I Corinthians 3:10-23
“Building Materials”
February 20, 2011 - Seventh Sunday after Epiphany

         My daughters were absolutely delighted when they discovered two thousand year old toilets still standing in the ruins of ancient Corinth. The builders of the city to which Paul wrote were wise architects who built well. In fact, the remains of the temple of Apollo looming over the other ruins have been visible since antiquity. The whole site is incredibly fascinating because there is enough structure left that one can easily visualize a row of busy shops, the public baths in use, visitors like the apostle Paul coming up the road into the city, and even the platform on which the Roman proconsul sat when Paul was brought before him as we’re told in Acts 18.

         Paul wrote to his friends in the church in Corinth in its heyday. Its buildings, temples, shops and homes, must have been wonderfully impressive. Their stone and marble structures have stood the test of time, so even their toilet seats are still around. One wonders if the best of our buildings and plumbing will manage to last half as long.

         Last week Paul finished with an image of the Christian church as God’s planted field by adding one final phrase to verse 9 that switched channels. He said “For we are God’s co-workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.” Now in verse 10 he wants us to watch that channel, to see the church as a structure being built up by the work of those who labor together with God.

         Verse 10 at first takes up the previous concern that what one Christian worker begins is finished by another. Paul started the church in Corinth, but other people added to it and were continuing what he began. He laid the foundation, he says, as a wise architect. That’s the word, not just builder, but architect.

         As the wise architect, Paul designed and planned the structure of the church to be built upon one and only one foundation, he tells us in verse 11. No matter who else builds on it, “No one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.” A couple minutes ago we sang, “Built on the rock, the Church does stand.” That rock is Jesus. The whole structure is the one the apostles carefully laid down wherever they went. The Church is founded upon Jesus Christ. There’s no other basis, no other reason for being here. Jesus is where it all begins.

         Then in verse 12 Paul reflects on how it is that we build on Christ. He generates an incredible picture of building with gold, silver and costly stones versus using wood, hay or straw. I went to school at Notre Dame and studied under the shadow of a domed building covered with fine gold leaf, but I’ve never seen or heard of any structure actually constructed of precious metals or jewels. It’s not meant to be realistic. It’s a fantastic image to convey the point that spiritual building should use the best materials.

         In verses 13 to 15 Paul talks about the quality of work of those who build in the church being revealed in “the Day,” with a capital “D,” the day when Christ returns and God brings final judgment upon this world and upon our lives. It’s spiritual TTD, as engineers call it, “testing to destruction.” God will put this world and our lives through a trial that will test to destruction. Again, don’t get hung up on the details. Yes, gold would melt in a fire, but Paul means to say that only the finest building materials will survive.

         As I heard these verses growing up, they were always preached as a caution about what you do with your own personal, individual life once you’ve been saved by faith in Jesus. Once you’ve committed your life to Christ, trusted in Him as your Savior, how will you live? Will you build up your soul from that point on with the gold and silver of prayer and Bible study and personal holiness, or will you mar that fine foundation with the hay and stubble of laziness and sin?

         The preachers I heard on this text always held out that promise of reward that Paul mentions in verse 14. If you build your life well, then God will build you an extra-large mansion in heaven was about the gist of it. It was appealing, but as a teenage boy with plenty of weaknesses and temptations, I was always glad to move on to verse 15, which assured me that even if my life wasn’t structured very well, even if all I built, “is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved.” I was happy to hear that I would be saved, no matter how I messed up my life.

         Yet reading that passage now in its whole context I’ve discovered that there was something fundamentally narrow and lacking in that preaching I heard as a youth. In verse 16 Paul carefully identifies the building for which he laid the foundation, the building on which others worked with him. It’s not anyone’s individual Christian life. When Paul asks the Corinthians “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?” he’s using plural pronouns. As the preachers of my boyhood did teach me correctly, this is a Southern “y’all.” This is not about building one’s individual spiritual life. This is about being God’s building together.

         The old film, “Lilies of the Field,” casts Sidney Poitier as Homer Smith, a drifter handyman who stumbles across a little group of German nuns in the Arizona desert. He finds himself first fixing their roof, then being conned by the shrewd mother superior into building them a chapel. He tries to get out of it, but when the nuns’ prayers produce the needed materials, he accepts the challenge.

         Homer takes the project as his own. He won’t let anyone else help. He wants to build the chapel all by himself, a monument to his own hard work. But a group of Mexicans hangs out watching him labor in the sun. Eventually, his friend Juan carries an adobe brick to where he’s laying them. “Take it, or step over it and get another,” he says. Homer picks up the brick and the next thing he knows he is surrounded by helpers.

         There’s still a ways to go for Homer before he learns to work with the help he’s offered. He sits with his arms folded as others take over his chapel building. He sits and lets them go it alone, without his guidance. The results are almost disastrous. The project almost comes to a halt once again.

         Paul warns those who try to destroy God’s temple among us in verse 17. We are to understand that God will deal with such people, because the temple of the church is sacred to Him. And to leave no doubt about what he means, Paul emphasizes, “and you together are that temple.”

