1 24 7 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e8fe37a112257c26aace32ba40fc3346.pdf d7b3417b7cd2257d01e14bb1764cc202 PDF Text Text Religion: Has It a Future? From the series: Meeting God Again For the First Time Scripture: Romans 7:14-25; Mark 8:11-21 Dr. Duncan Littlefair Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan September 28, 1997 Transcription of the spoken sermon (Mr. Rhem) It is for me a very great pleasure and privilege to introduce to the congregation of Christ Community and our friends visiting with us today the Rev. Dr. Duncan Littlefair. My friendship with Dr. Littlefair goes back over a couple of years through one of those wonderful providences when a friend of his became a friend of mine, and we found ourselves on Tuesdays enjoying table fellowship and absolutely wonderful conversation. We meet on Tuesdays religiously. During the past couple of years in which we have been through some difficult waters, it has been a source of great encouragement to me to come to know Dr. Littlefair. His strength and his vision have steeled my purpose. As I said to the 8:30 congregation, when I reflected at the lunch table about the things we were dealing with, Dr. Littlefair told me that they had handled that 100 years ago at Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids and, when I came with some brave new insight, I found out that he had published it in a primer on religion 50 years ago. I don’t know why some of us are so Johnny-come-lately, slow to learn, if not slow to speak. As we gathered around that lunch table, it was obvious to me that there was fire in the belly, there was a sermon brewing, ready to be delivered, and so I broached the subject, asking Dr. Littlefair if he would be our guest at Christ Community. He has been in our worship and warmly affirmed us, but he goes a step further in giving us the gift this morning of his presence in this pulpit. I want to say to you very sincerely that I am deeply moved and greatly appreciative of his presence here this morning. Welcome, Dr. Duncan Littlefair. (Dr. Littlefair) You cannot be human without being religious. You may doubt that in the course of my presentation to you this morning, but I want it to be in your mind. You cannot be human without being religious. Now, there are very many levels of humanity, and there are equally many levels of religion. You can have a profound religion. You can have a trivial religion. You © Grand Valley State University   �Religion: Has It a Future? Richard A. Rhem Page 2   can have an intellectual understanding religion. You can have an ignorant religion. You can have a religion that is equal to the best of knowledge, or you can have a religion that is full of superstition, but religious you must be if you’re going to be human. Or, I like it better the other way, to be human means to be religious. There has never, ever been a people anywhere in the history of this globe (and that history goes back a long, long way now; we’ve extended it enormously), never any people without a religion. Isn’t it, then, more than just a little absurd that any one religion should claim that it is the only way? If you stop to think about it, can you imagine anything more absurd than for one religious people to proclaim that its way of reverencing and worshiping this Creative Source that makes us is the only way? And Christians have done that all these centuries. They’re still doing it! Criticizing this church because it moves out to the possibility - that’s all you’re doing - move out to the possibility that there are other ways. I cannot contain myself when I hear such stupidity and prejudice as to assume that there is no other way but your own. And as a result, Muslim faith grew out of Christianity and Judaism, you know. Of course you know. And, Islam faith claims that it’s the only valid way and scorns the Christian, or the Christian scorns the Muslim and the Buddhist. And I’ve been prophesying for some ten years and I think that it will come to be that any crisis that occurs in this world will be a crisis between these two faiths proclaiming themselves to be absolute and the only way. And they are meeting. As Colette made mention in her prayer, they are meeting across the world and they are fighting each other. They will engage in mortal conflict. The tenth and eleventh centuries all over again, and this is the twentieth, moving into the twenty-first. I know of no institution in the world that is as riddled and ridden by superstition as religion. Now, I want to make the definition of religion. I have said that it was a universal product, that there was never a person or a people without it, never a people, and that’s historically true, archeologically, anthropologically true, but I’m going to define religion for you and follow my definition in the course of my discussion because it doesn’t run counter to what I’ve said, it’s a definition and a description of it. Religion is to care. That’s all. To care. Care about what? I think anything. Anything. We start off with our children. We encourage their caring on their level, whatever it is. Care for money? Fine. Then it will be your religion. It is the religion of many people. Stupid. Trivial, insubstantial, insufficient. But, it can be a religion. But, if we start out with religion as caring, see, then you come to a place like this, this beautiful place, and you join yourself together with other people like you, beautiful congregation in this building. I’ve been here, I’ve seen you and felt you. You come to a place like this, you see, to deepen your caring. To illumine your caring. Enlighten it. Make it more profound. Make it more impressive and make a greater impact with it on yourself, and let the chips fall where they may, because you have a society of persons who care, you’ll have a caring society. © Grand Valley State University �Religion: Has It a Future? Richard A. Rhem Page 3   Now, I want to mention that I think we are in a cultural crisis in the world. A cultural crisis is not something that occurs in a lifetime, not a few years or months, you know. It’s a long, long thing. Our cultural crisis has been brewing for 350 years, maybe 400, we don’t argue about 50 or 100 years in this sort of thing. It started with the beginning of the scientific approach to knowledge. Not until the 1500s, Galileo the middle of the 16th century, 1500s, the beginning of the scientific approach to the world, not to go on here say, not to go on folklore, not to go on imagination, not to go on superstition, not to go on campfire ideas, but to begin to probe the nature of the world to see what it’s like, what it’s truly like. Not until the middle of the 16th century. It wasn’t until the middle of it the 17th century, which Whitehead calls the century of genius, that we even discovered the circulation of the blood. And that was the same century that Newton discovered the nature of gravity. And since then we’ve been growing so wonderfully in our ideas and appreciations so that now, after 350 years, it’s beginning to take account. It hasn’t taken hold yet. People feel it, but intellectually it’s not clear. And even our leaders are not talking about it enough because it’s a frightening thing and they don’t want to offend people. They don’t want to frighten them, but they are frightened. The people of the western hemisphere are frightened, and rightly so, because we’re discovering that we live in a world that can brush us aside like any of the thousands of species that have been brushed aside, failed and lost out in the past, that can happen to us, too. We’re not that long established, you know. I like to point out that the human life has been here maybe a million years and the dinosaurs were here 100 million years. Now, if you understand the nature of scientific progression of knowledge and facts, then that has to be significant to you. And the cultural crisis is that we have to come to the conclusion that things are in our hands. Oh, I know that I violate most of the ritual that goes on around, even in this enlightened church, and some of the ritual that goes on in my church, but we have to come to the conclusion that we are on our own in this world! I don’t know how any intelligent person could avoid coming to that conclusion, I just do not understand it. There is to be no divine intervention! There is no miraculous intercession. Hasn’t been. Is not now, and never will be. I like the little story in the New Testament, which is a very important book to me, of Jesus in the midst of a circus, a parade. The man stood up in a tree so that he could participate in it, and Jesus said, "Come on down. Come on down, Zaccheaus, and get out of that tree. We’ve got things to do." We’ve got things to do. Did you hear Colette’s prayer? I have difficulty hearing behind there, but I heard it. We have to save our environment. We have to save the air. We have to save the water and make it open and accessible for quality and human living. We have to save our woods. We have to deal with our hatreds, with our tribal loyalties and devotions. We have to deal with our selfishness. We have to deal with our ignorance. We have to deal with our hatred, which leads people to fight against each other, killing neighbors year after year. No matter what we do, we cannot © Grand Valley State University �Religion: Has It a Future? Richard A. Rhem Page 4   stop it. This is a cultural crisis and religion is so far showing its awareness of it by its frantic, absolutely frantic retreat into what I call "warehouse religion," emotional binges without the slightest degree of interest in pursuing knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. Just emotional expression. Now I want to say, after having indicated that the cultural crisis is hinged on knowledge, that this kind of knowledge has really nothing to do with religion. I have a principle that I introduced to the men at lunch and I jokingly call it "The Littlefair Principle." I thought I might as well, nobody else has said it. To the degree that any religion depends upon the repudiation of knowledge and truth and facts, it is to that degree of dependence spiritually ignorant, illiterate, and unworthy. Now, the alternative: To the degree that any religion is founded upon and dependent upon knowledge of the world, it is to that degree, spiritually invalid. I have not excluded religion, now, because religion is to care. But, if your caring involves you repudiating the best and most established knowledge, it’s obviously unworthy, too trivial for any people to adhere to. But, if you make a religion out of the facts, you’re missing the whole point of a religion, which is to care. Now, we do not allow the religionists to tell us what the facts are. That would be ridiculous. They’re not trained to do it, obviously, are they? You want to know about the earth, what it’s made of? You want to know its structure, you go to the geologist, don’t you? They know. They have learned. They’ve applied the scientific method. They have irrefutable facts, not some dream that arose around a campfire about what the nature of the earth was. No way. You want to know about the human body? You go to a biologist. And let me tell you that I’ve heard from the biologists that if you don’t know the biology of the last 20 years, you’re ignorant, biologically speaking, so great has been the advance and growth and knowledge of the body. But, you don’t ask a religionist about the nature of the body. You want to know about the structure of things like this? And the rocks and some trees? You don’t go to the geologist, you go to the physicist and the chemist. He’ll tell you. You want to know about the history of life on this planet? You go to the anthropologist. They’re the ones who have been doing the studying on this thing, and they know. They’re not guessing, they’re not hoping. They have facts, and those facts are important for anybody trying to live the modern world so that you can make your caring an intelligent thing. © Grand Valley State University �Religion: Has It a Future? Richard A. Rhem Page 5   One other point: We’re on the stage of the democratization of religion. I’ve been wondering about this for some time and it suddenly occurred to me that what I’ve been after all these years in my ministry is the democratization of religion. Isn’t it amazing that we make God a monarch? Have you thought about that? We make God a monarch. We don’t believe in monarchies! Goodness sakes, we abolished them long, long ago! Even Japan. Certainly the monarchy in England, Britain, the one outstanding one is just decorative, it’s not the essence of the British Republic. We don’t talk about monarchs, but we make God to be sitting on a throne. We have people supplicating Him, fawning over Him, flattering Him. Most of our prayers are forms of flattery equivalent to a courtier and an emperor. God is not Louis XIV. Surely that ought to be clear