Jesus Christ; in other words,
Christian exclusivity. I think there is no one that would deny that we are dealing
with a very important question for the Christian church, but I begin with that
disclaimer, that I am here for conversation and not as a crusader, not moving out
now to convince the whole world, after all, that I was right or that I am right.
© Grand Valley State University
�Spoken Address to Mid-Atlantic Synod
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
The other thing I want to say is that I am a Christian minister of the Gospel. I
have for 36 years been involved in the ministry. Four of those years I was in
graduate study in The Netherlands. Other than that, I have been a pastor and
have preached every week, been involved in pastoral care, preaching, teaching,
just a garden variety pastor, committed to the local congregation – all of that
done as a Christian minister. I preach the grace of God as it has appeared in Jesus
Christ and no other message. We don’t get up on Sunday morning at Christ
Community and say, “Well, let’s look at the menu this morning. Shall we have a
pinch of Buddhism or a dimension of Islam, or whatever.” No, I preach every
week from the scriptures. I try to be faithful in my wrestling with scripture and its
interpretation, and to proclaim the God whom I have come to experience as the
one embodied in Jesus Christ. So, let me be clear on that, as well.
I suppose there will be some other things that will come out as the day
progresses, but I think I want to say those things by way of introduction. I am
here at your invitation, not at my initiative, and I’m here as one who continues to
be what he has always been and that is a minister of the Gospel of the grace of
God in Jesus Christ our Lord.
I’ve tried to think of how I could best get the story, the issue before us, and
sometimes to tell one’s own story is about as effective as anything. Obviously, in
the last weeks and months I have had good opportunity to try and track the
pilgrimage on which I have been engaged, and the way that I have come to where
I am presently in my understanding of Christian faith and other faiths. It seems
to me that, when I was in New Jersey in the middle 60s when my “little system”
was coming up short in terms of being able to deal with the experience of a pastor
in a congregation, and my ability to interpret life, understand human experience,
and to preach my theological system, my understanding of the faith, was limited.
I came out of a very conservative nurture and continued in that very conservative
track through my college and seminary education. I went into the ministry a very
conservative, evangelical pastor and I certainly would have been at the far right of
the theological spectrum. Human experience has a way of humbling us and
creating situations in which our tight little systems are not adequate. I was
beginning to run into that when I made the move from Spring Lake to New
Jersey.
My first four years were in Spring Lake, Michigan. At the time that I came to New
Jersey, the Reformed Church was engaged in some controversy over a Church
School curriculum, Covenant Life Curriculum, and this was the first time in
which the church at large was being introduced to some of the critical views of the
scripture. It was really very good stuff and very responsible and actually
conservative material. But, nonetheless, there were those who were threatened by
some of the things that were handled in the Covenant Life Curriculum. I began to
study that curriculum and it began to address some of the questions that I was
having in my own pastoral ministry. It was time for me to go to Europe in 1967
and find out if I really had anything to say, if I had a Gospel to preach.
© Grand Valley State University
�Spoken Address to Mid-Atlantic Synod
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
I went there wanting, for the first time in my life, to know the truth. I went
through my whole college and seminary education seeking to buttress the
presuppositions with which I came, those I had imbibed with my mother’s milk. I
did not want to be stretched and I was not aware of it, but I was very defensive
against those questions that put my faith understanding in question. But one
eventually has to deal with that and so I went to Europe and found a very
wonderful mentor in Hendrikus Berkhof who was at the University of Leiden. He
helped me identify what the real questions were. Berkhof would say, when I
would come with a question, “Ja, ja, ja. That’s the question.”
I said, “I know that’s the question. What’s the answer?”
He’d say, “Ja, ja, ja, ja. Just live with the question for a while.”
So I did and they were four wonderful years in which I imbibed as much as I
could. I read and read and read and wrote and read and wrote and thought, and
had, what was for me, my first real immersion in an educational experience.
I sat in his study one day and I said to him, “You know, in the Reformed Church,
we can’t really deal very effectively with any of the specific theological questions
that come up because we have never dealt with the issue of the authority of
scripture and how scripture is to be used. It seems as though with everything
we’re debating, we never debate the issue. We debate the issue in terms of what it
will do to our doctrine of scripture.”
I think at the time it may have been the ordination of women to the Elder-Deacon
office, and I could see that nobody was asking whether women could be spiritual,
whether women could be gifted, whether women could be effective leaders in the
church. It seemed to me that the issue always came down to, “Well, if we grant
that, what will happen to First Timothy, whatever, and what about this passage?,”
so that it was not the issue itself, but it was that authority which informs all of our
decisions. I said to Berkhof, “What I really should do is write a dissertation on the
place of scripture and the use of scripture in the church,” and he looked at me
and he said, “You go back to the Reformed Church in America and the United
States of America and do that, do you know what they will do to you?” And so, I
came back and I didn’t do that. But I was aware that that needed to be dealt with.
Then, after some years, having returned to Spring Lake where I had continued to
wrestle with the faith, I went to the University of Michigan in the fall of 1983
where Hans Küng was a guest, giving public lectures on Monday night. They were
held at Racham Auditorium, with overflow crowds. He gave the lectures, now
published, entitled Eternal Life? On Tuesday afternoon I was engaged in a crossdiscipline seminar with him for three hours. There were about 35 of us from the
various schools of the university, medical people, artists, a couple of pastors – a
marvelous experience. He was working from mimeographed material on
paradigm change in theology – wrestling with that whole shift in perspective that
© Grand Valley State University
�Spoken Address to Mid-Atlantic Synod
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
comes when current data put the present conception of things into question.
Then there seems to arise a new model that can include and embrace the fresh
data and there is a significant shift.
It happens, of course, in the sciences, and there was a significant book by Thomas
Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in which he said this is actually
what happens in the natural sciences. Hans Küng and David Tracey of the
University of Chicago had gathered a consultation in Tübingen prior to 1983
about the application of paradigm shift through theological understanding. So I
really got into that paradigm shift dimension early on. Küng helped me to
understand that, in all of my training, I had come up with the scriptures as the
authoritative word of God and all of human experience, the ongoing human
experience, really had little impact on the faith understanding that came out of
the scriptures. I had one pole to which I was lashed, and yet life was going on “out
here.” Küng helped me to see that the theological task is to live between the two
poles – that which is given, the history of Israel and Jesus in our scripture, and
ongoing human experience, the present horizon. And that theology does not pass
along through history untouched by historical circumstance, some deposit of
faith as though it fell out of heaven, simply to be delivered to the next generation
as it is. Rather, theology is that hermeneutical task that constantly runs between
the given revelation that is in the scripture and the ongoing human experience, so
that from the scripture the present is illuminated and the present elicits new life
and new understanding from the scripture. There is a coordination between those
two poles.
And when I saw that, I realized that my whole experience prior to that had been
living out of this pole of the scripture without any significant regard as to what
was happening out in the world. I also realized that what had happened in the
liberalism of the 19th century, that had come on bad times, was that there was
such an earnest attempt to understand and accommodate what was going on in
the world that the pole of the scripture was not taken seriously. I began to realize
that the task really for us in the church is to live between that biblical story and
our ongoing story, and to understand our lives in the light that comes from the
story, the founding story, but that the founding story has spurred a tradition that
has resources that are rich, being enlarged through ongoing human experience,
that can continue to be reclaimed to bring the faith to fresh expression as we go
on in our pilgrimage. For me, I think that was a very significant moment.
On Monday night Küng spoke on heaven and hell and purgatory, judgment and
death to overflow crowds in this vast educational institution where only a
professor’s half time is given to a program in religious studies in this huge state
university. There is just a smidgeon of interest in the whole phenomena of
religion. This was a new experiment at the time, Küng being the first guest
lecturer in Religious Studies. The Vatican was putting the heat on him in
Germany; they wanted him put under censure for his views, and he came to the
University of Michigan almost on a lark in order to have some leverage back in
© Grand Valley State University
�Spoken Address to Mid-Atlantic Synod
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
Tübingen because Michigan did say to him, “If you want to stay here, you can stay
here.” He didn’t do that because, when you’re a professor at Tübingen in the
German system, you want to retire out of that system, which he has done.
So there I was, preaching every week, and now I see in this huge secular arena
sophisticated, educated, cultured, cultural despisers of religion sitting for two
hours to hear the rather difficult English of this Catholic theologian talk about
death, purgatory, hell, judgment, and I said to myself, ”Good grief, I don’t even
preach on those things in my own pulpit. In this secular setting I gathered with
people, fully human, listening to lectures on such issues. Maybe they know, too,
they’re going to die, and they must wonder, and maybe they’ve lost someone, and
they must wonder.”
And so it was like a revelation to me that there was this intense existential
interest in the human person, whether they were connected with the institutional
religion or had any particular faith profession. Those end questions engaged
them, and I came home and began my own search. That is what has gotten me
into trouble, because I discovered the expanse, the extent of the grace of God was
much broader than I had ever dreamed.
It was about that time that the Reformed Church founded a journal of theological
investigation whose purpose was to stimulate theological discussion in the
Reformed Church and, because I was a pastor at a rather safe pastorate, I seemed
to be the one that got the assignments to write on the issues that would address
the Reformed Church in terms of those questions that we felt needed to be talked
about. And so, an early article was on purgatory.
I never would have believed that I would have been concerned at all about
purgatory, but I began to see what was the wisdom of the ancient church and
what was behind that whole construction of things, and to recognize that, as a
child of the Reformation, I never got a fair shot at understanding what that was
all about because we were in such sharp reaction precisely at that point in the 16th
century. And then I began to investigate the extent of God’s grace and I found out
that, in the early church, there was a strong strain of universalism, that the grace
of God would finally be triumphant in regard to all. And I found some high
Calvinists who simply were more logical than some of the rest who also came to
that same position of the ultimate triumph of the grace of God And then, of
course, there was my own mentor, Hendrikus Berkhof and his reference to Karl
Barth and to the contemporary discussion of that issue. And so, again, I wrote in
Perspectives. The “Letters to the Editor” revealed that some people were upset.
There were also a few positive comments and there was engagement. However, it
was in black and white. Over the next decade I continued to address these issues
in the journal until 1995, when I published an article on interreligious dialogue
and my recognition that we had within the Christian church some serious
thinking to do before we could enter authentically into religious dialogue. That
© Grand Valley State University
�Spoken Address to Mid-Atlantic Synod
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
got me to where I am and there was never any question about it until the spring
of 1995.
The catalyst for the discussion on salvation was the fact that we allowed a group
from the Metropolitan Community Church ministering largely to gay and lesbian
people simply to use our chapel. When that was called in question, then one thing
led to another, and then my theological views were called in question and
eventually the Classis recognized, I think, there wasn’t much point in pursuing
the original issue, but they were deeply concerned, then, about this question of
salvation apart from Christ.
This has become a conversation within the Reformed Church and the question, as
it has been phrased, is “Can non-believers be saved?” I want to say that that is the
wrong question. I’m not interested in the question of whether non-believers can
be saved. I am interested in the question of whether those who have a yearning
for God and seek after God and who pursue that yearning and that seeking in
another faith tradition can be saved, because we are not talking about people who
are Christian and the rest of the world as non-believers. We are talking about a
world that is laced with believers of many stripes, and we are living in a context
today, a global context in which these people are our neighbors and our children
are bringing home people of other faiths and presenting them as their future
spouses. We meet them at work and down the street there is a temple or a
meditation place or a shrine of some sort that was not the case some years ago.
So, the question is not whether non-believers can be saved. The question is “Must
I insist that there is salvation through Jesus Christ alone?”
Now, let me be very clear again. Before the Classis of Muskegon I said, “If you will
scratch out one word, I’ll sign your document” that affirms that there is salvation
through Jesus Christ. I believe that and I would affirm that, and I have affirmed
that. But, when you tell me that I must say it is through Jesus Christ alone, then I
don’t know what to do with Jewish folks that I have come to know so well and
have become so fond of, working in the Jewish-Christian Committee for Dialogue
in the West Shore area of Michigan. Then, what do I do with all of those about me
in our world today who seem to manifest all of the fruits of the Spirit, whose
questions are my questions, and whose experience seems to be the same
experience as mine – what am I to do with them? The issue is not whether or not
there is salvation through Jesus Christ. It is whether or not I must be held to an
exclusivist position that says through Jesus Christ and through no other, and that
apart from Jesus Christ there is only condemnation, there is no salvation and
light, and no eternal life for any who come not through Jesus Christ our Lord.
