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Wisdom for Life
From a series on the Wisdom Literature
Text: Proverbs 8:35-36
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Pentecost XIII, August 21, 1994
Transcription of the spoken sermon
"For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord. But those who
miss me injure themselves; all who hate me love death."
I hope it is as much a relief to you as it is to me to be out of the Book of Job
(laughter) and into something light—the Book of Proverbs. Proverbs is one of the
Wisdom Books. I have seldom preached from the book. I have made various
sorties into Proverbs. I would read a few verses here and there, but it seemed it
was simply the gathering together of aphorisms and maxims and proverbs from
ancient cultures that made a lot of sense, but over which I didn't really care to
linger too long. There was no story there . . . I've just never been attracted to it.
However, on more serious study, I find that, in neglecting the Wisdom Books in
general and Proverbs in specific, I have missed a very rich mine of spiritual
direction and guidance. There is a lot of wisdom in this Wisdom book. I have
learned that the Wisdom Books offer a strong affirmation of life. In the Wisdom
Books we have not simply inconsequential truisms; we have the distillation of
generations and centuries of observation of life as it really is.
What we have specifically in the Book of Proverbs is the invitation to follow the
Way of Wisdom, thus finding true life, and admonition to avoid the path of
foolishness, which leads to destruction and to death. Lady Wisdom as it were,
(Sophia, the Hebrew word – somewhat akin to logos, the Greek word – that
personification of wisdom and order and principle in the whole cosmic order).
Lady Wisdom invites us to choose wisely, to live well, in order to find life.
As we can only scratch the surface of this book this morning, let me simply give
you some of the fundamental assumptions of wisdom. It will not be exhaustive,
but I think it will at least be enough to perhaps whet your appetite and give you a
modest introduction to the contents of this literature, and specifically this
particular book.
The first thing that I would reiterate again is that in wisdom literature there is an
affirmation of life. The toast with a glass of wine in the Jewish society, "L'
Chaim," “To life”, is a hallmark of Jewish culture, of a Jewish perspective on
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Richard A. Rhem
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human existence. There is something wonderful in Jewish society—they celebrate
life in a marvelous manner. Rabbi Harold Kushner, who has earlier written some
books, last year published a book entitled "To Life," which is a marvelous survey
of Jewish faith and life and community, in which he points out that that is the
hallmark of Jewish existence . . . "to life" . . .the affirmation of life, a strong
positive regard for life, a valuing of life. It is definitely a central theme in the
wisdom literature. Walter Brueggemann has written a book about the wisdom
literature, which he has entitled "In Man We Trust," that is a reflection of this
basic premise, that life and the human person are created good.
The Book of Proverbs and all of wisdom literature was an attempt to gain
knowledge in order to have mastery of life. To have mastery of life here and now
means we should enter fully into it. We should wring the best out of it. We should
live with joy and with delight, and we should exploit all the possibilities that are
ours in a creation that God called into being and said, "It is very good." The Jew
says enter all of it fully, enjoy it fully, delight in it before the face of God. Laced
through the Book of Proverbs you will read that the fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom – fear in the sense of reverence and awe, living before the
face of God, conscious that one lives before the face of God, but lived with zest,
for life is God's gift.
We need to hear that, particularly those of us who come as a part of the Christian
tradition, both Catholic and Protestant, and particularly the western Latin
tradition out of which we have flowed, that is, the Protestant Reformation
tradition. In the Latin tradition, the central emphasis was not, as in Eastern
Orthodoxy, on resurrection and celebration, but rather on the cross, crucifixion,
sin and guilt. We have been nurtured in a rather dim view of the human
experiment. We have been given, I believe, a negative perspective on the human
person and on human experience. We are the inheritors of a few statements by
Paul that have been systematized and absolutized by Augustine and by Luther
and Calvin. We are the children of a doctrine of Original Sin. We believe in Total
Depravity, and as the psychologist Maslow says, "The human person will
generally live up to, or down to, the expectations that are held out for him or her."
Our view of human life and the human person has been a rather negative view.
We are suspicious of motives, of intentions, and rather negative on the human
scene as a whole. And, that's too bad.
We've lost something that was intrinsic to the tradition of Israel, and that was a
strong affirmation of life, of human life, of human existence. We could well go
back and embody some of that positive feeling about life here and now that was
their basic assumption, their affirmation of life.