to us. Degradation. Can you see Jesus on a throne? Can you really see that? You grew up thinking about it, having it given to you, and maybe you’re hearing it as adults, too - can you see Jesus on a throne? The man who put his arms, figuratively, around a prostitute and made her his best friend - that’s an emperor? My God and I walk through the fields together, we laugh and talk as good friends should and do. Our voices ring with laughter. My God and I walk through the fields together. You have your choice. Jesus talked about God as a father, and I assume the best of fathers is like a friend that you laugh and talk with and walk through the fields together. Now, I want very briefly to go to describe something more about religion as caring. I want to define Spirit for you, and I’ll be back next week, I trust, to talk some more about it. But, I want to define the Spirit. It just doesn’t get defined. I do a lot of philosophical reading and it just doesn’t get defined, and I’d like you to take it home and think with it, about it, and put it together with my notion that religion is to care. Spirit is to feel while you are aware. Now, listen to this - it’s not a "thing," almost anyone surely knows with their fourth-grade mind that it’s not a "thing." It’s not something that resides in the body and comes out. We’ve thought that for centuries. It’s too late for that kind of thinking. We’ve got things to do. The Spirit is a part of the body and so much it is a product of the body, and is never found apart from the body. No Spirit apart from the body. And I gave it the simple definition and I defy you to exhaust it. You or the geologist or biologist or anthropologist or any physicist or chemist - it’s a feeling awareness. Doesn’t sound like very much, but it’s the essence of being human. We’re not very aware, you know. I challenge you to go back over your drive here this morning to come to church - what do you remember of it? What were you aware of when you were driving? Oh, if something happens, you’d see it, if a red light came on or some child crossed the street, or somebody was driving - you’d see that and react to that, I know. Squirrels do that. But, what do you feel? What © Grand Valley State University �Religion: Has It a Future? Richard A. Rhem Page 6   are you aware of? Most of us live in a sleep, really almost 100% sleep. You can carry on business jobs just by being animal responsive. But, to be feelingly aware. Do you see this beautiful hanging? Maybe you notice that it’s red or black or white, but are you aware of it? Are you aware of that beautiful brick wall that you have? It’s so fascinating to me. I’ve spent my ministry in a church with the most magnificent stained glass windows in America. I find this wall just a total fascination. I come in and I sit there and I look at it and I think about it. What are you aware of? Are you aware of the grass? I’ve been aware this whole season long of leaves. I can’t believe the wonder of a leaf. And then of the trees - they stagger me! I cannot comprehend them. And I sit and look and I walk and look and I feel. The grass - yes. Leaf? - yes. Tree? - yes. Anything. How about a person? Are you aware of the person that you’re living with? Or is it like your awareness of driving to church? Women are particularly alert to this. Do you see the face? Do you see the concern? Do you see the agony? Do you see the depression? "You have eyes," said Jesus, "and you don’t see." Mr. Rhem read that this morning. It’s the most profound spiritual observation. "You have ears, but you don’t hear. You have hearts and you don’t understand. Woe is the person." To feel, to be aware of anything - anything! This is God’s world. I hear Him pass in the rustling grass, I see Him everywhere. My listening ears all nature sings. Feeling awareness. And then you treasure it. It’s no use bothering people about Sunday religion, but, of course, true, it’s wonderful to have it, that kind of Sunday following a custom, routine - it’s not enough! If you’re going to treasure your spirit, you have to treasure it every day! Or you lose it. Very few people ever arrive at the spiritual level, you know that. Jesus knew it. Every spiritual person has known it. You have to treasure it. You have to pay attention to it as if it were important, as important as the money you used to care for. Or the success, or the arrogance, or the pride, or the power. You have to treasure it, because where your treasure is, there your heart will be, and where your heart is, there your treasure will be, and if you have a treasuring of the spirit, you have something that nothing can take away - neither life nor death nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor height nor depth nor any other creature. Nothing! You treasure it, and you’re grateful for it. You’ve got to be grateful, because you didn’t make it. If you want to get down to the heart of religion, here’s another one of those fundamental things - you didn’t make it! The thing that you treasure. You didn’t make the leaf, you didn’t make the flower, you didn’t make the tree, you didn’t make yourself, you didn’t make your mind, you didn’t make your body. It’s a gift. We call it the gift of God, don’t we? So, you have to be grateful. No spiritual person swaggers with the qualities of the Spirit. No. No swaggering with the Spirit. It’s just the utmost of gratitude. © Grand Valley State University �Religion: Has It a Future? Richard A. Rhem Page 7   And then you celebrate it. You celebrate it by - you come to church and you light candles and you listen to that beautiful, beautiful music, and you have a birthday party or you give a gift or you bake a cake and you gather your friends around and you hold hands, and you say, isn’t it wonderful, the gifts that are ours? That’s a celebration, and there’s no religion without it. You have to have the Spirit there to make the celebration significant and real. Now, that’s a description of religion as best as I can do for you. What’s the language of religion? Just a word or two now and that’s all. What’s the language of religion? I said of religion, not about religion, because the investigation of religion or of anything falls into the realm of scientific categories. You explore religion like you explore the structure of a city or of an institution or of a piece of metal. Thus, we use technical language when you want to discuss the nature of religion. But, what’s the language of religion? I keep trying and I’m a preacher and I should know how to do it and I feel so helpless at it, and I want to tell somebody what it means to be in rapture by that blossom that I saw out my window. How do I do it? How do I tell somebody how much I love them? I don’t know how to do it; you stagger and you stumble. We don’t do very well at it. Well, the language of religion is story, it’s poetry. Poetry is the nature of religious language, because you’re explaining. You see something and you just let go. I keep thinking of David dancing before the ark of the Lord - just totally feeling. He expressed it in dance, like you do here so frequently. I have an enduring memory of being out there last spring sometime and you had all those children dancing down the aisles. And there was one child who caught my imagination so that I didn’t want to lose myself in the panorama of it. Interestingly enough, on the way home, the wife of the person I was driving with said, "I know who you meant. I saw that, too." What was it? I don’t know. I couldn’t describe it. But, that girl - she exemplified it to me, with all those children she exemplified the Spirit, the miracle and wonder of being human. We use myth and story, legend and song and dance and art. These are the language of religion. Mr. Bryson plays that organ and has that choir sing so beautifully they’re singing of the Spirit, if you have ears to hear. How better could you describe Paul’s dilemma, which is yours and mine - "I want to do good and I can’t because the evil’s all around me. I want to do good and the evil takes over. I know that in my heart reigns the law of God, but there is another law, the law of my members entangling me in sin." How would you describe this? Well, it’s never been better done than it was in our religious heritage. In the beginning the world was wonderful, beautiful, and everything was there. And then God made man and it was all right then, too, except that man ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. The fruit of the tree of knowledge. And then he became like one of us - gods, says the Bible. Knowing good and evil. And if you know good and evil, you’ll never, ever be totally free! Because the evil is always there; it’s part of being human. And that’s our biblical story. © Grand Valley State University �Religion: Has It a Future? Richard A. Rhem Page 8   You want to describe the miracle of life, the wonder of being human, the wonder of a child which is where we see it most and should not confine ourselves there, do you want to describe the miracle of the birth of a child - how would you do it? Well, we’ve had a description, a poetic, beautiful description that has been a cardinal part of my heart for all these years that I’ve been thinking about dreams. There was a man and a woman, simple man and woman, carpenter and his wife they had to go to a distant city and she was with child. But, they had to go and it was a difficult, long journey, and it came on wintertime and they were up in the mountains and the time for her came, and they didn’t know what to do and there was no place to go. There was a little village up in the mountain and every place was filled because everyone else was going as they were going to this thing that had been called by the emperor, and they had no place, no place in the inn or anywhere. And the innkeeper gave them a place where the cattle were. Not much, was it? Oh, no, but it was something. It was a gracious act and it was some comfort and protection, and they were there with the animals, you see, and she gave birth to her child and it was just a miracle. And there were three kings who had been out on the road for a long time, looking for the glory of God. And they had been told that they could find it, and there was a star that they had to follow. And they followed that star for many days, many weeks, and finally the star came and stood over a stable. Stood over a stable. And they knew that that was the end of their search. They went in and found the child, and they brought their gifts as tribute to the miracle of God in human life. And there were some shepherds out in the fields, not just the kings, but some shepherds, ignorant shepherds. And all of a sudden, when they were keeping watch over their flocks, the air was filled with angels singing, "Glory to God in the highest, for unto you is born this night in the city of David a Saviour." And the shepherds went off, left their flock and went up into the stable to pay tribute to the glory of God and the child. You have ears but you don’t hear. If we were to listen, if we were to listen, anytime, we’d hear the angels singing. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/85c5c7ebd675c7c365e6dac356607ddf.mp3 6045c2bbb3d6bbc772595a6cf13df566 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 Pentecost XIX Series Meeting God Again for the First Time Scripture Text Jeremiah 7: 1-7,, 11-15, Mark 13:1-2 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19970928 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-09-28 Title A name given to the resource Religion: Has It a Future? 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 September 28, 1997 entitled "Religion: Has It a Future?", as part of the series "Meeting God Again for the First Time", on the occasion of Pentecost XIX, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Jeremiah 7: 1-7,, 11-15, Mark 13:1-2. Awareness Compassion Nature of Religion Story Wonder https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/736a6533c00361ce113eb79cc9f386d1.pdf 0387fd2d306a37f0db0970a985d4f980 PDF Text Text Prayer at Fountain Street Church Richard A. Rhem Fountain Street Church Grand Rapids, Michigan November 25, 2001 Transcription of the prepared text Eternal God, Creator of all that is, enlivening Spirit whose breath gives life. In the beginning, O God, your spirit/wind brooded over the soupy chaos of emerging cosmos, bringing forth order, beauty, and rhythmic regularity in a rich diversity of infinite possibility. It is with awe that we contemplate heavens set with a myriad of starry diamonds in the inky blackness. It is with delight that we trace the breaking dawn, bask in the radiant warmth of the sun at its zenith, watch with wonder its final moments firing all with golden glow before it slips below the far horizon. Summer and winter, springtime and harvest – All beautiful the march of days as seasons come and go. The hand that shaped the rose has wrought the crystal of the snow. Wonder, mystery, all about us if we have eyes to see, ears to hear, if for a moment we pause, fully conscious, fully aware, attentive to the reality into which our lives are woven, a tapestry we can never fully take in. Yet now and then, O God, we get a glimpse of the grandeur of it all and know ourselves to be a living part of it all, bringing to the emerging wonder a consciousness – © Grand Valley State University   �Title… Richard A. Rhem Page 2   self-consciousness, consciousness of the other, the dawning of communion, the foundation of community. Ah, dear God, the mystery deepens; before the consciousness of ourselves, of the other, we find ourselves in the presence of the mystery – indeed, in your presence, O God, mystery of being, mystery of our being, of our being together. We cannot take it in. We cannot fully fathom the cosmic depths or the depths of our own being; yet, in moments of awareness we realize we have been gifted with life, gifted with insight into the larger reality in which we share, gifted with a sense of being known and of knowing, knowing who we are knowing the other, knowing we are not alone but belong together. In the stillness of this magnificent space we contemplate the wonder of it all. © 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 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. 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 RA-1-20011125 Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Title A name given to the resource Prayer at Fountain Street Church 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 A language of the resource eng Description An account of the resource Prayer created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on November 25, 2001 entitled "Prayer at Fountain Street Church". Tags: Prayer, Wonder, Cosmos. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2001-11-25 Cosmos Prayer Wonder https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ef491e75f01ba4ce45bbeba2f9573143.pdf a2947b7c28743d5bf25ec22b27af7261 PDF Text Text Prayer On a Tour Group Sunday Richard A. Rhem September 19, 1993 Prepared text of prayer Let us be in the spirit of prayer, aware that we have been gifted with life not of our creation, that we live at the far end of a creative process spanning billions of years, an extension of time beyond our capacity to comprehend, evolving in a cosmic expanse of space beyond our ability to imagine. We have seen rugged mountain peaks thrust heaven-ward by volcanic explosion, issuing in a fiery river that, after aeons of time, became rivers of ice crushing all in their path. All of this wonder would be beyond belief except our eyes have seen the narrative written in rock and ice and lake and rivers and undulating oceans stretching beyond where the eye can see. In the familiar words of the song brought to such beautiful expression by Louis Armstrong – What a wonderful world! And yet, when we have stood in awe, amazed at our earthly home, wondered at its wonders, we have only begun to scratch the surface of the miracle, wonder, glory and joy of life. For we have not even begun to contemplate the beauty of the human – the likes of us who have emerged in this creative process billions of years in the making. Here we are, conscious, aware – reflecting on it all... We have become the awareness of the cosmos, © Grand Valley State University   �Tour Group Prayer Richard A. Rhem the voice of that awareness, creating poems that paint pictures with words, writing music that lifts our spirits in worship and sets our feet to dancing, celebrating the wonder of it all. And still we have only begun to touch the depths of our human experience, for we have not yet spoken of human relationship, the human kaleidoscope of faces, of languages, of body form and skin tone – all this diversity but the manifestation of the oneness that unites us in our common humanity. We have experienced the beautiful reality of that oneness in the diversity of those who have cared for us so well – cleaning rooms, waiting tables, creating the ambience of grace and pleasure of comfort. The external differences fade before the sparkle in the eye, the smile, the appreciation of being well served and serving well. And still there is more – for we have experienced again the joy of communion – knowing afresh the wonderful process of the knitting of human bonds forming a new family where there is appreciation, mutual care, affection, laughter and a new circle of love. These days have been too full, fully to take in. We will relive them and their beauty, and wonder will continue to wash over us. How blessed we are! How grateful! And now we enter these final days – still much to see, to do. And yet home begins to beckon – those we love, waiting for us, and the routines of the ordinary days that fill our lives with order and meaning. For home and deep human relationships that await us there, we are thankful as well. Surely goodness and mercy have followed us all these days and we dwell consciously © Grand Valley State University Page 2   �Tour Group Prayer Richard A. Rhem in Your presence, Holy Mystery, from whom all emerges and to whom all returns, a mystery for us come to expression in the Word become human – Jesus, who taught us to pray. © Grand Valley State University Page 3   � 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 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. Event Group Tour in Greece 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 RA-1-19930919 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-09-19 Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Title A name given to the resource Prayer during Group Tour in Nauplia, Greece 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 A language of the resource eng Description An account of the resource Prayer created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on September 19, 1993 entitled "Prayer during Group Tour in Nauplia, Greece", on the occasion of Group Tour in Greece. Tags: Prayer, Wonder, Emergence, Awareness, Community. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Awareness Community Emergence Prayer Wonder https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4e160bc402a601ad9289ff0f71a275d5.pdf 482aa4bcc501230ca1cd0017ee582715 PDF Text Text To the Wonder, Glory, Miracle, and Joy of Life! A Littlefair Legacy, 1 Ecclesiastes 3; Philippians 4 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan February 8, 2004 Transcription of the spoken sermon It is good to be back home. Not to say that Nancy and I were sorry to miss this wonderful January winter you had, and not to say that we were unable to make do with this extended period away with nothing to do, but it is so good to be back. In all honesty, it is so good to be back because of the place to which we come. Yesterday morning the sun caught the ice floes on the lake and it was so beautiful. Ordinarily I would have called Duncan Littlefair to say, “Dunc, you should see what I see,” and he would have said, “Ahh, it’s beautiful.” I thought to myself it may be cold, but it is pretty. And then to be able to come home to my wonderful family - we’re going to gather in a little bit. It’s so wonderful to have such a great family and such a wonderful community, to come back to you. Nancy tells me that I was more relaxed this time away than ever before, and I did take as many books, but I didn’t get them all read, and I think I was relaxed because of how I feel about this community. I feel so good about the fact that we are in such positive territory, feeling so good about the excellent leadership we have, a wonderful pastoral/program team in place that keeps things going and even getting better when I’m gone, Ian and Meg Lawton on their way, feeling so positive about that. I am eagerly anticipating this time of transition and then the next stage of the journey. So, blessed, indeed, I am delighted to be back here in your midst. As you know, while I was gone, I received word of the death of my dear friend Duncan Littlefair. I think the first week or ten days of our vacation we sort of crashed and didn’t do much of anything, but then we got the call that Saturday night that Duncan had died. You know what he meant to me and so many of you have given expression to that, and I do appreciate that. The request was that I should do his memorial service. It was his request that I do that for family and a circle of friends, but we all know that the whole community had, somehow or other, to find some closure with this one who had been larger than life in our midst, and so on Friday I did lead that service at Fountain Street, and I suppose you can imagine that after getting that call and knowing that that was my assignment, my mind could not register on much else. I think I preached about a hundred funeral sermons from 3:30 to 5:00 in the morning every night, it © Grand Valley State University   �To the Wonder…Joy of Life! Richard A. Rhem Page 2   seemed. I had not submitted my preaching for my return. We had left somewhat early and I thought I would have time down there to worry about that, as often I do. But, I just couldn’t determine what to do. I was so filled with thinking about Duncan and the whole impact of his life on my life and the larger community. Finally, I said to Nancy, “I think I’m simply going to do three sermons on Sunday mornings, ‘A Littlefair Legacy,’ and then on Ash Wednesday night concluding that series,” because it’s really all I could be thinking about. Thinking about last Friday, I couldn’t possibly somehow or other turn around the furniture in my mind and come up with something new this morning. Some of you were there for that service on Friday and I have to apologize to you because you will hear some of the same things, but not entirely so, because there was a special relationship that Duncan had to this community. He loved this community very much. He loved to worship here. I would bring him a tape every Tuesday of the service and the next Tuesday I would pay for it. He could really get after me when he saw me slipping back into the slough of orthodoxy. But, he cared a great deal for this community and he saw here hope for his religious vision to be perpetuated. So, I thought, not only will it be good for me, but I hope it will be good for you as a community, as well, to reflect for these weeks on A Littlefair Legacy, to reflect on the impact of this most remarkable human being whom it was my rare pleasure to come to know intimately and to love and respect very deeply. I want to begin this morning where I began on Friday and that is simply to share with you what he taught me, and the heart of what he taught me was to live fully and richly, to enjoy life and to enter it with zest, to live with wonder and awe, with awareness and appreciation, with reverence and thanksgiving. I have to say to you honestly, it was that which impacted me and has changed my life over this past decade. You know because of my frequent references that Tuesday was “Tuesday’s at Duba’s” and you know that those were sacred times and we kept that religiously and as we gathered, we spoke often of the fact that when we would awaken on Tuesday morning, those few individuals that were so blessed to be there, we would say, “Ah! It’s Tuesday,” and with every passing hour our anticipation grew until, all of us at our places, Duncan would lift his glass and say, “To the Wonder, Glory, Miracle and Joy of Life!” The glasses would clink and it was a holy moment. It was good, it was just very good. And then that serious conversation would begin, and it was serious conversation. But, the thing that happened in the clinking of the glasses was that the radical diversity of that table became a community, and a community in all of our diversity in which we came to love one another and care for one another in a most remarkable way. As I came to know Duncan, I came to realize that that toast was the theme of his life. It was the very essence of his being. That man lived with a constant sense of wonder every day and throughout the whole day, in all of the varied circumstances and situations into which I ever saw him, he was one who lived with wonder, with awareness, with appreciation, with a sense of reverence and of © Grand Valley State University �To the Wonder…Joy of Life! Richard A. Rhem Page 3   deep gratitude. Duncan never had a bad day. He was the most unusual person I have ever met. The fact of the constancy, the consistency of that sense of living as a miracle, was contagious. You couldn’t be around him without feeling your own spirit rise and your own sensitivity heightened. And I began to see things that were always there but had never seen before. I began to live with a kind of awareness and appreciation that I’d simply never experienced before. It was because, in being with him often enough, long enough, in so many different situations, I