         With verse 18 there seems to be a change of subject. Paul goes back to themes from the end of chapter 1 and the beginning of chapter 2, warning those who “think you are wise by the standards of this age.” But Paul is still talking about those who destroy God’s dwelling place among us, who tear down God’s building which is founded on Jesus Christ. He’s talking about the Homer Smiths who never learn that they can’t build the temple of God by themselves, in their own way, trampling over the feelings and gifts of others.

         You see, “the standards of this age,” are still the standards of our age. They are the standards that tell you and me that we are self-sufficient individuals whose aim in life is to discover meaning and purpose and happiness inside our own solitary hearts and minds. It’s the standard that counsels taking care of yourself before anyone else, that advises you to find self-fulfillment rather than consider the needs of others, that urges you to have life your way rather than think about what someone else wants. That’s the individualistic wisdom taught by Stoics and other philosophers of Paul’s time and it’s still the phony “wisdom” being foisted on us from every corner of entertainment and education today.

         The only way out of such false wisdom, says Paul, is to “become ‘fools’ so that you may become wise.” He’s not talking about the anti-intellectualism I heard in the church I grew up in, people telling me not to ask too many questions, not to think too hard, not to go to college lest I lose my faith in the swirl of too much education. No, Paul’s not talking about being deliberately ignorant or uneducated or unreasonable. He’s talking about ditching the false wisdom that teaches you to rely only on yourself, to take care only of yourself, in the end to love nobody but yourself. That self-focused mentality is “the wisdom of this world” that “is foolishness in God’s sight” as verse 19 says.

         So Paul quotes Job 5:13 and Psalm 94:11 in verses 19 and 20 to say again that God will deal with the person who persists in such selfish wisdom, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” and “The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.” May God catch you and me before we go too far down that path of individual, lonely wisdom and find all the plans we made for ourselves are futile.

         That’s why we come back again to the division in Corinth around different leaders. That splitting into factions is the beginning of splitting into solitary individual Christians who try to make it alone. Thinking they are the only right and true believers, they undermine the great temple God is building on the only right and true foundation, which is Jesus Christ. “So, then,” says Paul in verse 21, “no more boasting about human leaders!” Leave that path which leads to separation and division and pull back together to keep building what God wants built.

         The last phrase of verse 21 seems to switch channels again, “All things are yours.” Where did that come from? It came from that same Stoic, individualistic wisdom that Paul wants to counter there in Corinth. The Roman philosopher Seneca, Paul’s contemporary, often quoted the maxim that “all things belong to the wise man.” Popular philosophy today might say, “If you trust in yourself, you can do anything. It’s all yours.”

         So Paul is going to concede the point, “All things are yours.” If you are really wise in God’s wisdom, then it’s all yours, whether it’s human leaders like Paul or Apollos or Peter, or whether it’s the cosmic realities of “life or death or the present or the future—all are yours.” If you are really wise, then yes, everything belongs to you, everything is possible for you. But the catch is finding real wisdom. You don’t find it in yourself or by yourself.

         Homer Smith had to discover that all things became his when he gave up wanting it to be his alone. When he finally let his chapel become a project that others owned along with him, he had all kinds of gifts brought to him. The German nuns stomped adobe mud in their bare feet. Mexican men laid bricks, spread adobe finish, and cut wooden beams. The women made lunch for everyone. People from town brought furniture and a candelabra. And a hard-boiled businessman donated a load of bricks that didn’t fit with the adobe. In a scene that is a cacophony of Spanish, German and English all being spoken at once, Homer discovers how a church is really built, by diverse people putting all their different gifts together so that they belong to everyone. It was all his and it was all theirs.

         The point is not what material you’re going to build with in your own life. That matters. You can make a mess of yourself by constructing your life out of possessions or sex or addictions or entertainment. You don’t want to do that, but the way to avoid it is not to focus on yourself. It’s to get involved in a bigger project. What builds you up and makes you the wise possessor of all things is what you put into the construction of the temple of God.

         What materials will we use to build up each other in God’s building? Will we offer one another the best of our time and talents and resources? Or will we save the gold and silver for our own homes and lives and give each other the wood and the hay that’s left over? That’s what Paul is asking us today. With what sort of building materials will you and I construct this church we are part of here and now?

         This week I heard someone in our congregation say to another member, “Tell her she can call me if she needs anything. I’d like to help.” That’s it. That’s stepping out of the world’s wisdom of looking after ourselves to build up the temple of God in the lives of others in His church. It’s when we build together that everything is really ours.

         Paul has one last word in verse 23. Yes, all things belong to you, he grants the Corinthians. But here’s the deal: “you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.” Our ownership of all the gold and silver or all the hay and straw is ultimately subsumed by the fact that you and I are owned by Jesus. He died and rose again so that we could belong to Him. No matter how much we’ve got, it’s really all His.

         What’s more, Jesus Himself, says Paul, belongs to God. Jesus came to us in submission to the will of the Father. The Son of God who owned the universe gave up His own life, gave Himself back to the Father in love. That’s the model for all our building. That’s the foundation upon which our temple is constructed. You may have it all, but only when you give it up does it really belong to you. May we give up our own lives to build together a holy temple in which we belong to each other by belonging to Jesus, who belongs to God.

         Amen.

Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2011 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj