God's Home Building

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"God's Home Building"

1 Corinthians 3:1-9
February 13, 2011

And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as
people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were
not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, for you are still of the flesh.
For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh,
and behaving according to human inclinations? For when one says, “I belong to Paul,”
and another, “I belong to Apollos,” are you not merely human?
What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as
the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So
neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives
the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and
each will receive wages according to the labor of each. For we are God’s servants,
working together; you are God’s field, God’s building.

I’m in the midst of reading a book by the British author Julian Barnes called Nothing To
Be Frightened Of, which is mediation on mortality, of the end of life, from the
perspective of someone who was an atheist in his youth, but who has now simply
admitted to an honest agnosticism about the existence of God. He writes beautifully,
which always makes reading a deep pleasure, but I was struck by something he wrote
about the moment he and his brother were tasked with disposing of his parent’s
property after their death:

Thirty-five years later, I was faced with the final leavings of my parent’s lives. My
brother and I each wanted a few things; my nieces had their pick; then the house-
cleaner (which is the British equivalent of our American pickers, those who go into an
estate and buy items that might be of value) came in. He was a decent, knowleagable
fellow, who talked to the items as a way of gently preparing the customer for
disappointment, but it turned into a kind of conversation between himself and the object
in his hand. He also recognized that what would soon be haggled over coldly in his
shop was now, here, for the last time, something which had once been chosen, then
lived with, wiped, dusted, polished, repaired, loved. So he found praise where he could:
“This is nice—not valuable, but nice”; or “Victorian moulded glass—this is getting rarer—
it’s not valuable, but its getting rarer.” Scrupulously polite to these now ownerless
things, he avoided criticism or dislike, preferring either regret or long term hope. Of
some 1920’s Melba glasses (horrible, I thought): “Ten years ago these were very
fashionable; now no one wants them.” Of a basic Heal’s green-and-white checkerboard
plant holder: ”We need to wait another forty years for this.” (34-35)

That passage really struck me and then it reminded me of a time a few weeks ago in
Chicago when I was visiting Douglas, and we passed by an estate sale sign, and
decided, on the spur of the moment, to check it out.   By the time we walked in, which
was in the early afternoon, most of the more valuable things had been bought and
removed, and so this little, small Chicago house was mostly empty of furniture, but still
full of people like us, strangers, picking through the stuff that filled the lives of people
we did not know. And yet, I was struck by the fact that I could glean a few things about
the persons or persons who once lived there—for example, their politics were on full
display, as I saw both Hillary and Bill Clinton’s autobiographies, still for sale on their
bookshelves. Most of their regular household silverware and dishes were for sale, and
lots of odds and ends, that obviously meant something to them, but now would mean
little or nothing to us, these interlopers stomping through their former homes, looking
for bargains out of what remains of their lives here on earth. I kept thinking how ironic it
is that we spend a lifetime acquiring stuff, treasuring it, and protecting it, as Julian
Barnes’ parents did, and in the end, all of it will end being divided up between family,
and the rest will be sold out the front door of our house to complete strangers.
Now, surprisingly, I think, such a mediation on mortality, of the utter vanity of spending
a lifetime accruing what will eventually be given or thrown away, has everything to do
with our scripture today, this text that continues Paul’s own confrontation with the
divisive forces that have rocked the Corinthian church. In the past three weeks, in this
journey with Paul, we’ve noted his focus on getting that church to focus on Christ
himself and not get lost in theological arguments, and we saw how shame around being
considered losers in a culture that prized winners so much had surely been playing out
in their conflict, and then we saw Paul arguing that the Gospel was not something we
could ever logically piece out, that God’s wisdom is not our wisdom, the wisdom of this
world, so why argue about what we cannot fully ever understand—the Good News of
God’s love for all of us, whoever we are.