saw him notice everything - a rosebud on a table set, the chorus of birds on his feeder outside his kitchen window which he delighted to watch, a sunset, a starry heaven, the lawn laid with newly fallen snow, a rainy day when he could pull up his rocker to his fireplace and to the crackling of the fire have a good book on his lap, enjoying and savoring the grayness of the clouds. If you would ever have called him in January to complain of a Michigan winter, he would have said, “It’s Wonderful! I love it!” Every day, he had no bad days; he had no desolate seasons. He was totally unimpacted by the external situation of his life because he lived out of an internal miracle that was always going on, of which he was always aware, and which he continued to bring to expression. One of his favorite poems, by poet Grace Crowell, has these lines: This day will bring some lovely thing, I say it over each new morn Some gay adventurous thing to hold Against my heart when it is gone. And so I rise and go to meet The day with wings upon my feet. I come upon it unaware, Some hidden beauty without name, A snatch of song, a breath of pine, A poem lit with golden flame, High tangled bird notes keenly thinned Like flying color on the wind. No day has ever failed me quite. Before the grayest day is done I come upon some misty bloom Or a late line of crimson sun. Each night I pause remembering some gay adventurous lovely thing. That is exactly how he lived more consistently than anyone I’ve ever known. As I came to know him and to experience him more and more, I found my own awareness and appreciation of life growing. He changed my life. © Grand Valley State University �To the Wonder…Joy of Life! Richard A. Rhem Page 4   In Florida I did take down Gary Dorrien’s second volume of The Making of American Theology, and I went back over some things I had read before about the Chicago School. Duncan graduated from the University of Chicago, did his doctoral work there, getting out around 1939-1940, somewhere in there. The Chicago School was a famous school of theology at the time. It was really the center of theological ferment in the country, a pioneer in the movement they called Theological Modernism, and I was re-reading again the story of that. There was a theologian-scholar there named George Burman Foster, and I identify with Foster, because Foster, coming out of a very pious and orthodox Baptist experience, moved across the whole spectrum of religious experience to a naturalist-humanist kind of understanding, and yet he wrestled through it all. As I was reading Gary Dorrien’s account, I read of Foster, who said the content of revelation is in holy personalities. When I read that, I thought, “Dear God, that’s true.” He went on to say ideas are important, but we are not saved by ideas. We are saved by persons, by personalities who embody the ideas. He said as fire kindles fire, and not some theory about the flame, so people save people. I thought, “It’s true.” And then I thought of my own life. While I was in Florida a week after Duncan died, another great friend of mine, Dr. Eugene Osterhaven, died at age 88. Dr. Osterhaven was a professor at Western Seminary for many, many years, he was a great friend of this congregation, he was a dear friend of mine, he married Nancy and me in 1972, and we have been in contact ever since. He prayed for me every day. In the opening years he prayed thanking God for me, in latter years he prayed petitioning God to save me. But, he was one of my dear, old friends who never forsook me, even though he couldn’t believe that I was really as bad as rumor had it. So, I thought of Gene Osterhaven. He was teaching an adult class here in 1960 and was the one that engineered my call here in 1960. And then he was teaching again in 1970 when you were without a pastor, and once again he was an instrument to bring me back here. So, Gene Osterhaven played a big part in my life, and I loved him. He was a beautiful, beautiful human being. He was an orthodox Reformed theologian. I learned my Reformed theology from Gene Osterhaven. I put my mind on his desk and asked him to shape it and to form it. I was totally brainwashed, at my request. That’s where I came from. Then, after about seven years of pastoral work, there began to be some cracks in the armor and I began to have more questions than I had answers, which was a relief to my people, because when I came out of seminary I had all the answers and didn’t even know what the questions were. It was my privilege then to go to the Netherlands and there I had this good fortune of another Professor, Hendrikus Berkhof, whom I have quoted here again and again, again what a beautiful human being he was. He also was a Reformed theologian, but a Reformed theologian who had brought a critical view to the faith and fresh insights and new formulations, and he led me into the place where I could do my own theological thinking. © Grand Valley State University �To the Wonder…Joy of Life! Richard A. Rhem Page 5   Maybe you remember that just a few years ago before he died, he was 80 years old and the University of Leiden celebrated him. They had a big day arranged with a panel of scholars, and I was the only foreign student to be invited back, and I got to say a few words. I didn’t talk about him in terms of his theology, I talked about him in terms of his personhood. I talked about the fact that in the crisis of my own life, Henk Berkhof was a pastor and was full of care and compassion, and I concluded my remarks with “Thank God for the man!” And the Dutch paper the next day, in telling the story of that event, used that phrase in the headline - “Thank God for the Man!” He was brought to the occasion from a nursing home where he was at that time, and I knew as I was with him, it would be the last time I was with him. I spent two hours with him and I wrung every bit of wisdom and insight I could out of him. Then I said to him, “You know, Henk, when I was studying here in the 60s, you were looking in this direction, and now as we talk, I sense that you are looking in that direction.” He said, “Say that again.” I said, “Well, you were talking much more about Karl Barth now than you are about Kuitert and I just sense that there has been some shift as you have come to the end - have you moved?” “Ah,” he said. I said, “You know, I feel so close to you it’s like if you drew a circle, we would be in the circle, but I feel like you’re looking in one direction and I’m looking in another.” He said, “Yah, and that’s the way it should be, for a student must go beyond his teacher.” Now, there’s a teacher for you. There’s grace for you. He gave me permission to go on and I did go on, and this last decade, having encountered Duncan Littlefair, it was a transformation, the next step, moving from orthodoxy to critical Reformed reflection to religion that is natural and human, for I saw in Duncan that his life was the fruit of his theological religious understanding. He was deeply rooted theologically, philosophically. He never talked about it. He didn’t preach about it. He didn’t burden his people like I have burdened you. He celebrated life with them, but when I probed because that’s who I am, I kept probing to say, “Okay, tell me. How does this blossom form?” And I realized it was because he wasn’t looking for God outside of the world, some kind of supernatural being in control, now and then intervening. He saw the mystery of the holy and the sacred as the unfolding of this cosmic drama of which we are a part. Religion for him was totally natural and wholly human, and it was the appreciation and the awareness and the wonder of this cosmic miracle into which our lives are woven and we, as that emerging consciousness of this whole drama. © Grand Valley State University �To the Wonder…Joy of Life! Richard A. Rhem Page 6   And so, little by little, I began to see that that beautiful life was the consequence of a consistent vision. Sometimes on Tuesdays all hell had broken loose somewhere in the world, evil had been perpetrated on other human beings, and we would raise our glass in the somberness of whatever event might have been, and then Dunc would say, “Even in the darkness ...” because he accepted life, not as he wanted it to be, but as it is, and even in the darkness it could not cloud the joy or remove the miracle. So, I read Ecclesiastes 3. He could have written it, all of the diversity of human experience. I owe to Don Hoekstra that translation. If you read it in your scriptures, it says there is a time to do this and a time to do that. I always winced a bit when it came to “There is a time to kill and a time to make war.” Don’s translation helps me to see that what that poet was saying is not there’s a time to do this, as though it ought to be done, but as a matter of fact, that’s what we do. This is the way life is. This is the human condition, and it is this that Duncan was able to embrace. His religious vision enabled him to transcend that darkness and to live in the constant light of the unfolding miracle. The Apostle Paul wasn’t too bad, either. He said, “Rejoice. Again, I say rejoice. And don’t worry about anything, but by everything with prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God that passes human understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ.” And then he went on to thank them for the gift they had given them, the Philippian congregation, and he said to them, “But, don’t think I need your gift.” (That reminds me of Duncan. He lived with such detachment.) “But, thanks for the gift. It was good of you. I didn’t really need it. I know how to be abased and I know how to abound. I know how to be full and I know how to be empty.” Some think they get a hint of stoicism in Paul. I think Duncan was even better than Paul, because I never got the sense of stoicism, not like “I’ll grit my teeth and get through this day.” Rather, “So, this is the day. This is the day that the Lord has made and I will rejoice in it and be very glad. So, it’s raining or snowing or hailing, so it is winter or summer or spring or fall. I will live in the wonder, the miracle, and the glory and joy of life.” Wow! That’s a life. References: Grace Crowel (1877-1969), “The Day,” 1926. Gary Dorrien. The Making of American Liberal Theology: Idealism, Realism, and Modernity, 1900-1950. Westminster John Knox Press, 2003. © 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 V Series A Littlefair Legacy Scripture Text Ecclesiastes 3, Philippians 4 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI References Gary Dorrien. Making of American Liberal Theology, Vol. 2: Idealism, Realism, and Modernity, 1900-1950. Westminister John Knox Press, 2003. 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-0-20040208 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004-02-08 Title A name given to the resource To the Wonder, Glory, Miracle and Joy of Life! 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> 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 Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on February 8, 2004 entitled "To the Wonder, Glory, Miracle and Joy of Life!", as part of the series "A Littlefair Legacy", on the occasion of Epiphany V, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Ecclesiastes 3, Philippians 4. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Littlefair miracle of life Natural religion Wonder https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4d1b83c09fef75cd185c897cfb7e8ebe.pdf b41a62410c41d94744ec7216ddcc306d PDF Text Text The Breath of God – The Life of the World From the Eastertide sermon series: Credo Text: Genesis 1:2; Ezekiel 37:5; John 3:8 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Pentecost Sunday, May 22, 1994 Transcription of the spoken sermon "... a mighty wind (Spirit) that swept over the surface of the waters." Genesis 1:2 “I will put my breath (wind, spirit) in you and you shall live." Ezekiel 37:5 "The wind blows where it wills; you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So with everyone who is born from Spirit.” John 3:8   I have a very simple but a very wonderful word to share with you today on this Pentecost Sunday. I want to say to you that the breath of God is the life of the world. You've been around with me long enough to know that "the breath of God" is simply another way of saying "the spirit of God" or "the wind of God." For the Hebrew word Ruach means "spirit" or "wind" or "breath". In the Hebrew it has that enlivening, energizing vitality about it: the wind as a tempest, the wind as moving power, the wind as energy. It was the Ruach of God in the story of creation that shaped the cosmos. As we said earlier today at the baptismal font, it was the breath of God moving through the chaos, bringing creation to its fullness. It was the Ruach of God that caused Israel to have hope in its exile, the Ruach of God which caused the dry bones to come together in that vision of Ezekiel, that vision which spoke in metaphor of God's promise that that exiled people would come to life again. Then resurrection so to speak, would be through the Ruach of God. It was the Ruach of God or the breath of God that breathed, which blew through Mary and caused the Word to take on flesh and to dwell among us. And on the day of Pentecost that Ruach, spirit wind of God, rushed through that early community of the followers of Jesus turning them inside out and sending them out into the world. The unfortunate thing for us is that the Hebrew word Ruach that had about it this energy and vitality was translated into the Latin vispiritus, and into English by the word spirit. And for us, the word spirit is intangible. It's invisible. It's kind of ghostlike. In fact, the German translation is gist and we even speak in an older form of the Apostles Creed of the Holy Ghost. So there is something spooky about it, something intangible about it – quite the opposite of the imagery of the Hebrew word Ruach. © Grand Valley State University   �The Breath of God–The Life of the World Richard A. Rhem Page 2   What I want to say to you this morning is that it is that breath of God or that wind of God that gives life to the world, to all that is. Psalm One Hundred and Four, I said, is such a beautiful poem because it makes that point that every living thing – snails, and worms, and grubs, and birds, and the animals of the field, and the trees of the forest, and the meadows, and the skies, and the seas, and ourselves – is alive with the life of God! It seems that in the modern age, since the Enlightenment, with all of the past accomplishments of the natural scientists and the explosion of technology, there has come into our lives a compartmentalization, a division, so that we do this on Sunday and then go out to the rest of the week to do our lives where life really is. Others have no moment like this hour of worship, because life for them is lived altogether outside the sanctuary, and they're getting along just fine. Human powers, human ingenuity, technology, scientific experiment, production, the corporate world, all of that going on without any reference to God. There we live a profane life. Profane means, literally, outside the temple. We come into the temple, then we speak of the sacred. And to this day in life, there has been that distinction between the sacred and the profane. What I want to say to you this morning is that the celebration of the sacred, such as we do today, is in order to recognize the sacredness of the whole of life. But what has happened in our modern western civilization, western culture, is that the vast majority of our brothers and sisters live a purely secular life without any reference, without any recognition that it is the breathing of God that keeps all things in being. Someone from the outside could say to me, "We don't need God. That's just a hypothesis. The world is just a phenomenon that's there. It's just an accident the way things have developed. We can live purely out of our own resources." And I have to answer that is as reasonable as what I am claiming. But I'm claiming the opposite. I'm claiming that everything that is, is because God keeps breathing. As the Psalmist said, "God withholds God's breath and they wither and return to the dust. God breathes and they are created and renewed." That goes not simply for some spiritual realm of our human experience, but that goes for our bodies. That goes for our physical universe, our natural world, for the totality of reality. It is all God-breathed, moment-by-moment incessantly. God holds all things together. And we live and we celebrate and we can delight in the totality of it because it is all a consequence of the breath of God. On this Pentecost hear me say that I believe the breath of God is the life of the world. I had an experience recently on a beautiful morning, much like this morning. I had to go into Grand Rapids for breakfast. I came down Route 45 to Allendale, to Eastmanville, and then took Leonard Road into Grand Rapids. And if you haven't taken that route recently, do it again. It courses through valleys. There are wonderful green hills. That day the trees were coming out in marvelous blossom. © Grand Valley State University �The Breath of God–The Life of the World Richard A. Rhem Page 3   There were jonquils and farmyards. There were cattle staring at me with those large eyes. And because it was still cool at that hour, their breath was causing a bit of a vapor, almost a kind of mystical something in that morning light. It was a brilliant, shining morning. I had my sunroof open. The fresh air came in. After the long Michigan winter, I said, "Dear God this is it! Spring has come!" And when I began to tell somebody about it, I said, "It was almost a spiritual experience", when as a matter fact it was precisely a spiritual experience. It was exactly a religious experience because a spiritual or religious experience is simply the experience of the world in the conscious awareness of the breathing of God that makes it all possible and invites us to delight in it. I had another experience, not too long ago while I was on vacation. It was Sunday afternoon, on a Florida intercostal down in Marco Island. It was a ramshackle, broken-down, old, beat-up tavern scene, the kind of place where you find yourself a small table under a little thatched palm roof to keep out of the sun. Tied up to the nearby docks people were eating brats and hot dogs and there was a musical group (though not nearly as good as the Weideman family but with a certain similarity!) and the people washing down excessive numbers of brats and hot dogs with excessive liquids of various kinds. They had tied their boats together,"rafting" out from one another as it's called. I looked at that scene and I said to myself, "Dear God, in the church, we are missing it. We few Christians coming together decrying the worldliness of the world and the unspirituality of people. We are growing smaller and smaller, and it's getting tougher and tougher, and we have to shout louder and louder, and run faster and faster. And I thought, "We're missing it." What we ought to do is not simply invite people next weekend to come "casually" (for a casual Sunday) into the sanctuary, What we ought to do is all go to the shores of Lake Michigan somewhere and have a "kegger", and some hot dogs, and a hot band. Then at some point, give me just ten minutes. Give me just ten minutes for me to tell them that all of this sand dune, and sky, and sea, and the wonder of the world is all there to be enjoyed and be delighted in because God keeps breathing. It isn't an accident. It can't be taken for granted. It ought not to be presumed upon. We don't need to retreat to the temple to feel God's breath! If only we are aware, in that moment, that all that surrounds us is enlivened by God! A moment of awareness, that's what prayer is. A moment of attention, that's what prayer is. Attention and awareness to the breathing of God in a jonquil, in a tulip, in the forsythia, in sand, in sky, in food and friends. It should cause us to wonder and worship because the breath of God is the life of the world. Rather than living out in the world by my wits as best I can and sneaking into church on the weekend to be refueled, I ought to come here to this sanctuary to do sacred things, in sacred space, in order to go out and to see that all of space, and all of life and all of its lusty delight is the gift of God who keeps breathing, and breathing, energizing, vitalizing, enlivening us to be fully human, all to the glory of God. Isn't that wonderful? © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/640a377c649abf2ce6f0b5604e5e2fd1.mp3 ee1cc2466376609b228ebb9c2644017a 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 Pentecost Scripture Text Genesis 1:2, Ezekiel 37:5, John 3:8 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-0-19940522 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1994-05-22 Title A name given to the resource The Breath of God - The Life of the World 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> 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 May 22, 1994 entitled "The Breath of God - The Life of the World", on the occasion of Pentecost, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Genesis 1:2, Ezekiel 37:5, John 3:8. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Awareness Panentheism Pentecost Presence of God Sacred Wonder https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a4d08ed47709b920422d603b42a49b2a.mp3 97e2fe9c0ad4ae9393a5c97361b5432d https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ed46a79024a8494fad683cd667526f25.pdf 830f890b2c7f8b0d2fd0c46e451c8958 PDF Text Text The Word: A Means of Grace; Story as Sacrament From the series: The Sacramental Character of the Church Text: Isaiah 55:11; Acts 10:44 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Pentecost IV, July 5, 1992 Transcription of the spoken sermon ...so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth, it shall not return to me empty, but it will accomplish that which I purpose... Isaiah 55:11 While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. Acts 10:44 If you have any important summer events for which the weather is important, don’t talk to me. This is a day of the Rhem Reunion - thundershowers predicted at noon - just when the grill is getting really hot. (Laughter) But, it’s a pleasure to have so many of my family here: aunts, sisters, brothers-in law, nieces and nephews, and the lower generation. Nancy and I are especially grateful this morning that we have six kids in church. Pretty good, huh? Good introduction for a sermon on population control, of course. But we didn’t know what the other was doing for a long time - I mean, before we met. (Laughter) I had better get to preaching. As a matter of fact the sermon does have something to do with population control. Population control is really only one dimension, but the planet earth is in trouble. There is a crisis in the world, a crisis in the universe. And it is being recognized on many fronts. Last month there was a world-class summit, the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro where the leaders of the nations gathered to discuss the whole situation of the environment, of the state of the planet. The United Nations sponsored the conference on the environment and development but that’s where the rub is. The resources of the earth are being used up and consumed at a greater rate than the earth in its own natural cycle can replenish itself. The human race has done great damage to ecology from time immemorial, but it was rather localized and the population was not that great. But today, for the first time, population being what it is and technology being what it is, we are as a matter of fact outstripping the resources of the earth. There is a crisis on planet Earth and it is serious, and it is a matter of universal human concern, and it is a matter of concern to biblical Christians, to biblical people. © Grand Valley State University   �The Word, a Means of Grace… Richard A. Rhem Page 2   Now sometimes issues like this tend to become trendy and band wagon issues, and there are those nuts on the lunatic fringe that tend to turn us off and to offend us. Apart from them, of course, our attention would not be grasped. But sometimes they also enable us to write the issue off and to say, “Well, that’s just a matter of a few nuts, and it doesn’t really concern us.” Well, I want to say this morning that it does really concern us, and the situation is serious. The conference was held in Rio de Janeiro last month, but last year in Cambera, Australia at an assembly of the World Council of Churches there was a major focus on justice and peace, and the integrity of creation. The integrity of creation has become one of those catch words in our day as the Church has come to recognize the serious dimensions of the environmental crisis. Justice and peace, and the integrity of creation are major foci of the Church’s thinking and reflection today, and well they should be. I suppose that there are some of you here who really get turned off with all of the claptrap about the environment as though it were a non-issue. You would probably like to spit at a spotted owl, or what was that silly fish that held up the building of the dam in Tennessee? Maybe it is still held up, I don’t know. Satire can make a laughing matter of such environmental concerns. However, we cannot simply sidestep this issue. I felt that our own president lost an opportunity for world leadership in Rio at that conference. I heard his rationale for our foot-dragging. He said, “After all, the United States has done more than any other nation on these issues.” True. He said, “The United States has spent more billions of dollars