I suppose somewhat of a corollary of that is, in the wisdom literature and in
Israel's tradition, the human person was viewed as capable and responsible –
capable and responsible of making decisions that would lead to life. It was part of
the tradition, not only of the priests and the prophets with whom we are familiar,
but also of the sages who reflected on life, who observed life carefully and
patiently, and who rendered wise counsel as to the path that led to life, a tradition
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that believed the human person was capable of deciding and responsible for those
decisions. That doesn't mean that they were naive about human nature, as
though the human person was entirely good, but neither would they agree with
Augustine and Luther and Calvin that human nature was basically evil. They
would rather say that the human person is made up of a little bit of both.
In fact I suspect that most of you would agree that we are . . . a little bit of both.
We are a mixed bag. There are times when you feel pretty good about something
that you did, and aren't there times when you despise yourself? Don't we know
about acts every day that are heroic, and don't we know of instances every day in
which the human person has been a scoundrel? Isn't there a constant
interweaving of both in the experience of all of us? So, in the wisdom literature it
was not naiveté that the human person was prone always to choose the right, but
the invitation was there and the person was understood as being capable of
making choices, and responsible for those choices, and reaping the consequences
of those choices be they the right choices or the wrong choices. The invitation was
there because the human person was viewed as capable and responsible for
deciding. Therefore, there was a responsibility placed on the person. No cheap
cop-out, "Well, I'm only human." You are human. Precisely the point. Therefore,
stand up and decide, for you have a choice to make, so choose life . . .avoid the
path of destruction . . . in the multitude of human decisions that you make every
day.
Now listen carefully to me, because this is where the rub comes. According to the
sages, the writers of the Wisdom literature, the choices are to be made on the
basis of the authority of human experience. That means that you can't open up
the book and find a text and find the answer to your dilemma. That means that
morality or ethical choice cannot be laid on us from beyond ourselves, from
another time. That means that there was a consistency between Proverbs and the
Book of Job when God in the whirlwind said, "Don't bother me with that stuff.
You can figure that out for yourselves. You've got minds. You've got experience.
Decide and choose wisely. Order your lives." All the proverbs and maxims and
aphorisms are the distillation of the wisdom that comes after years and years of
reflection, centuries and generations of reflection, pursuing that ultimate. But
there is no authoritarian rule to be laid on us from outside of us. We are called
upon to the careful observation, the living of life as it is and the making of
decisions accordingly in the midst of the concrete context of our everyday life.
"Well," you say, "What about the Ten Commandments, aren't those moral
absolutes which can be laid on us eternally?" No! (Pause . . .) Nobody walked out
yet? (Laughter) What are the Ten Commandments then? They are universal
principles coming out of Israel that have been proven in the test of time. They are
reflective of, for example, the Code of Hammurabi, that predated them. They are
reflective of Mid-eastern culture and the peoples that surrounded them. They are
the best wisdom possible for a fulfilled, successful human life, and the possibility
of human community and society in that day, and maybe in ours. But those
moral absolutes didn't drop out of heaven. There were no tablets that were
penetrated by a divine finger. They were the best wisdom that could be distilled
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out of the ongoing human drama by some of the best possible people who
realized they were living with fear and trembling before the face of God. So it is
with every decision that we have to make in the living of our lives. You can't go to
a book. That's a cop-out. You can't ask a priest. That's a cop-out. You can't ask the
Church. That's a cop-out. That's authoritarianism.
People like authoritarianism, really, even though in the eighteenth century we
threw off all authoritarianisms. The human bud started to flower in the fifteenth
century, in the Renaissance. Then the Reformation came along as an aspect of
that, but that shut down the blossoming of the human spirit with one more
authoritarian mode. Finally in the eighteenth century, the Age of Reason,
Enlightenment, the human person said, "No" to the church, "No" to the Bible,
"No" to the divine right of kings, "No" to every authority—the emancipation of the
human person.
Well, pendulums swing too far. The enlightenment for all that it has given us has
been found wanting in that to make human rationality the limit of reality is to
truncate the Mystery of Life. So now we are in the Post-Modern Age as some
would say. But what in a Post-Modern Age we must never do is to go back and
put our necks under the yolk of some new authoritarian control.
Now, what does this mean for the decisions that face us as a society and as
human persons? Well, it means that fundamentalism is a dead end street,
whether it be Christian or Jewish or Islamic. In a hinge time in history, when the
old ways have been shown to come up short and the new ways are not yet clear,
people get very fearful, they get very insecure. In fact it's a good time for the
Church, because people who are fearful come to church seeking answers, wanting
a priest, wanting someone, some prophet to say it clearly. Make it simple. Make it
burn. Answer these quandaries for me. Give me some ground to stand on. The
Church is all too happy to beckon those who would come to find in it a crutch in
order to avoid having to stand up and be an adult and make mature decisions in
this world where it is so ambiguous and hard to decide.
