God is not a problem to be solved. God is a mystery with whom we are to live. God is not an equation to be worked out in mathematical precision; God is personal, with whom we connect.
God is a who, a where, and a when -- acting, living, and doing; and if God is sometimes a what and a why, an issue to be thought through, then that is witness only to our limitations and not to His. God is not a problem to be solved. God is a mystery with whom we are to live.
And so, first thank God. Let the first words out of my mouth this morning be, “Thank God”. For thanking comes before thinking. Experiencing God comes before analyzing God. Doxology comes before theology. First thank God.
That was the apostle Paul’s stance. Here he is, at the outset of this glorious Letter to the Romans, getting ready for a new phase in his ministry. He is an experienced preacher and teacher. He has been on mission in many places. But now, closer to the end of his life than to its beginning, he looks toward a new set of friends and a new locale into which he understands God to be calling. So before he explains himself, before he presumes to instruct the Roman Christians in Theology 101, before he takes on knotty questions about Christian lifestyles or church practices or how to pay the bills – all of which he will eventually get to – before he turns his magnificent mind to the whole range of issues before him – first he thanks God. First he lives into God and only then does he spin out ideas about God. God is not a problem to be solved. God is a mystery with whom we are to live.
Seems like the right place for a brand new interim pastor to begin too. Seems like the right stance for one who is here not simply as a hired hand for twenty minutes of religious talk every Sunday, but who is here as a pastor and preacher profoundly passionate about the Gospel. First I thank God.
Again, why? Because God is not so much a problem to be solved as God is a mystery with whom we have to live. And we begin by living into the moment with this God; we begin by encountering Him, heart to heart and person-to-person. Not merely in sermons and speeches, not simply in following the order of Sunday service, not alone in singing hymns and bowing in prayer – but with an intimate, brash, messy, passionate connection. First thank God. May I break that open with you today?
I
First, thank God for the faith that has been proclaimed here. Thank God for all that you have received from those who have carefully taught and worked, so that today here is a strong church and a sense of shared witness that means something real to you and your community. Paul’s words are worth echoing, “I thank my God … for all of you, for your faith is proclaimed throughout the world.”
Some of you know that I have a connection with this church, from past years. During the period after the pastorate of Robert May, I spent some nine months in 1979 and 1980 preaching here, Sunday morning and Sunday evening, trying to help you move forward. Those were good months for me, making friends, watching you do church – how impressed I was that you carefully prepared people for church membership rather than just blindly putting their names on the church roll!
One thing that I recall vividly – and some of you have heard this story before – is that the search committee brought a candidate to visit the church. This candidate and I had a good conversation about what you needed, but he felt that this was not the right place for him. However, his good friend, the one who had suggested him in the first place, might be interested. And so I got this excited phone call from the Assistant Pastor of Chevy Chase Baptist Church, one Charles Updike: “Joe, I think I want to learn more about this Gaithersburg church. Can I take you to lunch?” Well, in those penurious days, lunch was a Big Mac and fries. We can do better now! But we talked … Charlie’s name went before your committee … and the rest, as they say, is history.
Ah, but what a history! Growth in membership; new buildings and new ethnic congregations; youth work, musical ensembles, missions involvement, on and on and on. You have sent so many sons and daughters into the ministry it has become a standing joke within the Scholarship Committee of our D. C. Baptist Foundation that Gaithersburg is sending everybody in the church to seminary, and you are going to soak up all of our scholarship budget! So when I began to reconnect with you a few days ago, I was not surprised to find that a legacy of influence and ministry and service is known, not just here in this community, but across the region and indeed across the world.
It should make you proud to be part of such a history. It should make you challenged to continue and extend it. And most of all, it should make you thank God, for it is the faithfulness of God Himself that has strengthened those who have labored here. “I thank my God … for all of you, for your faith is proclaimed throughout the world.” Charles Updike would be among the first to say that what has been accomplished here is not so much his doing as it is God’s doing.
Think about it! What a concept! That our mighty God, creator of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible, who flung the very stars into space and who holds the oceans in the hollow of His hand – that same God knows you. That same God gave you life, built your church. That same God endowed you with all that you need in order to find profound joy in Him. Oh, yes, first thank God. First thank God for the legacy of faith proclaimed both here and throughout the world.
II
And more than that, thank God for the mutual enrichment that is available to you in this place. Thank God not only for being present to His church, but thank God for the infinite variety with which He has endowed His creation. Thank God for bringing us together where we can be for one another help and power and enrichment. First thank God, for you and I in this congregation are among the most privileged people on earth. We have the joy of sharing in one another and of offering mutual enrichment.
When Paul looked out across the waters toward the eternal city and imagined who would be there in the church of Rome, he thought of Greeks and barbarians. Greeks and barbarians; now he was not trying to be insulting. He was acknowledging the way people thought of one another in those days. Either you were a cultured Greek or you were a rude barbarian. Either you were sophisticated, educated, qualified and accomplished; or you were just the other people. Just the nobodies, who did not count for much. But listen to Paul: I am debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians. I have learned from all sorts of people. I have learned not to lord it over others because of my race or my nationality or my experience, for I have been enriched beyond measure by God’s creative diversity. Debtor both to Greeks and barbarians.
It remains, in my view, the great shame of American Christianity that, as Dr. King once said, “Sunday morning is still the most segregated hour in America.” Until I came to Washington, I had never worshipped in anything other than an all-white congregation. People who worked together, went to school together, and even to a degree lived in neighborhoods near one another, went their separate ways on Sundays. And there are some incontrovertible historical reasons for that. But God had a pilgrimage in mind for me, as likely for many of you. God intended to enrich us.