than any other nation on these issues.” True. And he said, “We don’t have a lot of money for these issues.” True, I suppose. But, let’s be honest folks. This perspective was given to me by my friend Ernie Campbell, who is a fellow pastor and writes some notes quarterly, who said, “You know it is rather difficult to make an impact on the world when you are the powerful and the affluent of the world.” For example, he says, it is a shame that the rain forests in the Amazon basin are being decimated. But how impressive is it when we sent our lecture down to the Amazon basis from our four, five and six bedroom houses with three, four and six bathrooms all nicely sided with cedar shakes? And how much will we be believed as we lecture the world on the virtues of riding a bicycle as we step out of our Mercedes or Chevrolets, as the case may be? And, will we really be heard when we suggest to the peoples of the world that it is necessary to conserve energy when we sit here in air conditioned comfort in the coolest church in town? (Laughter) You see it is awfully easy to be self righteous. As Ernie Campbell said, “It reminds me of the time when I was a kid and we used to play King on a Hill,” and he said, “when I got to the top after clawing my way up I wanted to say ‘Stop the game. Freeze the position. Now that we are at the top, let’s everybody act responsibly.’” I hope there will be some technological breakthrough, some way in which we will expand the resources of the earth beyond our fondest dream. And that’s really © Grand Valley State University �The Word, a Means of Grace… Richard A. Rhem Page 3   what has been the story of human development. They were up there in space long enough recently to maybe have brought back a crop of tomatoes. Who knows what potential there is in the cosmos for the meeting of human needs to make life sustainable on the planet? But in the meantime, the crisis is there. It is our responsibility and it is up to us either to pay the tab or to wind down our consumption and simplify our lives. It simply won’t wash to lecture the Third World on environmental preservation and conservation while we go blithely on our way, the greatest consumers that the world has ever known. But you know, the issue is greater than a matter of human survival. The real issue is that we have not valued and cared for God’s good creation. God created the heavens and the earth, and God looked it all over and God said, “It’s very good.” And God rested on the seventh day and luxuriated in the wonder of the worlds to which he had given birth. Creation is God’s and we are called to value it, and to bless it, and to bless the Creator in the blessing of creation. It is not ours. It is really a relatively recent thing that the human race has raped the earth and treated it as an object at our disposal. You can trace it back to the 18th century, to the Enlightenment. The same kind of philosophical thinking and experimentation that has led to such fruitfulness in the natural sciences has also led us to view the whole planet and the cosmic reality as that over against which we can have dominion, and we can manipulate, and we can use and abuse, that we can exploit for our own purposes. It is almost as though we have in mind that the earth and the plants, and the animals, and the sky and the sea exist for us, for the satisfaction of our wants and our desires, for our pleasure. We have failed to see our connectedness with all that is alive. We have failed to see ourselves in the continuum of creative reality and through the Industrial Revolution, in our consumer society, we have raped the earth; we have abused creation; we are outstripping the resources presently available to us. And it is high time that we question the whole modern approach to the world that has made it a “thing” to be used. It is high time that we get off our highhorse, anthropocentrically looking at reality as though it is there for us and failing to see ourselves as a part of the linkage of life. We have to get back to a biblical understanding of things. God created the heavens and the earth, and God blessed creation. Maybe you say to me, “But doesn’t it say in Genesis 1, at the end of the chapter, that God said, “Be fruitful and multiply and have dominion over creation?” It does. And there may have been a day when that was God’s word, but that word dominion dare not be used today because that word dominion, which could mean to rule as a servant, has come to mean to dominate and to have dominion over, and to exploit. The dominion model won’t work today. Most who look at these things and who study these things biblically have moved to a stewardship model. God has made us stewards of the earth. We are the trustees of creation. We are called to preserve, to conserve, to care for the created order. © Grand Valley State University �The Word, a Means of Grace… Richard A. Rhem Page 4   But there are some who are saying we need to go even farther than that, that stewardship, although it calls to mind human dignity and the agency of the human person in the whole creation of things and their operation and accords a certain dignity to the human person created in the image of the person of God; nonetheless, stewardship in our day, in the light of the crisis, even gives us still too much of that over-againstness. It is being suggested by some today – and it comes out of a rich, ancient Christian church heritage in the Eastern tradition – it is being suggested today that we think in terms, not of dominion, not even of stewardship, but of a sacramental model. That we begin to see creation as that stuff of reality that becomes for us alive with God, that creation becomes the material tangibly that conveys to us the knowledge of God and the grace of God, that we see the whole of creation as alive with the life of God. So that, just as bread and cup and water have become vehicles of grace, tangible material things, outward signs of inward and spiritual reality, so we begin to look at our world that way. A sacramental model of reality would see the world as a pointer to the Creator and all of creation, drawing forth from us praise and doxology. That we develop “Epiphany Eyes” in order to see through created reality and to recognize as the Psalmist said, “That all life is alive with the breath of God.” Apart from the breath of God there is no life. “You breathe and give them life,” he says. And so the whole created order needs to be recognized more and more as alive with divinity. I love to sit on the bluff and listen to the surf. When it is a gentle surf, the constant lapping of the waves in rhythmic regularity reminds me of a cosmic breathing. Breathing in and breathing out. Breath, spirit, the cosmos pulsating with the life that is the life of God and, therefore, the whole of created reality, a pointer to the creator, drawing forth worship and praise. How will we ever be able to develop such a sense? Is it not by observing Sabbath? Is it not by heeding the biblical word, the call to observe Sabbath in the Old Testament where the law, (and incidentally we speak of the Ten Commandments or the Law, but the better word is the Torah, which meant to the Hebrew a way of life), the way of life in Exodus 20, and the way of life in Deuteronomy 5 both called Israel, both call us, to observe Sabbath. But in the case of Deuteronomy it was to observe Sabbath to remember the redemption from Egypt. In Exodus 20 the call to remember Sabbath is to remember creation, for the writer says, “Six days God created and rested on the seventh day.” Israel was called in that rhythm of worship and work: life and liturgy - to remember in ever reoccurring cycles that all of reality was a gift of God through the observance of Sabbath. Sabbath means rest, and that to which God called God’s people was to cease, to stop, to look, to listen. That to which God called God’s people was simply to let go, to take one’s hands off the controls. Simply to be. Now when I get home, I am glad that I will be surrounded by about fifty strong family, otherwise Nancy would take me aside and lecture me severely and say, “Preacher, heal yourself.” Being a Dutch Calvinist who grew up believing that © Grand Valley State University �The Word, a Means of Grace… Richard A. Rhem Page 5   salvation was through suffering and one’s labor, it is very hard for me to cease from my labor. Sabbath calls us to stop. There is that in us which struggles and strives and seeks to achieve. There is that indispensability complex that forgets that the world will get on jolly well with us or without us. There is that in us that gives ourselves far too much credit and too much responsibility for the ongoing movement of things. God said to Israel, “Stop. Look. Listen. And in your pause let me whisper to you that it is I that keeps the planets in orbit, and the fields green, and the rivers flowing, and the rain falling. It is I, in that greater grace of life that embraces you, that sustains you and keeps you in existence.” Sabbath. Stop. Look. Listen. Luxuriate - after the example of God. Why did God rest after the sixth day? Was God exhausted? I don’t really think so. Was God bored? Probably not. Did God need refueling in order to go back to work the next day? Hardly so. Why did God stop? Did not God stop simply to delight in that which God made? And is not to observe Sabbath an invitation to delight in the wonder of the world? To take a moment to revel in joy at birds and bees, and creepy crawly things, turtles and rosebuds, and starry nights and a fresh breeze that wafts across one on a summer’s eve. Sunrise and sunset, the succession of the seasons: Springtime and harvest, Summer and winter. Sun, moon and stars in their courses above. All of it if we just stop - and look - and listen. Inviting us to move beyond it all to the one who upholds it all by the word of power, whose grace embraces all, who calls us to delight. Matthew Fox, the Catholic theologian in trouble with the Vatican, suggests that the Church has been so hung up with original sin that it has forgotten original blessing. Before Genesis 3 is Genesis 2, the creation of a garden named Eden, which means delight. And the whole covenant of grace and the whole salvation thing is simply an emergency means to the restoration and realization of God’s grander scheme of the creation of the heavens and the earth. The breath that you breath, that pulsates within you, is the same life that is in the rose and its source is the same good and gracious God. Oh, I remember Sundays as a kid - they were to be endured. As someone has said, “Ugly Sundays.” Another part of my Dutch Reformed pietism, Sundays were marked by all the things I couldn’t do. That oppressive legalism has created a lot of dysfunction in our lives. It has taken me a long time to get over my rebellion against that suppression of delight to the point at which I realize that the invitation to observe Sabbath is an invitation of the good and gracious God who formed my well being and says “Delight. Just sit there and delight. Don’t do anything. Simply be and let grace wash over you.” The writer to the Hebrews says, “Today if you hear my voice, harden not your heart. Enter into the joy of the delight of God’s wonderful world.” Thank God. © 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 Pentecost IV Series The Sacramental Character of the Church Scripture Text Isaiah 55:11, Acts 10:44 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-0-19920705 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-07-05 Title A name given to the resource The Word: A Means of Grace: Story as Sacrament 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> 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 5, 1992 entitled "The Word: A Means of Grace: Story as Sacrament", as part of the series "The Sacramental Character of the Church", on the occasion of Pentecost IV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 55:11, Acts 10:44. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Creation Panentheism Sacramental Model of Reality Wonder https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/48c9b87092b10fb0b98a3d392794e487.mp3 a7b777306adc129b2acf796f5e9e20b3 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/61d9566a92d26dcdda169fd526207471.pdf a3e149ca05cd1d65c16576bff78decac PDF Text Text Living With Wonder From the sermon series: Lifelines Text: Isaiah 6: 1 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Epiphany IV, February 3, 1985 Transcription of the spoken sermon …I saw the Lord…high and exalted. Isaiah 6: 1 Viewing the Robert Kennedy story on television this past week I was reminded of the tumultuous events of the last quarter century. What drama and high tension have punctuated the flow of the years of recent decades. I remember vividly where I was the day John F. Kennedy was shot. Seeing familiar scenes flashed on the TV screen again this past week still sent a chill through me. The vast majority of our days flow without special significance and they are lost in the mists of the past. But not all days, not all events. Some days, some moments change us forever; they leave their imprint upon us and we can never be the same again. Isaiah knew that. He shared such an experience. Isaiah wrote, In the year of King Uzziah's death, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted ... It was not necessarily the occasion of the King's death, although that is possible. Perhaps it was the annual enthronement festival. At least it was a great worship celebration, a state occasion in the setting of the Temple with, no doubt, the pageantry of priesthood, altar and incense. Whatever was the particular focus of the worship that day, for Isaiah, it was a moment of revelation, of the breaking through of the hidden majesty of God, the penetration of his whole being with the vision of the glory of God and he was transformed; his whole life was grasped, shaped and given its destiny. In chaste and restrained fashion he describes the vision: © Grand Valley State University   �Living With Wonder Richard A. Rhem   Page 2   ...the skirt of his robe filled the temple. About him were attendant seraphim ... calling to one another, ‘Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory.’ As he was transfixed by the scene, The threshold shook to its foundations, while the house was filled with smoke. Such was the vision of the glory of God. In reaction to the vision of God's holiness, the prophet was overwhelmed and sensed his unworthiness, his uncleanness in the presence of the Lord and he cried, Woe is me! I am lost. He knew immediately that there was a great gulf between the creature and the Creator. Such a vision would be his undoing, for he cries, I have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts. But the gracious God revealed Himself not to destroy His servant; rather the ministering seraph took a glowing coal from off the altar and touched his lips, signifying his cleansing and the removal of his sins. Then it was that he heard the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? Who will go for me?" To which Isaiah answered, "Here am I; send me." And the word of the Lord was, "Go and tell..." And Isaiah became one of the greatest of the Hebrew prophets, speaking the word of God to the People of God. This passage is obviously about the making of a prophet, about the vision of God and the prophetic call. In this message, however, I want to use the passage for another purpose, which, although not its primary teaching, is yet certainly a valid use. Let us consider the experience recorded here as an instance of the encounter with God in the celebration of worship. Worship is our focus. And even though Isaiah's experience was very personal, as all moments of divine revelation must be, yet its occasion was the corporate worship of God's people. It is corporate worship about which I invite you to think with me. Corporate worship is a lifeline; it provides the occasion in which Eternity breaks into our time, heaven touches earth, God reveals His glory, Grace and forgiveness are realized, the call of God is heard, and our response is offered. © Grand Valley State University �Living With Wonder Richard A. Rhem   Page 3   Worship provides the setting in which we are lifted out of ourselves, beyond the limits of the ordinary, in which we have the experience of transcendence and we are enabled to live with wonder. Living with wonder — That is the enrichment that worship affords. Moving from the experience of worship into the ordinary and the mundane to pick up our duties and exercise our vocations, all is transformed. A glow radiates over all of life. We move through the world as through a magnificent vaulted cathedral, conscious of the vertical dimension of life by which the horizontal plane of our lives has been intersected and transformed. Archbishop William Temple wrote: To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God; to feed the mind with the truth of God; to purge the imagination by the beauty of God; to open the heart to the love of God; to devote the will to the purpose of God. Those statements seem to flow directly from the experience Isaiah recorded for us. Worship is a lifeline because it is the highest action of the human person whereby true humanity is realized through the vision, grace and call of God. Worship is a spiritual discipline. It is means by which we are shaped into the persons God has called us to be. That shaping, that forming of persons, of a people, is accomplished most notably through the experience of corporate worship. In this message I recommend to you the great importance and value of regular corporate worship. I do so not to make it a legalistic requirement, the socalled "Sunday obligation." I do so because I believe the regular, corporate worship of the people of God gives structure and rhythm to life. I recommend regular, corporate worship to you as a spiritual discipline, indeed, a lifeline, because I believe it is so vitally important to have a regular weekly appointment in which you can be unlocked from the world's grip, freed from the grip of value systems and ideologies that would mold you into a sub-human existence, lifted above the economic struggle for survival, the competitive struggle that creates tension with values of mercy and compassion, the perils of a consumer culture that pummels you with eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die – like a dog, a culture that would convince us that this is all there is. No people can know spiritual formation, the shaping of life and value by the Word of God without a regular appointment with the occasion and the setting in which our lives may be encountered, confronted, judged, graced, healed and sent forth again to be the people of God in the world. Living with wonder. © Grand Valley State University �Living With Wonder Richard A. Rhem   Page 4   That could be a definition of being human. It speaks of living with the awareness of God, with the awareness that there is something more, a transcendent dimension; with a sense of grace that overcomes brokenness and failure; with a sense of vocation, calling, that gives life meaning and purpose. A sense of wonder. Living with wonder would enable others to sense through our language and behavior a life lived in openness and awesomeness before the world of things and peoples. As a friend and colleague described it, In an over-rational and over-explained world our overweened arrogance of knowledge teaches us that wonder is a temporary state of curiosity caused by an ignorance of adequate explanation. To realize that this universe, the one in outer space as well as inner space, holds mystery beyond imagination. Dag Hammarskjold was a celebrant of that mystery. He said in his diary, “God does not die on the day we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder the source of which is beyond all reason. (Howard Moody) Isaiah's life was transformed in that moment of vision which occurred in the context of corporate worship. Every time we gather together here we place ourselves in the posture and setting where lightning may strike. Reflect with me about the act of corporate worship. Obviously one could bring a whole series of messages on the subject of the corporate worship of God and I cannot begin to cover the subject in this one message. My focus is very limited and specific: I am setting before you the great importance of a regular corporate worship as a spiritual discipline by which your life might be characterized by a sense of wonder. In choosing this narrow focus I create for myself inevitable problems. First, I can point to the vision of God which transforms human existence but I cannot guarantee that that will "happen" every time we gather for everyone, or even for anyone. God reveals Himself. God gives Himself. God is sovereign in His own unveiling. The same thing stated negatively - God cannot be manipulated by liturgical acts, incantations, sacramental actions. God is God. He is not at our disposal. He is not a genie to be "rubbed," moved by a magical formula or coerced into action by ritual of priest or people. I face a second problem: To speak of the vision of God is not the same thing as experiencing the vision of God. To speak about worship is not worship. Speaking as I am now, tied to a biblical text over which we have prayed and to which we © Grand Valley State University �Living With Wonder Richard A. Rhem   Page 5   give attention is an essential action of corporate worship. In speaking as I am, I speak out of prayerful preparation with confidence in the promise of God to speak through my words. Yet here, too, God remains God; God remains free. In our Reformation tradition we have highly valued the sermon. We speak of the Word made flesh, the Word written and the Word preached and we call them all the Word of God. Nonetheless, apart from the present action of the Living God, the Word written remains a dead letter and the Word preached but human stammering. In other words, in corporate worship all of the forms, liturgical acts, gestures, sacramental actions are human structures that provide the framework in which the "happening" may occur. To use an analogy, the structure of the service and the actions in which we engage are like the train tracks. Whether the locomotive moves down those tracks is not in our power to determine. There is a third problem I face related to the one just mentioned: I can only describe that to which I refer rationally; yet what I am seeking to describe is beyond reason. Obviously as I speak to you I must attempt to be clear, to make sense. I work hard to make the message understandable. It must therefore be reasonable, able to be grasped by the reason. It must be logical so that its meaning can be grasped. But when I speak of the vision of God, of the inbreaking of God, of a “lightning strike” of revelation, I am speaking of an action of God, the experience of which is ineffable. The definition of “ineffable” is that which “cannot be expressed in words; unspeakable, unutterable, inexpressible.” Do you sense my dilemma? I am speaking about what is unspeakable, attempting to express what is inexpressible, trying to utter the unutterable. The best I can do is to point you by means of speech in logical thought, to a Reality which can only be experienced. In a classic study of the experience of God, which is beyond reason's ability to grasp or describe, The Idea of the Holy, by Rudolf Otto, the author states: This book, recognizing the profound import of the non-rational for metaphysics, makes a serious attempt to analyze all the more exactly the feeling which remains where the concept fails, and to introduce a terminology which is not any the more loose or indeterminate for having necessarily to make use of symbols. (Forward) To speak thus of "feeling" certainly is not to reduce religious experience to a purely human phenomenon. The translator of Otto's book writes in the preface: It is possible to devote our attention to religious “experience” in a sense which would almost leave out of account the object of which it is an experience. We may so concentrate upon the “feeling,” that the objective © Grand Valley State University �Living With Wonder Richard A. Rhem   Page 6   cause of it may fall altogether out of sight. Is religious experience essentially just a state of mind, a feeling, whether of oppression or of exaltation, a sense of “sin” or an assurance of “salvation;” or is it not rather our apprehension of “the divine,” meaning by that term at least something independent of the mental and emotional state of the moment of experience? (p. XIIf.) In reference to Otto's purpose, the translator affirms: He is concerned to examine the nature of those elements in the religious experience which lie outside and beyond the scope of reason - which cannot be comprised in ethical or "rational" conceptions, but which none the less as "feelings" cannot be disregarded by an honest inquiry. And his argument shows in the first place that in all the forms which religious experience may assume and has assumed, so far as these can be reinterpreted ... certain basic "moments" of feeling ... are always found to recur. Speaking directly to our point, he continues, Here we are shown that the religious "feeling" properly involves a unique kind of apprehension, sui generis, not to be reduced to ordinary intellectual concepts, and yet - and this is the paradox of the matter - itself a genuine "knowing," the growing awareness of an object, deity. ... a response, so to speak, to the impact upon the human mind of the divine," as it reveals itself whether obscurely or clearly. The primary fact is the confrontation of the human mind with a Something, whose character is only gradually learned, but which is from the first felt as a