But fundamentalism is not the answer. It is simply the reiteration of yesterday's
answers to today's questions. You cannot go home. You cannot go back. When it
seems that the tide of society is moving back, you can be assured that it is a
reactionary movement that will explode in ever greater force one of these days.
The Church ought not to be pandering to people's weaknesses. What we need to
do is to call people, as the wisdom literature did, as the sages did, to be adult, to
be mature, to look at the evidence, to live with observation and discernment, and
to make decisions that lead to life.
Let me be concrete for just a moment. The Pope says, for example, regarding
women in ministry, that he has no right to make a decision, that women cannot
be ordained to priesthood because Jesus chose men. That, if the Holy Father will
forgive me, is ridiculous. Jesus did not choose any women to be his disciples in
that age, in that culture, for it would not have been tolerated. But it would not
have been tolerated in that patriarchal age because women were devalued.
Women were understood to be second class citizens, less capable, less gifted. Now
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in the movement of culture, if we really believe that women are equal human
beings, equally gifted, equally capable, then to perpetuate a decision out of the
past that was based on an understanding of women that we no longer hold, to
perpetuate that decision to the present when we understand something quite
differently, that is fundamentalism. That is blindness. That is oppression. And,
that cannot stand the light of day. You see, you can't have it both ways. To say, "I
refuse to ordain women to ministry," but equally value them is a contradiction.
They weren't ordained back then because they were not equally valued. Had they
been equally valued they could have been a part of it. If they are equally able to
serve, then they have every right to enter fully into Christian ministry.
Well, where else would you like to go? In the last two months in this congregation
I have dealt with families in the critical care unit, about Living Wills. If you
haven't gotten yours made out, I would suggest you do. We may think the cranky,
kinky Kevorkian is out in left field somewhere, but I'll tell you he is dealing with a
real life issue. To say that he is wrong, that human life is not at our disposal and
that it is something for God to decide is simply to cop out. The moment you
inoculate, the moment you are put on a respirator, the moment you give an
antibiotic you are playing God, you have taken responsibility. You have entered
into the life determining process. You have interrupted a natural course of
nature, and you can't stop. You can't stop simply because it is a situation of fear
and trembling. You are responsible, and God says, "For God's sake, stand up and
be an adult and make a decision." We must be responsible. We must choose the
ways that lead to life. We must discern. We must struggle. We must talk together.
We must dialogue. It's not clear. It's not simple. It's not black and white. These
are decisions that wrench us, but we are humans created in the image of God,
called to think . . . and to decide.
We could move to the question of human sexuality. Two or three years ago the
Presbyterians came out with a report finding that the Church ought to deal with
this fundamental issue in our human existence, given what we know today about
the human person. The report was defeated by the General Assembly by about
400 to 30, and I said in a sermon at that time that I would have been on the
minority side. I think we lost a family that day. But I'll say it again. The Lutherans
didn't do any better. They had a report this past year and it never even made it to
the Synod there was such an uproar. People don't want to talk about human
sexuality because it may tamper with the moral absolutes. That's ridiculous. The
moral absolutes arose in a concrete context where people struggled together to
find the way of life. To take yesterday's answers and absolutize them for today
apart from the concrete situation in which we live is to abdicate our responsibility
to be human beings to whom God gave minds and called us to think God's
thoughts after God. The Episcopalian head bishop, Browning, said to the House
of Bishops that, when they meet in September and present their paper on human
sexuality, they should just pass it without debate, because there are just so many
things that we don't know about and we are just going to disagree on, so let's not
get into a debate. Let's just pass it!" (Laughter)
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Richard A. Rhem
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Abortion. People willing to kill in order to abort abortion. Convinced that they
know God's mind and God's will on that very difficult issue. The wisdom
literature would say that God is pro life, because God is pro choice.
God would expect us as responsible human beings to find our way in this maze in
which there is no simple answer to any one of these issues that I've raised. For if I
read the wisdom literature correctly, the one thing I may not do is try to find an
answer in a book, or in an institution, or in an authority figure. You and I live
before the face of God. We live in fear and trembling before the face of God,
believing that there is an order, that there is that which is true and good and
beautiful. But we'll never capture it absolutely . . . only tentatively, provisionally,
partially. And on the basis of that, we are called to decide and to act.
I can't coddle you, friends. This is not a place where you can run for refuge from
the tough decisions of the human story. If the Church could only be a place where
people, rather than being coddled in their infancy, would be called to maturity . . .
to seek wisdom . . . act wisely . . . find life.
God will not abandon us in the struggle, but neither will God write simple
answers in the sky. It's tough. It takes courage. But in the end that's what it is to
live as a human being before the face of God.
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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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Pentecost XIII
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Wisdom Literature
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Proverbs 8: 35-36
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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Wisdom For Life
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Richard A. Rhem
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A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on August 21, 1994 entitled "Wisdom For Life", as part of the series "Wisdom Literature", on the occasion of Pentecost XIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Proverbs 8: 35-36.
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A Compelling Question:
Does Sin Reap Suffering and Virtue Reap Reward?
From the sermon series on Job
Text; Job 6:26-30; Job 8:20
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
July 17, 1994
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Job:
"Do you want to disprove my passion or argue away my despair? Look me
straight in the eye. Is this how a liar would face you? Can't I tell right from
wrong? If I sinned, wouldn't I know it?" Job 6:26-30
Bildad:
"Good never betrays the innocent or takes the land of the wicked."
Job 8:20 (Translated by Stephen Mitchell)
We are in the midst of a series on the Book of Job. Job is a dramatic poem found
in the Hebrew Scriptures. Let me catch you up for just a moment, because we
began last week, and it will be important to have the proper context. I noted last
week that Job was a heretic. That word comes from the Greek language and it
means " to choose." A heretic is a person who stands up apart from the rest and
dares to speak one’s mind, to give expression to one’s conviction and passion. To
defy conventional wisdom, to remove oneself from majority opinion, to stand
alone if need be. Job was a heretic in that sense because he spoke against the
conventional wisdom of his day. He spoke against those things that everyone
knew, namely that human suffering was the consequence of human sin; that God
punishes human sin with suffering. Everyone knew that. Everyone took it for
granted. And then Job spoke out of an experience in which he said, "No, I don't
believe that." And in standing up, and in challenging, and in protesting to God, he
became a heretic, as it were, over against the orthodox opinion.
Orthodox is also from the Greek. It means "straight opinion," or "correct view of
things." That is, correct in terms of the majority vote of the establishment at any
given time. Job made his protest and it comes to expression in chapters 3-42, the
majority, the corpus of the poem. But it is encased in a prologue and an epilogue.
The prologue and the epilogue say a contrary thing to what the whole middle of
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the book says. The prologue and the epilogue, those who study it believe, reflects
an ancient legend that the author of the dramatic poem used in order to set forth
his protest. The ancient legend said that Job was the most patient man who ever
lived, that he was prosperous, came into calamity, endured patiently, and was
prospered once again. That message is diametrically opposed to the message of,
the protest of the poet who lived perhaps four, five, six hundred years before
Jesus. The poet borrowed an ancient legend in order to set off his radical and
heretical view: that there is no link between human suffering and human sin.
That's what the poem of Job is about.
Today, let's focus on the heart of the issue. I frame it as a compelling question.
"Does Sin Reap Suffering And Virtue Reap Reward?" Maybe a more existential
question, maybe with a deeper pastoral concern, I might simply say, "Does God
punish us for our sin with suffering?” Is human suffering a consequence of
wrong-headedness or wrong-heartedness or wrong action? Does God as the
moral cop of the universe send thunderbolts to us, bringing about our suffering in
order to punish us for our sin? Well, you say, "Everybody knows . . . it is
conventional wisdom . . . it is the knowledge of the person on the street that that's
not true. There is no link between suffering and sin, and its corollary is also not
true. There is no necessary link between virtue and reward." Everybody knows
that, don't we? But before we make short shrift of the question, let us recognize
that if we know that . . . if everybody knows that at least in their head, it may be in
part due to the fact that the Book of Job is in the canon. Because it is precisely to
break the link between human suffering and God's punishment that that book
came forth as an eloquent statement of a contrary view. So thank God for Job—if
everybody knows that.
We may know that now, but Job got into severe argument with his friends who,
though they came to comfort him, had become miserable comforters when he
began to raise his challenge to God. For in raising a challenge to God, Job
threatens their belief system. So, forgetting that they are there for comfort, Job's
"friends" go on the attack. They seem to have a lot of data going for them too.
They were operating on the accepted opinion, the orthodox view, that God gives
suffering. Job is suffering, God does not give suffering to the just. Therefore Job
has sinned. Job accepted their major premise. We'll have to deal with that
subsequently in another message, but he accepted their major premise: God gives
suffering.
But Job said, "I am innocent. Therefore, God is unjust." Now that is the radicality
of Job's protest. He doesn't question whether or not God gives suffering, but he
does say, "I am innocent, and therefore I will take my cause to heaven. God is
unjust." That is how strongly his own concrete experience moved him.
But, as I said, the friends of Job seemed to have some pretty good basis for their
view that punishment from God comes in the wake of human sin. For example,
maybe they were reading from Leviticus 26. At the head of the paragraph in my
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Richard A. Rhem
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Bible it says, “Rewards for Obedience. If you follow my statutes and keep my
commandments and observe them faithfully, I will give you your rains in their
season…." It continues on and on about all the blessings that will come in the
wake of obedience. If you move to the 14th verse, my Bible has a heading that
says, “Penalties for Disobedience,” and there I read, "In turn, if you do not obey
me, I will bring terror on you….” I selected Leviticus 26, but you can go to
Deuteronomy 28 or you can read that marvelous statement in Isaiah 1:18, "Come
let us reason together says the Lord, though your sins be as scarlet they shall be
as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson they shall be as wool." That's
where I'd like to stop. But it goes on, "If you are willing and obedient you shall eat
the good of the land. But if you refuse and rebel you shall be devoured by the
sword. The mouth of the Lord has spoken."
So you see, the friends of Job weren't just blowing a lot of smoke. They could
quote a lot of Bible verses. We have to recognize that the earliest Jewish tradition
was being expressed by these three friends. They could cite chapter and verse.
Actually, when you stop to think about it, it does make sense. You don't really
have to be a Bible student to know that there are certain manners of behavior and
certain attitudes and certain spirits that lead to disaster. And there are other
actions and attitudes and behaviors that lead to blessing.
Perhaps that's why Job's protest has never really gotten through to us. We may
say in our head there is no necessary link, but in our gut how quickly we say,
"What have I done that is wrong?” What about the way we often look askance at
the victim? Why did one in five Americans a year ago say the floods in Mississippi
or the earthquakes in Los Angeles are God's judgment on human sin. Why is
there this popular theology in the church and out of the church that somehow or
other this is just the way things are, and that God does intentionally harm people
and punish people. There is a deep thread in the human person of connecting
behavior and painful consequences.
It may be because preaching has a bad name. Do your kids ever say to you, "Don't
preach to me?" Parents have a tendency to preach. "Don't you dare." "You had
better." "Because of - - - this consequence will follow." Preaching. People don't
like preaching. Why should they like preaching? The whole tradition of preaching
in the Church is to turn the whole religious experience into a promise and reward
system. We try to keep people on the straight and narrow and have them avoid
the disaster. So preaching has a kind of heavy-handedness about it, which makes
out that God is some kind of moral cop up in heaven and that you had better
watch out. We transform the gracious God into Santa Claus. Santa Claus is
coming to town. You had better be good, you had better watch out, because God
knows if you have been naughty or nice. That's what religion can degenerate into.
That's what comes through too often, overpoweringly.
That's why people have left the church in hordes. Turn on your television today,
and don't watch golf. Find some great evangelist. He will give you texts right out
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of context. They will promise you reward for thus and so. He'll give you all kinds
of verses ripped right out of the context that will give you dire warnings of dire
consequences. You can always be sure that when a text is ripped out of its
context, it’s a pretext for something else. A text without a context is a pretext.
There are all kinds of hucksters in religion and out of religion. There are all kinds
of hucksters who are using religion as a means to sell their product, who are
quoting the Bible all the time. I listened to some motivational tapes this week. I
won't tell you why I got into it or how I got into it. I am just a sucker that's all.
(Laughter) I've got to tell you, they used Deuteronomy 28:10, Exodus 5:14, and
Joshua 3:16 to prove their point and sell their product. God says . . . God says, as
though you can just take a verse of scripture and say, "God says," as though it’s
right out of heaven, as though you could hear the voice of the Almighty. "If you
will do thus and so … If you won't do that….”
You would think that the whole of religion and the whole relationship to God is
this matter of sin and get punished, be virtuous and be rewarded. It is ignorant, it
is arrogant, it is an abuse of the Bible, and it is an abuse of people. It makes me
angry! (And if you want to know something I am really passionate about, come
next week!) (Laughter) I'm telling you, it's everywhere. That's popular religion,
and it is used by hucksters out of ignorance at its best, arrogance at its worst, and
it has ruined so many people. It distorts God. It distorts the grace of God. That's
why you can say off the top of your head, "Of course there's no link between
suffering and punishment," until you move into the darkness and begin to doubt
yourself, and you begin to look up and say, "God, why?"
Obviously there are some behaviors whose end is disaster; there are some
behaviors whose end is blessing. But as William Safire says about Job, "There is a
fire wall." The Book of Job is like a fire wall between the necessary link between
human suffering and human punishment. We may not blame the victim, for it is
not ours to judge. When we see someone in darkness, or when we enter the
darkness ourselves, what we need to know is that God is there with us. God is not
waiting in the dark with a club ready to beat us down.
There is a mystery of human suffering. In the first service I read the Foreword
from Night by Elie Wiesel, the renowned author and the survivor of the
Holocaust, which occurred in our own century and in our own remembrance. The
author of the Foreword, Noriak, quoted this paragraph from the book. These are
the thoughts, the anguishing remembrances of Elie Wiesel.
On the last day of the Jewish year the child was present at the solemn
[ceremony] of Rosh Hashanah. He heard thousands of these slaves cry
with one voice, 'Blessed be the name of the Eternal.' Not long before he too
would have prostrated himself and with such adoration, such awe, such
love. But on this day he did not kneel, the creature outraged and
humiliated beyond all that heart and spirit can conceive of, defied a
Divinity who was blind and deaf. That day I had ceased to plead. I was no
© Grand Valley State University
�A Compelling Question
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
longer capable of lamentation. On the contrary I felt very strong. I was the
accuser and God the accused. My eyes were open and I was alone, terribly
alone in a world without God and without man, without love or mercy. I
had ceased to be anything but ashes, yet I felt myself to be stronger than
the Almighty to whom my life had been tied for so long. I stood amid that
praying congregation observing it like a stranger."
Our world is torn. It is bleeding. People are suffering, especially the children. Job
said, "God is not doing it. God is not responsible. It is a mystery." His friends,
representatives of the tradition, said, "God gives suffering: Job is suffering: Job is
guilty." Job said, "God gives the suffering: I am innocent: God is unjust." No one
thought to say, " Job is suffering: Job is innocent; therefore, suffering is a
mystery that we cannot explain." Virtue is not necessarily met with reward. There
are those who will tell you that. Those on the religious network, on the tapes I
heard will promise you assured blessing, if only you'll subscribe, if only you will
send in your contribution, if only you'll do this or that. It's not true. It's not
necessarily so.
Sometimes there is the person who is suffering deeply, and there are those who
say, "If only you had faith and would pray." That's cruel. Don't we all know some
who have had faith and have prayed and have died? God will not be manipulated
into our schemes of things. Logical syllogisms do not work in concrete human
experience.
If you don't believe Job, would you at least believe Jesus? That life, wholly open
to the will of God, lived before the face of God on behalf of the world, crucified,
with a cry of dereliction on his lips, "My God, my God, why?" Not "Why are you
punishing me?" That wasn't the question. The question had to do with the
mystery of evil. "My God, where are you?"
No, being virtuous carries its own reward. I can't promise you prosperity. Be
careless and you may end up a wreck, but not because God punishes you. When
you come into the darkness, look to the one who went before you, as the writer to
the Hebrews invites you to do. We have this faithful High Priest, Jesus Christ,
who was in all ways tested like we are; therefore, come boldly to the throne of
grace to find mercy and obtain help in every time of need. There is a throne, there
is a throne of grace. There is one to whom to go. This one is the God of all mercy.
That you can count on.
Reference:
Elie Wiesel. Night. Hill and Wang, 1960.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3e9f73e628057f23ec7aa8fd87e11750.mp3
3b262edf461d5967b0f4b1bf5f2e365e
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981-2014
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost VIII
Series
The Job Series
Scripture Text
Job 6: 26-30, Job 8:20
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-19940717
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1994-07-17
Title
A name given to the resource
A Compelling Question: Does Sin Reap Suffering and Virtue Reap Reward?
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 July 17, 1994 entitled "A Compelling Question: Does Sin Reap Suffering and Virtue Reap Reward?", as part of the series "The Job Series", on the occasion of Pentecost VIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Job 6: 26-30, Job 8:20.
Morality
Open Mind
Suffering
Wisdom