In 1976 I was asked to serve as Director of Ministries in Higher Education for the D. C. Baptist Convention. One of the principal tasks I undertook was the organization of a Baptist campus ministry at Howard University. I shall never forget the first time I attended a meeting of the campus ministers of several denominations, all of them African-American. The Methodist chaplain looked me up and down and sideways and said, “All right, now look. The last thing we need is some daishiki-wearing white liberal at this place. You put on your white shirt and your preacher suit and then just be who you are.” Best advice I ever got. Be who you are, under God.
A year or so later this same group of campus ministers was invited to lead a Communion service for a group called the National Committee of Black Churchmen. We had developed a way of sharing the Lord’s Supper that was ecumenical and creative, and this group wanted us to lead them in that kind of experience. We all agreed that we would meet at the convention site on a given morning. Well, that morning I got a phone call, “Joe, don’t come. Don’t go to the convention site. The Communion service is off.” I accepted that and thought no more of it, until the next time we held a campus ministers’ meeting. I very innocently asked why the service had been cancelled, and two or three of my brothers began to look at each other and smile sheepishly. Finally one of them explained: “Well, the National Committee of Black Churchmen just assumed that every chaplain at Howard University was a black man. When we went over there to set up, somehow it was mentioned that one of us was white, and they said, ‘We don’t want him. Leave him at home.’ And we said, ‘If you can’t accept all of us, you don’t get any of us.’” Rather than collude with the status quo of segregation, my African-American brothers refused to participate in it in any way. And when I said, “What, you would do that for me?”, one of them said, “Hey, man, what can I say? We love you.”
Oh, I tell you, I have been enriched in extraordinary ways by the Greek and the barbarian, by the Jew and the Gentile, by the diversity of God’s church. And I thank God that in this room I can see that the Lord of all humanity is bringing together for our growth people across the lines of race and nationality and gender and age and education and financial status, and maybe, dare I say it, sexual orientation and past issues and conditions. Out of all of that, our God is making us one! Oh, thank God, what a gift. First thank God for mutual enrichment.
Only a few days ago my family and I stepped inside a Catholic church in Vienna, just to look at its ornate baroque splendor. But we found that Mass was under way, and the congregation was singing. My German is pretty rusty, but this one I knew right away and joined in heartily, “Heilig, heilig, heilig; heilig ist der Herr.” Holy is the Lord. The holiness of God transcends time and space and language and every other imaginable barrier, and draws us together to worship. First thank God.
III
And most of all today, thank God for the victory that is yours already, though it is not yet complete. Thank God that our Lord is not one who leaves His work unfinished, but who will bring to completion that which He has begun. If you have an ounce of breath in you, thank God that what He has initiated He will not abandon. That is what the empty tomb is all about; that just as in Christ Jesus death is defeated and the victory of faith is assured, so also in you and you and you, as in this one baptized this morning, our God is at work to shape us into something beautiful for the Kingdom. If I did not believe that, I could not have been preaching for nearly a half-century. If I did not believe that, I could not have made it past those days when people I tried to help disappointed me and fell back into old habits. If I did not believe that our God will ultimately be the victor, I would be ashamed to keep on blaring out all these unlikely promises about joy and fulfillment and eternal life.
But, like Paul, and I trust, like you, “I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith.” We are not ashamed of the Gospel. And what we are about here in this church is the proclamation of the good news that life need not be miserable, souls need not be lost, and one day we shall all see the victory of our God. Oh, thank God that He is not one who leaves His work unfinished, but brings to completion what He has begun.
The work of the First Baptist Church of Gaithersburg will go forward. You will not go backward, but forward. You will not go into oblivion, but into glory. The work of this church will continue to be to seek and to save that which is lost. The task will always be, as your motto has it, “Developing Faith for Life.” Brothers and sisters, do not be ashamed of the gospel, or of this receptacle for the Gospel. It is still the place where we shall see the salvation of our God for everyone who has faith. First give thanks for the victory that you shall see.
For we are the children of our mother Sarah, who gave herself to fits of anger and jealousy and allowed herself to be peddled like meat, but who one day found that God had heard her cries and was giving her a child when she thought it was too late. Sarah, says the Scripture, laughed out loud. She gave thanks.
We are the children of our ancestor Jacob, who messed up his life in every way imaginable -- untrustworthy, liar, deceitful, rebellious; but whose night of slumber was interrupted by the rustle of angels’ wings, and who could only utter, “Surely the Lord is in this place … This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” And gave thanks.
We are the followers of Jeremiah, feeling in his very bones the call of God in difficult times; of Isaiah, face to face with God’s claim on his life and yet also with his own imperfections, then feeling the thrice-holy’s searing cleansing. We follow Ezekiel, so caught up in what God was doing that it was as if he were transported beyond space and time to discover that even a valley of dry bones can live again. And all these gave thanks.
And more. Remember Mary, grateful that God had honored her among all women, but announcing in no uncertain terms that this same God would put down the mighty from their seats and would exalt those of low degree. Remember Peter, blundering brash Peter, woefully inadequate, become the prince of the apostles. And remember Paul, our Paul, this magnificent mind, calling himself the chief of sinners and the persecutor of the saints, but now ready for whatever may come. For he is not ashamed of the gospel, which is the very power of God for salvation, and which is the victory of God’s church.
Oh, first thank God. Whatever you think, feel, or fear, first thank God. What a mighty God we serve, what a mighty God we serve; angels bow before Him, heaven and earth adore Him, what a mighty God we serve. The first order of business: thank God. For God is not a problem to be solved. God is a mystery with whom we are to live, in joy.