transcendent present. "The beyond," even where it is also felt as "the within" man. (XIV F.) When I speak of the problem of expressing what is essentially inexpressible, I am speaking of what Otto describes in his study. The translator states it thus: The "feeling" element in religion involves, then, a genuine "knowing" or awareness, though, in contrast to that knowing which can express itself in concepts, it may be termed "non-rational." The feeling of the "uncanny," the thrill of awe or reverence, the sense of dependence, of impotence, or of nothingness, or again the feelings of religious rapture and exaltation, - all these are attempted designations of the mental states which attend the awareness of certain aspects of "the divine." (p. XV) It is to the "feeling" that remains when the concept fails that I point you. I can only point to the experience. Isaiah described such an experience in the imagery of the Temple service. There in the midst of some festival celebration God broke through to him. © Grand Valley State University �Living With Wonder Richard A. Rhem   Page 7   It was a life-transforming moment. For the rest of his days he was shaped by that vision. Few of us will ever have such a vivid, dramatic encounter. But it is the contention of this message that it is in the setting of corporate worship that we put ourselves in the way of such an experience. It is here in the sanctuary that we are most likely to be encountered and that we have the greatest potential for apprehending the divine vision. If we would live with wonder then we can do no better than place ourselves in the presence of God with spirits open to the lightning strike of His glory. Rudolf Otto coins the word "numinous" to describe ... The specific non-rational religious apprehension and its object, at all its levels, from the first dim stirrings where religion can hardly yet be said to exist to the most exalted forms of spiritual experience. (p. XVII) But he maintains that we cannot dispense with the knowledge that comes through human reason and moral experience. He insists, writes Harvey, that for him the supremacy of Christianity over all other religions lies in the unique degree in which ... in Christianity the numinous elements, such as the sense of awe and reverence before the infinite mystery and infinite majesty, are yet combined and made one with the rational elements, assuring us that God is an all-righteous, all-provident, and all-loving Person, with whom a man may enter into the most intimate relationship. (p. XVII) Thus it is Otto's contention that religion ... is a real knowledge of, and real personal communion with, a Being Whose nature is yet above knowledge and transcends personality. This apparent contradiction cannot be evaded by concentrating upon an aspect of it and ignoring the other, without doing a real injury to religion. It must be faced directly in the experience of worship, and there, and only there, it ceases to be a contradiction and becomes a harmony. (p. XVII) God is the object of worship. We attempt to speak of God. The description of God is spoken of as the attributes of God and Otto writes, ... all these attributes constitute clear and definite concepts; they can be grasped by the intellect; they can be analyzed by thought; they even admit of definition. An object that can thus be thought conceptually may be termed rational. The nature of deity described in the attributes above mentioned is, then, a rational nature; and a religion which recognizes and maintains such a view of God is in so far a "rational" religion. Only on such terms is Belief possible in contrast to mere feeling. (p. 1) © Grand Valley State University �Living With Wonder Richard A. Rhem   Page 8   However, too much religion, including our Reformed tradition, has stopped there. As Otto says, ... so far are these "rational" attributes from exhausting the idea of deity that they in fact imply a non-rational or supra-rational Subject of which they are predicates. ... That is to say, we have to predicate them of a subject which they qualify, but which in its deeper essence is not, nor indeed can be, comprehended in them; which rather requires comprehension of a quite different kind. (p. 2) Otto points to the failing of Christian orthodoxy in that it found in the construction of dogma and doctrine no way to do justice to the non-rational aspect of its subject. So far from keeping the non-rational element in religion alive in the heart of the religious experience, orthodox Christianity manifestly failed to recognize its value, and by this failure gave to the idea of God the one-sidedly intellectualistic and rationalistic interpretation. (p. 3) So much for the problems I encounter as I point you to the discipline of corporate worship as the place and occasion for an encounter with the living God from which one derives the sense of wonder that transforms all of life. Recognizing that I can point to the vision of God but cannot guarantee that to speak about worship is not the same as worshiping, and that I must describe the worship experience rationally, but that it is an experience beyond reason, let me nonetheless say something about the experience of corporate worship. The first statement I would make is that our worship is response to God. He has taken the initiative; He has woven the truth of His being into the fabric of our being and no matter how much we deface His image in our souls, yet we can never fully divest ourselves of the trace of His imprint. This is where we part company with those following the German philosopher/theologian Feuerbach, such as Marx and Freud and company, who insist that religion is of human creation, prompted by human need and thus must be understood not as response to the revelation of God, but as a purely human action fashioning God out of human projections. We speak of the "feeling" that remains when the concept fails; we speak of that which shatters our reason and breaks the bounds of our rational thinking, but we insist that is a reflex action a response, a re-action. God reveals Himself; our worship is response. Thus worship is something the People do Godward; it is human action offered to God Who is the object of our worship. Therefore, while worship should be edifying and instructive, edification and instruction are not in themselves worship. Therefore, worship ought never to be boring, but neither is its purpose entertainment, simply holding the people's attention. Worship is the offering of praise and adoration to God Who has made © Grand Valley State University �Living With Wonder Richard A. Rhem   Page 9   Himself known to us so that we cannot but respond by acknowledging His worthship. Secondly, the corporate worship of God occurs in a carefully choreographed, dramatic pageant. Such a statement will certainly not be accepted by all without objection. Let me quickly admit that there is a large variety of acceptable modes of worship. Where God's people gather, God's truth is declared and God's Spirit is present, there the worship of God occurs. Let me acknowledge further that various modes and media of worship touch different persons. There must be no stereotyping of personality type that alone can worship truly, and worship depends not on one's theological understanding, liturgical training or aesthetic sense. Granting that I must insist that the worship of God demands of us the highest attention, the most strenuous care for detail, and the utilization of our best gifts all devoted to excellence of form and content in the experience of worship, I have acknowledged the legitimacy of variety in modes of worship: the silence of the plain Quaker Meeting House, the fervor of the Charismatic Pentecostals, the solemn dignity of Evensong in the setting of Cathedral magnificence. Yet, let me put in a word for the mode of worship created in this place week by week. I spoke of a carefully choreographed, dramatic pageant. The word pageant has several definitions. The most obvious is "a scene acted on a stage." Another definition is "a spectacle arranged for effect." And "pageantry" is defined as "splendid display; pomp." "Pomp" is defined as "splendid display or celebration; splendour, magnificence. " In the definitions of pageantry and pomp there is also another meaning of empty display or ostentation. That is interesting because it indicates what a fine line there is between truth and its counterfeit. That is why religious ritual and ceremony have so frequently through the centuries become empty, lifeless display without substance, without soul. Hollow forms have been the curse of the Church, foisted on her by ministers and priests without passion and faith, by religious leaders grown callous through familiarity with holy things. Acknowledging all of that, I must still contend that the celebration of worship of the People of God at its highest and best is the full-spectrum pageant in which is utilized the arts which appeal to the aesthetic sense: music that moves one in the depths; movement that expresses what leaves the tongue dumb; color and symbol creating a feast for the eye; the word of truth that engages the mind and triggers the emotion that triggers the will; candles and crosses and colors of vestments; incense and smoke rising heavenward; © Grand Valley State University �Living With Wonder Richard A. Rhem   Page10   the roar of the mighty organ; the chill of an obligate; the simplicity of a gesture - breaking bread, pouring wine, making the sign of the cross on a forehead with baptismal water; The word of assurance -"Your sins are forgiven; go in peace." Choir and congregation in one mighty voice, singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Alleluia! Go back to the definition of pageant: "A spectacle arranged for effect." That is it, you see: arranged for effect. What effect? The vision of God, surely! The vision of God, high and lifted up! I cannot in calm rational discourse affect the vision; I can only point to it, speak about it, draw out the implications of it. Sweet reason does not remove the veil from the face of the living God. Reason reaches its limit; rational discourse comes to its bounding and still beyond reigns the living God. He must come to us. He must penetrate our space and time. But if I can choreograph a pageant full of sound and sight which engages not only the head but the heart and soul, then at least I have set the stage - created the setting, arranged the spectacle where the effect might, if God be gracious, happen. In such a setting I just may catch a glimpse of His glory; there may well be a moment in which there is a rift in the sky and in that moment my life may well be transformed, become radiant with light and full of glory. Then I will have come to know God Who is beyond knowledge, and to possess a joy which is unspeakable. Then my life will be full of wonder, and I will walk beneath the blue sky of the heavens as though it were a great vaulted cathedral and my every day will be vibrant with praise. Finally, in such an experience of worship all of life is lifted into the presence of God, cleansed and claimed and sent forth to serve. It is here in worship that one is most likely to hear the Voice, "Who will go for me?" "Whom shall I send?" It is while one is lost in wonder, love and praise that one is most open to respond, "Here am I, send me." That, of course, is why this service always culminates in the offering. Where a People has caught a glimpse of the glory of God and heard the call of God, response is inevitable. Some action is called for, some gesture must be made. That is why the organ builds to mighty crescendo, the people rise, the gifts come forward and together we sing, "Praise God from Whom all blessings flow." © Grand Valley State University �Living With Wonder Richard A. Rhem   Page11   How could we remain seated, passive, uninvolved? Such is the wonder of worship. From such worship flows life full of wonder. Living with wonder is living with heaven on earth. Reference: Rudolf Otto. The Idea of the Holy. Translated by John W. Harvey. Oxford University Press, 1958. © 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 III Series LifeLines Scripture Text Isaiah 6:1 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI References Rudolf Otto. The Idea of the Holy. Translated by John W. Harvey, 1958. 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-0-19850203 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1985-02-03 Title A name given to the resource Living with Wonder 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> 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 February 3, 1985 entitled "Living with Wonder", as part of the series "LifeLines", on the occasion of Epiphany III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 6:1. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Epiphany Presence Prophet Isaiah Sacred Transcendence Wonder Worship