That I will not say. And that is the issue upon which I have been put out.
Obviously you might expect me to argue my theological conclusion on the basis of
scripture. But that is not as simple as it sounds because, as has been claimed in
many arguments, anything can be “proven” by scripture. I learned from Professor
Berkhof the rich diversity of the biblical witness, for example, on the very
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question of the extent of God’s grace. In his Well-Founded Hope, he has a chapter
entitled “The Double Image of the Future.”
He deals seriously with the biblical witness but concludes that Scripture
leaves us with a double track. Countless attempts have been made to
subsume one track of texts under the other by ingenious “exegetical tricks”
but, Berkhof concludes, “we cannot smooth out this contradiction in the
New Testament.” All that we read abut the future, texts offering
consolation and texts of warning, do not “fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.”
In the case of the passages giving warning, these present the gospel in its
nature as a call to decision; the passages offering consolation give hope
and the promise of eventual salvation of all.
We must hear both witnesses; we must not reduce one to the other. But we
cannot simply allow them to stand with no link between them. Berkhof
suggests we pronounce them “one after the other,” for “only the person
who has learned to tremble at the possibility of rejection may speak about
universal salvation.”
When my article, “The Habit of God’s Heart” was published in 1988, I was the
Preaching Professor at Western Theological Seminary. The piece caused a stir. I
was called before the Executive Committee of the seminary board to give an
account of myself. I remember distinctly when I suggested that scripture spoke in
more than one voice on the matter of the extent of God’ s grace, I was
immediately “corrected.” Scripture interpreted by scripture leaves no ambiguity –
salvation comes through Jesus Christ alone.
I remember a conversation with the wonderful Lutheran bishop, the late Krister
Stendahl, who was a guest at our Jewish-Christian Dialogue. He spoke of the
brilliant apologist for Christianity, C. S. Lewis. He spoke of how much he loved
the Lewis of Shadowland and of A Grief Observed, the result of his grievous loss
of his wife to cancer. Lewis, in his grief expressing the loss of his love, spoke the
language of the heart. But, said Stendahl, when Lewis argues for the existence of
God, the incarnation, the atonement, I don’t take him seriously because he is so
brilliant he could be just as effective on the other side of the question.
So it is with the Bible. As Luther argued, scripture is a wax nose; one can be as
honest and responsible as possible and have someone on the other side of the
question come up with a contrary conclusion. And thus I have not really engaged
in the whole biblical debate.
That said, it does not imply that I do not believe there is a legitimate biblical
witness to God’s universal grace. In Luke’s Acts we read the story of the
movement of the Gospel beyond its community of origin – to the vast Gentile
world. The story of Peter and Cornelius is paradigmatic, showing the expansive
movement of the Gospel to the Gentile world. Luke records the story and then
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has Peter rehearse the whole experience before the Jerusalem Elders who called
him to account for going to the Gentiles. In light of his concrete experience of the
Spirit of God anointing the Gentiles, Peter says, according to Luke’s account,
“…who was I that I could hinder God?”
An even larger crisis was generated by Paul who brought the Gospel intentionally
to the Gentiles. Acts 15 records the story of the first “Church Council.” The Jesus
Movement was at a crisis point; a decision had to be made concerning the nonJews who were embracing the Gospel and becoming a growing part of the Jesus
Movement that, to begin with, was a Jewish movement.
Peter recounted his experience with Cornelius. In Luke’s recounting of the story,
he has Peter declare,
And God, who knows the human heart, testified to them by giving them
the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us; and in cleansing their hearts by faith
he has made no distinction between them and us…we believe that we will
be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will. (Acts 15:811)
Following Peter’s witness Barnabas and Paul told of “the signs and wonders God
had done through them among the Gentiles” (verse 12). And then the leader of
the Jerusalem Church, James, gave his “decision that we should not trouble those
Gentiles who were turning to God…” (verse 19).
Luke is recording the most momentous decision that early Jesus Movement was
called upon to make. Luke records the pivot point of the whole Jesus Movement.
Gentiles could become Jews. That was not new. What was new in Paul’s
argument is that Gentiles can become God’s children without first becoming
Jews.
Paul is arguing for Grace, the Grace of God embracing the Gentile apart from
those specifically Jewish rituals, circumcision, dietary laws, whatever, and Paul’s
experience is that God is embracing the Gentiles through faith as Israel had been
embraced through all the generations. Peter’s experience is that God is embracing
a Cornelius and his household, the Holy Spirit falls on them, the waters of
baptism are applied to them. In Jerusalem the leadership asks, what’s going on
here? That was a critical point because they could have said it would be necessary
for the Gentiles to come to faith in Jesus as the Messiah, but they would have to
do it by way of full participation in the Mosaic legislation following the Torah.
And they decided not. They decided that the grace of God could embrace the
Gentile without that Gentile becoming a Jew, and that was a paradigmatic shift.
Paul said God is doing a new thing; God is creating one new humanity. In
Romans 9, 10 and 11, Paul is struggling because he does not see how his Jewish
brothers and sisters can fail to see what he sees in Jesus. How they can fail to see
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what God is doing in history. He says, “My heart is deeply distressed. I, myself,
would be accursed for my brothers and sisters if only they could see.” He goes on
in those three chapters struggling with that issue, and he comes to the end of that
struggle in the 11th chapter in verse 32, where he says, “God has reckoned all in
disobedience, the Jew and the Gentile, Israel and the nations, in order that God
may have mercy on all.” And then he breaks out into the one great doxology that
has no reference to Jesus Christ, just praising the eternal God, the God of Israel,
for His unsearchable ways, His inscrutable judgment, and he says, “Source, Guide
and Goal of all there is, to God be glory forever.” He finally believes that a
mystery is at work here, that Israel finally will be saved, he knows not how, and,
in the meantime, the grace of God has come to the Gentiles.
Now we are talking about a hinge point in history. We are talking about the fact
that Peter had to do that which is contrary to the scripture by which he had lived.
He could quote scripture and verse, the ritual, the tradition that would have said
don’t enter the house of Cornelius, don’t do this, don’t do that. He was going
contrary to that which had been deeply inbred in him, and he did it because he
said who can fight God? He was so inwardly compelled and the evidence, what he
saw before his eyes, made him say, “I have to do this.” And it was confirmed in
the experience.
So I would say we are at another hinge point in human history. I don’t know
where we got into it and I don’t know when we’ll get out of it, but I think that we
are living through a time of global change. We live in that period of history in
which the whole human family is experiencing its history at the same time and
together. This is a time of global consciousness, of a global community, and it
does not seem reasonable to me that the whole world is going to be evangelized
and the Gospel is going to be brought to the whole world. That was a noble dream
and a noble vision, and it was an honest response to an apocalyptic vision, that
conviction that they were standing on the end of the age and that the whole
cosmic drama would be wrapped up rather soon.
But, can you imagine that the Christian church could hold its breath for 2000
years and still be talking about the imminent return of our Lord Jesus Christ? As
we approach the year 2000, are we not going to hear more and more about it?
And how can we honestly do that when we come to recognize that those New
Testament documents were written by those who believed they were at the End
and they were not at the End.
The Jewish scholar Paula Fredrikson of Boston University has written From
Jesus to Christ, and she says, “Why did the Jesus Jewish movement fade out first,
and why did the Christian movement become a Gentile movement?” She says,
first of all, because the one who was to come didn’t come. Nothing happened.
Three times in the Gospel of John it speaks about being put out of the synagogue.
Why? Well, if you were a Jew and if you had responded and believed that this
Jesus was the Messiah that you were expecting and according to the message,
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history was all going to end very soon and this one would return, but nothing
happened. And now the Pharisaic, Rabbinic Judaism, the movement of Judaism
after the temple which became the ascendant group, the ongoing Jewish
community – that community now is saying, “If you say Jesus was the Messiah,
you’re going to be put out of the synagogue.” And now you have to say, “Am I
going to remain with my religious heritage of all of these centuries, or am I going
to be put out of the synagogue on the chance that this one really was the Messiah
and he’s going to come back very soon?” What would you do?
Paula Fredrikson said the reason that the earliest movement faded , first of all,
nothing happened; and secondly, there were just too many Gentiles. Paul was too
successful. And if Paul succeeded, if Judaism had stayed with the church, there
would not have been the question of assimilation of the Jewish people in the 20th
century. It would have happened in the first century. And I think our world would
have been diminished for lack of that ongoing Jewish community.
Now it seems to me that what was going on then is going on now. We are not
seeing the death of the great religious traditions; we have seen their renaissance
and their resurgence, and, not only that, we have found that they contain riches
and gifts that can enhance our own understanding and our own experience. I
believe that we are faced with a global reality that calls us, in light of the power of
religion and its volatility, to discourse together, to learn from each other, to live
in mutual respect and civility in order that all together we may work toward the
building of community and world understanding.
Karl Jaspers was a German philosopher who spoke about the first axial period.
The pre-axial period was when the human family was pretty much caught up in
the rhythms of nature and the cosmos. Then the first axial period, 800-200 BCE,
independently, in three places around the globe, India and China and the eastern
Mediterranean, the great religious traditions arose. They all arose in that period
of time effecting a transformation of human consciousness, a transformation that
shaped the first axial period to the present. Ewert Cousins, Fordham University,
suggests that we may be in the second axial period and that the image for us is
that view of the globe that the astronaut has seen, that beautiful, fragile, blue
globe hanging in space. For the first time our kind has been able to look back and
see it whole and to realize that all the borders and divisions and the lines that we
draw over which we fight and for which we kill, that all of that has no reality
because we are a part of one inner-connected whole. And, if we are part of one
cosmic whole and we are part of one human family, and if we are serious that
God in the beginning created the heavens and the earth, then I believe that it is
high time for us to deepen our particularity and to learn again from Jesus Christ
and all of that which has been revealed through him of the purpose and heart of
God and to recognize that God has a grander scheme and a broader purpose and
that there is so much enrichment, so much greater possibility as we live together
in the human community transcending those barriers and divisions that have
separated us.
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As I said, Krister Stendahl was in Michigan. He was at the temple on Friday
night, a Sabbath service, and then Saturday lectures, and then he preached at
Christ Community Church on Sunday morning. My son came up to me
afterwards and said, “Dad, I’ve had a religious experience,” and I said, “I know.”
He said, “This feels so right,” and I said, “I know. If it feels so right, you don’t
need an argument, do you?”
He said, “No.”
I said, “Once you have had that sense that it’s so right, then you can simply be
there and invite others to share that same sense of shared humanity. You don’t
need to prove anything or demonstrate anything.”
But, I’ll tell you, my own experience is that I have never experienced such
openness from the other and desire to hear about my Jesus than since the time I
laid down my arms and did not feel that monkey on my back of world
evangelization, but rather speaking of the grace of God in Jesus Christ and
listening and receiving and giving and taking in a mutual enhancement that
builds toward world community that is so much better than anything I have ever
known.
Thank you.
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
Q.
The rise of fundamentalism in all world religions frightens me. How can
people engage with Christians and other fundamentalist groups when they are
willing to kill for their faith?
A.
Well, it scares me, too, and I do believe that that is part of the reason why it
is so imperative that we enter into dialogues in a broad scope. James Davison
Hunter, in his New Culture Wars, points out the fact that the breakdown in
civil discourse and in communication between people has created such a
threat throughout the world, and I think that the militant mind in the
respective traditions, there's a Jewish fundamentalism, an Islamic
fundamentalism, a Christian fundamentalism, you don't have to have a
particular badge in order to have that mentality and that mind set, and I do
believe that as the times become somewhat anxious and people become
somewhat unsteady and afraid, they tend to this kind of fanaticism and
absolutism, wanting to find security and wanting to find the answer that is
absolutely clear and simple. So to me, I don't know why, I just know that, in
such a world, at such a time it is critical that we dialogue together and open
up the channels of communication together. Now, for a lot of these things I
do not think that it is a question of being right or wrong. I mean, there's such
a broad spectrum of understanding, and there are various symbol systems
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and it's not like one will work and the rest won't. I think that we need to find
that which communicates meaning and connects us to that sense of
transcendence, meets that hunger for God, and if that is in place, then I think
that, rather than enforcing that on everyone else, in that sense of
connectedness with the transcendent to find a freedom and a resting place in
which to open oneself up to the other and thus create the bridges of
communication. So, I don't know what the answer is, but I know it's a
serious problem.
Q.
Will you describe more fully your phrase “Monkey on your back?” You applied
that to world evangelization.
A.
Did I say that this morning? Well, if I didn't, I should have. I came into the
ministry, I grew up, feeling that I had to defend God. I had to defend the faith.
I felt such an urgency; I was insecure. I didn't know how insecure I was. I
didn't know how defensive I was. But I thought it was up to me to defend
God and to keep God enthroned, and it seemed to me that it was my
responsibility that you believed correctly, that you dotted the i's and crossed
the t's and that is a terrible, terrible burden. I can remember the experience of
believing finally that God could take care of God's self, whether or not I could
defend God. Now, that was Step One. And then to believe, as well, that God
had a marvelous embrace of people who had an experience quite other than
mine, and yet which seemed to be also very similar in terms of that which it
generated within the individual. And when I could simply affirm that and not
have to change someone to my image ... I had lived with a monkey on my
back. I had to get the world to Jesus. And I had no sense of letting that in
God's hands and simply being an instrument, and so that's what I meant.
Q.
We have just heard for over an hour about the love of God for everyone, but
10% of those God has created are homosexuals who cannot change their
identity and are ostracized by the church. These are people who are looking
for God's love. How can the church deny them?
A.
Well, I don't think the church can deny them, but the church does deny them.
I have to say that this was the catalytic event that got this whole conflict
started for us because, as I said to you, we gave a group ministry, largely
lesbian and gay people, the use of our chapel. For us it was an act of
hospitality. Again, I was not looking to take on a crusade. This was not my
issue. Subsequent to what has happened, I think it should have been my issue
a long time ago. It is an issue of justice; it is an issue of the love of God and
the grace of God. I had heard stories, people pouring their heart out to me,
beautiful human beings and I thought, "My God, where was I all these years?"
Just not even concerned about this thing with people who were suffering and
being ostracized and being shunned and so, when you say how can the church
deny them, I don't know how the church can deny them love, and I will now
speak anywhere, everywhere for... In fact, I’ve got a lot of stories.
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Q.
Does God's grace extend to non-believers, too, in your theology? Could your
position be better supported by the teaching of Christ himself rather than
appealing to St. Paul? Who now holds your credentials? Will the Spring Lake
church align itself with another denomination?
A.
The congregation holds my credentials at present, and we have done some
very preliminary kind of investigation, but I have found that it's a little bit like
marriage, it's a lot easier to get in than to get out, and I'm – just scratch that
one – I'm at this advanced age, you know, and in the springtime of my
senility, and I don't know if I really want... I believe in the connectedness of
the church and I believe in mutual covenants of accountability, I believe in all
that, but I may just keep investigating long enough to where it won't be an
issue anymore, and in all that time no one will be able to criticize me for
living in splendid isolation and I'll say, "I'm working on it, I'm working on it,"
and one day they'll bury me. Sort of like Peter Paulson today, as Bob said, you
know, Paul Fries tells me that he suggested to Peter when he went into the
pastorate that he always keep a body at hand in case he needs a funeral.
Can my position better be supported by teachings of Christ? I do believe that.
Yes, I do believe that. But, you know, when you've got Dutch Calvinism in
your blood and your genes, you have to argue with Paul and I do believe, yes,
Jesus. Again, I'm hesitant to get into biblical discussions about this because
you can argue it all over the place. But, I would say that, apart from any
specific biblical reference, just the God I see in Jesus is a God that would make
me reach out and embrace my neighbor and listen to the other and live in
harmony with the other, and that's not by having a text, it is by the whole
context, the whole encounter with Jesus Christ which says to me God is
bigger than anything we've yet dreamed of, so I would agree with that.
Does God's grace extend to non-believers, too, in your theology? Yes.
Because ... I don't know. How do I know? This is what I think and that is that
God is not through with us at our death. This is what I began to wrestle with
Hans Küng and then I would never have thought that I would think twice
about purgatory and I go to these lectures and find, why did the ancient
church have this? What were they talking about? Then I read from C. S.
Lewis, his Letter to Malcolm, where he talks about purgatory as, you know,
being in the dentist's chair and when you're coming around the dentist says,
“Wash your mouth out with this." And he says, that's purgatory. I began to
read Lutheran and Reformed theologians as well as Catholic theologians who
speak about our encounter with God at our death, and so, what does it mean
to be a non-believer? What does it mean? Does it mean that I have been so
damaged by the institutional church? I'll tell you what -I could almost leave
the institutional church. This past year with that experience in the church –
I'll tell you what – if I wasn't a stubborn Hollander, I'd be out. I'm just too
ornery not to go. But then, how many people have not been damaged and hurt
by the attitudes, by the spirit, by the structures? So, non-believers - who are
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they, anyway? I don't find as many non-believers out there as I used to. I
used to know how many there were; I used to know what percentage of the
population they were, and now I found out when I don't know so much,
they're really interested and they really want to talk and I think there's
something deep down in the human spirit that can be appealed to that makes
that category of non-believer somewhat fuzzy. One of the old, early American
preachers, Lyman Abbot, said if he were a Calvinist he would be a universalist,
but he said, because I respect the human will, I cannot be a universalist
because I believe that God will not finally crush my human Yes or No. I think
God respects our Yes or No to such an extent that... So, non-believers?
Someone wants to finally say, "Not thy will be done, but my will be done?"
will God say then, "Thy will be done?" I don't know. Of course, I don't know
those answers. But, I don't think there are as many non-believers out there
as I used to.
Q.
You said that you didn't want to get into scripture, but there are a few people
here who would like you to at least address some issues. One question:
please speak on the question of the necessity of the cross of which Jesus
speaks often, particularly consider the incident of Jesus in Gethsemane
saying, "If it is possible for the cup to be removed," but God demanded
Jesus to drink of it, nonetheless.
A.
Yes. I would say that one of the areas of revision as I reflect on Christian
faith and doctrine, as I have learned it and I have preached it and taught it, is
my understanding of atonement. I think that when Jesus said, "Let this cup
pass from me," that Jesus was saying, "Bring that kingdom about, effect your
purposes apart from my having to go through with tomorrow." I think
Gethsemane was just what it appears to be and that was the real existential
struggle of Jesus in the garden at the threshold of his own death, a horrible
death, in which he could have slipped out of town and gotten away with it. I
don't think that Jesus died to bear our sins; I think Jesus died because of our
sins. I think Jesus died the way he died because he lived the way he lived, and
his dying was the authentication of the life that he lived ,which was the
embodiment of the kingdom of God and the rule of God in the midst of
human society. And so, when he said, “Let this cup pass from me," I think he
wanted out, like I would want out. And I think when he said on the cross, "My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" that's not like my Calvinist
theology said, that in that time he was experiencing the torments of hell
because God turned God's face away from Jesus in those moments. I think he
was experiencing hell; he was experiencing forsakenness. That which he had
staked his life on and pointed to and embodied was not happening. He was
dying! He was being crucified. And I think anybody that lives the way he lives
is going to end up pretty much like he ended up, and that's why most of us
are smart enough, most of the time, not to do it. And to follow the Way of
Jesus is a most radical way to go, and I'll tell you what - I'm not ready for
it.
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Q.
How do you respond to such scripture as "No one comes to the Father but by
me"?
A.
I refer people to Bishop Krister Stendahl's little paper on “From God's Point
of View, We're all Minorities.” Now, he's a New Testament scholar; I'm not.
And he says, you know, to take a text in the intimacy of conversation between
Jesus and his friends, and then to lift that up out of its context and absolutize
it as though it is the end all and the be all.... I wouldn't be in any trouble if it
weren't for John 14:6 and Acts 4:12. "No other name under heaven given
among men whereby we must be saved." In other words, save as healed, and
they're talking about the crippled man who was just healed. And they are
saying in Acts 4:12, in your name did you do this? And Peter says, "No, not in
our name. There isn't any other name. The only name is the one Jesus, that
name. That is the healer, that Jesus who was in our midst who was the
embodiment of God who brought the healing power of God to bear."
And in 14:6, “In my Father's house there are many resting places." Krister
Stendahl says that's in the world. In the world there are many places you can
be, and so, be there. And as I go to prepare a place for you and so forth. I do
not think that one ought to take John 14:6 and try to explain it as though it
had no nuances of exclusivism because there is a genuine biblical exclusivism,
there is that track in the scripture, and I think that it is most understandable
that there would be, because the Bible, New Testament documents, this is not
a book on interreligious dialogue; this is not a book on religious philosophy;
this is a book of proclamation. This is a book written by those who believed
they were at the end of the age, that God had appeared in Jesus Christ, that
the answer was in Christ, everything was in Christ, this was their message;
this was their preaching, so, I don't think I ought to try to whitewash that
thing and say there is no possibility of constructing that kind of exclusivist
view where there is salvation through Jesus alone and no other. The only
thing that I would argue is that that's not the only voice of the scripture, and
that if we look at it in its context and in its time and then, through the
tradition of 2000 years and our present situation, you put all of those things
together, then I think that's the basis on which I would say that if Jesus said
John 14:6, which Jesus Seminar says he didn't, of course, that's too easy, isn't
it, then I think that there's the possibility of nuanced interpretation, but
maybe that's exactly what John wanted to say.
Q.
Has human experience taken precedence over the authority of scripture?
A.
Yes, I hope so. And that's why I'm in trouble, because I say things like that.
You see, and now Dr. Fries can't be that foolish because he still holds an
institutional position. But, the reason I'm in the trouble I'm in is because I
think human experience and scripture need to be in dialogue and need to be
coordinated. I need to give human experience a lot of credence in order to
make up for the first fifty years of my life, when I didn't know that human
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experience even existed. I had a text and I had a book and it didn't matter
whether human experience was being honored or regarded at all. So, I think
there is the scripture, there is the tradition, there is present human experience
and then there is the reflection of reasonable faith, and Krister Stendahl who
was with us some years ago in a dialogue with David Hartman, the Rabbi from
Jerusalem, spoke about tradition as an instrument for continuity and change.
Now, I know of tradition as an instrument for continuity. I didn't understand
it as an instrument for change. As Krister Stendahl spoke of it, I could see that
it is the living tradition that connects us with the founding story, and that
living tradition is a constant re-interpretation of the founding story in light of
ongoing human experience, so that at every point of the historical spectrum,
as you look back at this event, you see it from a bit of a different angle, you
see new wrinkles and new nuances because what goes on is also God's history
and the spirit of God is still active in the world. It’s not as though it all
happened back there and now it's just waiting for the applause at the end. We
have to constantly look at that story in light of our experience, in light of that
way we have traversed, and we do it, we use our heads, we think! And in that
mix we come to our present understanding of the faith which helps us to
interpret present human experience. So, I think that's a red herring. I think
that's a false dichotomy. I don't think you can understand the Bible apart from
human experience, and I don't think that human experience apart from the
critique of the founding story will ever connect you to the transcendent. I
think that both of them have to live in tension.
Q.
How do you view Buddha and Krishna?
A.
Hardly ever do. I don't know, and frankly, I am an incurable Christian
theologian and I have not really dipped with any breadth or depth into the
world of religious dialogue. The only specific relationship I've had is with the
Jewish community which has been a very enriching kind of relationship, but I
am not a scholar of world religions. However, when I hear someone like John
Hick who advocates a pluralist position, or when I hear someone like Huston
Smith, then I sense that perhaps if I am going to make sense of what they tell
me about the authenticity of that spiritual experience, then I would say that
the spirit of God can take up residence within Buddha, Krishna. I think that the
historical, concrete figure may be agent and instrument of the Spirit of God,
and that there have been those in whom that transcendence came to shining
expression to a degree far beyond that which is true of us ordinary mortals. So,
I think where there are great religious leaders, if there is truth there, I would
guess it is the truth of God.
Q.
Where or how do you fit in the 250,000 Jewish people who have come to
believe in Jesus as Messiah since 1967, and who believe that the Messiah is
still to be preached to their own people?
A.
I am aware that there is such a movement. I just got a letter from Isaac
© Grand Valley State University
�Spoken Address to Mid-Atlantic Synod
Richard A. Rhem
Page17
Rottenberg who wrote to a Rabbi in New York City about the Jesus Jewish
movement and the fact that that ought to be a part of the agenda of the
discussion, the dialogue between Christianity and Judaism. I think in all of
the religious traditions there ought to be the possibility of crossing over. I
believe that one ought to deepen one's own tradition and one's own
particularity. In other words, don't hear me say that you ought to put all the
traditions into a blender and homogenize them and come out with some new
kind of mush. Let's be authentically what we are. Let's even deepen what we
are. Because I do believe that the universal is accessed only through the
particular. But, I think that there should always be the possibility for a Jewish
person to see Jesus and say, "Messiah!" And if that is the authentic
experience of that person, wonderful. Ironically, in the Muskegon Classis in
the last two years, I'm the one who has baptized two Jews, adult Jews! I
almost did it with a bad conscience. I said, "Are you sure you want to do
this? You know, you don't really have to do this," but they wanted to do that.
Okay. But, on the other hand, seriously, about myself, maybe I'll join the
synagogue. I could become a Jew because I see Jesus very much in his
Jewishness and to follow Jesus and practice Judaism, live out of the Torah, so
if I want to do that, I think the Rabbi should receive me. But, all I'm saying is
that you can cross over, pass over, if that is where you find that connects you,
God bless you. And if you are a Jew and you want to find in Jesus the
Messiah today and you want to tell your fellow Jewish people about that, I
think that's witness, that's fine, that's fine. I respect that.
Q.
If your views moved the Reformed Church closer to the Unitarian position, if
so, what would be gained for the church body, and what might be lost?
A.
The doctrine of the Trinity is a mystery and I can understand how the church,
seeking to come to terms with the raw material of its experience, its
Christological creedal formulas, I understand. I understand what those
doctrinal symbols are pointing to and seeking to communicate. Would my
views move the church more toward Unitarianism? Maybe, but not
necessarily, because I think that, even within the Jewish tradition, that which
comes to expression in the doctrine of the Trinity, there are echoes of that in
Judaism, as well. And so, I think that that is not necessarily the issue of
where I would go. I would say this: I understand the impetus to Unitarianism
when it happened. I can understand why there was such a movement and such
a development, and I'm not nearly as scandalized by it as once I was or
probably some of you would think I should be. But, I want to maintain the
embodiment of God in the flesh of Jesus. That's the God I know. That's the
God I see, and I am not as impressed with some of the contemporary
discussions of the Trinity where that's reflective of community within a
godhead which is modeled after community of humankind - frankly, it never
really grabbed me, but that's for esoteric theologians like Dr. Fries. I mean, you
know, we wouldn't need seminaries, we wouldn't need such brilliance if there
were not those kinds of questions to think about.
© Grand Valley State University
�Spoken Address to Mid-Atlantic Synod
Richard A. Rhem
Page18
Q.
Will you please respond to the question once posed to Karl Barth –
“Professor, will there be a hell?”
A.
Hell, no. I think that Hell is the experience of separation from God and I do
believe that I believe in judgment. I believe that no one will get away with
anything. Thank God. True for all of us. So that there will be this authentic
encounter with God so that my life will be there and I will face my life, and
then, you know you have to talk in symbols and images. I love The Great
Divorce, where C.S. Lewis says on the other side of death you can sort of
float around in those misty grey flats as long as you want to, and then if you
want to get on board the bus a little farther in, a little farther up, okay. You get
up there and say, "Ooh, this is too bright. I think I like it down below," the
ambience of the misty flats. But, it is always the individual in authentic
encounter with God. God is not mocked and I will see myself consciously in
the presence of God. I believe in judgment. But, I believe that judgment is
redemptive. I think that in the scriptures that judgment is always for salvation.
So, Hell for as long as you want it, but it doesn't have as many folks in it as it
used to have, for me, and it doesn't last as long as it used to last.
Q.
Dick, it would have seemed that Joseph Campbell addressed this issue
without the controversy, why is it now considered controversial?
A.
Well, Joseph Campbell wasn't talking within the rather narrow limits of the
Reformed Church in America. I mean, Joseph Campbell had a world stage and
the whole mythology tradition of which, of course, he was expert. I cannot
believe that this issue is of such interest that it would get on the front page of
the New York Times. I can't believe it. Others have said it better; they've said
it years and decades and centuries ago more eloquently, more explicitly. I do
not know why now this issue is so big. I think it's reflective, perhaps, of the
church being afraid, being threatened. And rather than in faith saying, "What
in the world is going on?" and "Is there something bigger? Does God have a
grander scheme that is more than I ever, ever conceived of?” Rather, there's
this growing in, and why it is now, I don't know. I don't feel like I have said
anything new. I've not said anything very well. I am pretty much mainstream,
down the middle. In my context? No, but in the broader human context,
certainly, and even within the broader Reformed Church, I believe that I
would come somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. So, it baffles me.
Q.
As a seminary student that shares your views, should I consider a longer
engagement, both live together for a while, or break it off now?
A.
If I answered that in all honesty, I would be answering out of a deep
woundedness that would not be a fair answer. I am wounded. The church has
hurt me. And I should not be giving counsel to anybody for another year or
two.
Q.
Why is there no movement to change our creedal statements? Why are we
© Grand Valley State University
�Spoken Address to Mid-Atlantic Synod
Richard A. Rhem
Page19
stuck in 15th and 16th century statements?
A.
I said to the Classis of Muskegon that I would be willing to sign the formula
for ordination which speaks of those statements as faithful, historical
witnesses to the Christian faith. I do believe that those statements were
authentic statements of faith. They were affirmations; they were
proclamations. In their context they addressed the questions and the issues
of that time. It's simply a human quality - we tend to say it, the
movement erupts, there is this prophetic flame, there is an eloquent
statement, and then we absolutize it and we perpetuate it through history
as though it no longer will be touched by ongoing historical experience. It
happens all the time. It happens in every tradition. You don't have to be
the Reformed Church in America, and I think that's the question. Until we
can honor our creedal tradition as being a faithful expression in a given
context, recognizing that that faith needs constant translation and fresh
expression - until we do that, we'll be going through the torment of this
past year in Michigan. Historical consciousness is a relatively late arrival
on the scene of the human disciplines. I think that science of history,
historiography, is an 18™ century phenomena, and it, when it really
soaked into the human psyche… I mean we all think historically today. It
is the very lens through which we see everything, but we have somehow
or other compartmentalized our faith and our theological expression, and
made out as though those expressions do not need to continue to bring
new light through translation in light of ongoing experience. I don't know.
I don't know why we can't learn that. I've learned it.
I said in New Brunswick Seminary when John Beardsley - John
Beardsley, where are you? What year did you go to New Brunswick?
Could it have been '64? I sat there on behalf of Western Theological
Seminary and stood in your procession and John Leese gave a lecture,
and John Leese's lecture pointed out the historical condition of every
creedal statement, and it was like a light went on, and I sat there and
thought, why didn't I understand that in my first 30 years? Why didn't I
know that? And then I could see. It happened. It's just amazing to me, but
I can remember it like it was yesterday. The historical conditionedness.
You want to read a great story? The Presbyterian Controversy by Bradley
Longfield, the fundamentalist controversy from 1920 to 1936 in the
Presbyterian Church, the one where _________came out and started
Westminster Seminary. Henry Sloane Coffin, I think, Robert McCartney,
William Jennings Bryant, anyway, six of these outstanding church leaders,
and the controversy of those, assembly after assembly, where the
fundamentalists in the decade of the 20s, it is an amazing story, and Jay
Gresham Machen said this is the deposit of faith and this thing goes down
through history and nothing touches it.
© Grand Valley State University
�Spoken Address to Mid-Atlantic Synod
Richard A. Rhem
Page20
I can remember as a student reading Machen who said never go down on the
playing field. They'll slaughter you. Stay in the citadel of faith. Okay, you got it
here, stick there, just keep saying it. Fundamentalism is simply the reiteration
of yesterday's answers to today's questions, and so, you don't go down. He
said, don't get out of the citadel and go down there. In other words, you can't
reason with those people. Don't draw swords with those people. Don't dare
try to go mind to mind, thought to thought. No encounter, because they'll
slay you, because if you have the citadel of faith, and you have this pure
source of revelation, you just keep repeating it. Well, to think that that
deposit of faith can just sort of move through history with all of the... was it
Einstein who said after the explosion of the first atomic bomb? Everything is
changed, except our thinking. I would say that, on the threshold of the year
2000, if the church would open its eyes, it would have to say everything has
changed and it's time we think about it. And then it's a question of whether
one really believes in God, really has faith, you see. I believe in God. I trust
God for the future. I think it's going to be great. I'm going to keep preaching.
Q.
What can be done by a Reformed Church minister to engage in a serious
Christian-Jewish dialogue where the Consistory is opposed to this
dialogue?
A.
Take a call. I don't think you can do it without leadership in tune with it. The
only reason I've survived this past year is because my own congregation has
been wonderfully solid and supportive. If my congregation were torn up, I
would be torn up and I would be out of here because I am not a fighter. I
don't go around looking for confrontation and I couldn't stand it if my own
people were not together in this thing. So, I would be very hesitant to
recommend a minister or a church leader of any sort to get involved in that
which is not affirmed by his or her own leadership. It's a formula for disaster, I
think.
Q.
Of course, a lot of things can feel right, even demonic persecution which
takes the persecutor beyond need for argument. What are the critical criteria
for putting holds on affirming all kinds of behaviour, such as your ouster …?
A.
Well, you see, I think that if we operate with a biblical tradition, with the
biblical story, with the Christian tradition in a concrete community of faith,
and if we are in dialogue together and in conversation together, then I think
that we'll make some mistakes, but I think we'll correct ourselves, too. I trust,
basically, the people. I think that there's a terrible gap between the academy
and the congregation. Your pastors have known a lot of things they've never
told you about over many, many years, and my experience has been that I can
trust my people with anything I'm thinking about, anything I'm toying with,
and it's a community and the Spirit of God lives in that community. And so, I
have the biblical story, I have the tradition, I have the concrete community.
And then, I think we test the spirits, and sometimes we make mistakes, but
© Grand Valley State University
�Spoken Address to Mid-Atlantic Synod
Richard A. Rhem
Page21
we have the freedom to fail, and then we can turn around and say that didn't
work or the consequences of that were not foreseen. I'm going to back down
from that. I don't know any other magic, but I do think that the Christian
community can be trusted.
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
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English
Type
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Sound
Text
Identifier
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KII-01
Coverage
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1981-2014
Format
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Series
Address to The Synod of Mid-Atlantic, Reformed Church in America
Location
The location of the interview
Reformed Church Synod of Mid-Atlantics,
Ramapo, New Jersey
References
Karl Barth, The Humanity of God, 1960,1996, Hendrikus Berkhof, Christian Faith, 1979, 1986 C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, 1964, Richard A. Rhem, "The Habit of God's Heart," Perspectives, Sept., 1988.
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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RA-3-19961004
Date
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1996-10-04
Type
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Text
Title
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Regarding the Conflict About Christian Exclusivity
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
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
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eng
Description
An account of the resource
Talk created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on October 4, 1996 entitled "Regarding the Conflict About Christian Exclusivity", as part of the series "Address to The Synod of Mid-Atlantic, Reformed Church in America", at Reformed Church Synod of Mid-Atlantics, Ramapo, New Jersey. Tags: Inclusive Grace, Nature of God, Pluralism, Universal Grace, Scripture, Authority. Scripture references: Karl Barth, The Humanity of God, 1960,1996, Hendrikus Berkhof, Christian Faith, 1979, 1986 C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, 1964, Richard A. Rhem, "The Habit of God's Heart," Perspectives, Sept., 1988.
.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Authority
Inclusive Grace
Nature of God
Pluralism
Scripture
Universal Grace