Today, we have Paul recalling his last visit with this church, telling them that when he
was last with them, he knew they weren’t ready for adult food yet, that they were yet
children in the faith, newbie’s, babies, and so he spiritually fed them baby food. What
he saw was people who were lost in their flesh, and what he means by that is not what
we are probably thinking—he is not using the word “flesh” in any sexual way, he’s not
denouncing their sexual sinfulness. Rather, he is concerned that these Corinthians
were still seeing the world through the prism of worldly values—for example, their
struggle with shame, the shame of following a loser Messiah, a crucified God, in a world
that believed that winners don’t get crucified—indeed, winners do the crucifying and the
losers of this world get crucified, so proclaim these worldly values. These Corinthians
were still believing the assumptions of the world around them, and so Paul fed them
what he could, fed them the appropriate diet for a child starting out a new life. You don’
t feed meat to a 3-month old, and if you do, you’re going to have problems, because
their mouths and stomachs are not quite ready for food meant for older kids and
adults. And it’s important to note here that he’s not dissing them by saying that he fed
them baby food—milk is the right food for the right moment, children’s Sunday School is
right for children, Confirmation classes are right for young adults—but you can’t stay in
children’s Sunday School when you’re 35, you can’t stay in confirmation class forever:
you can’t be fed milk your whole life, he seems be hinting at here.

Now, there is something amazing here in this text that I don’t want us to miss, and that is
the imagery that Paul uses here, a surprisingly radical image for someone who has
rightfully been called to task for his misogyny. Note that Paul says that he fed them
with milk, and what we don’t need to forget here is that in the ancient world there were
not bottles of milk, no store bought cans, no refrigeration.   The image here is of Paul
feeding the Corinthians as an ancient mother would breastfeed her baby, which is the
only way a child would ever get her milk, either through her mother or a wet nurse. In a
world where masculinity was dearly prized, in a world where the Romans often joked
that Christianity was a women’s religion, a weak religion, in their eyes, to find Paul
taking on the role of Mother Paul, as the feminist scholar Beverly Roberts Gaventa has
called him here, is an incredible moment in so many ways. Paul, for all his shadows, his
many faults, he still so often surprises us, I think, and though he is about to shift away
into another metaphor in this text, this odd little moment from Mother Paul ought to be
noted.

Still, the problem here is that these Corinthians, they’ve not gotten beyond childhood,
despite their age and the length of their spiritual journeys, and he cites the very fact
that they have become divided by their allegiances to particular people—Paul or
Apollos, or Cephas, as mentioned in earlier sermons I have preached from this text.
“You hold onto those whom you think are your spiritual parents, clinging on beyond
time needed to wean you,” he says, “thus showing me that you are still thinking and
believing and living as people constricted by the assumptions of this world.” Spiritual
immaturity is shown by our obsession with our spiritual parents, even our spiritual
traditions, no matter how nurturing they may have been for us at the beginning of our
journey with God. There is a story, told in the first person, that really captures that
spiritual immaturity: I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing
on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said, "Stop! Don't do it!" "Why
shouldn't I?" he said. I said, "Well, there's so much to live for!" He said, "Like what?" I
said, "Well, are you religious or atheist?" He said, "Religious." I said, "Me too! Are your
Christian or Buddhist?" He said, "Christian." I said, "Me too! Are you Catholic or
Protestant?" He said, "Protestant." I said, Me too! Are your Episcopalian or Baptist? He
said, "Baptist!" I said, "Wow! Me too! Are your Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church
of the Lord? He said, “Baptist Church of God!" I said, "Me too! Are your Original Baptist
Church of God or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?" He said, "Reformed
Baptist Church of God!" I said, "Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God,
Reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?" He
said, "Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915!" I said, "Die, heretic
scum!" and pushed him off the bridge. Funny as the story may be, the reality is that we
have not matured much since the early church—we too have an awful habit of
fanatically following this one or that one, our own Apollos, our own Pauls, and we show
our immaturity as people of faith when we do as the Corinthians: throw each other off
the bridge for the sake doctrinal and theological purity.

But naming that truth that is not enough for Paul here—he wants us to see the larger
picture, to see the One Paul and Cephas and Apollos are speaking of, the One doing
the actual gardening, the One doing the actual building in this world. Paul moves away
from the image of parenting to make his point to now using gardening as a metaphor,
and actual buildings to show us yet another truth. Yes, Paul and Apollos, and all the
people that have nurtured us, the preachers and the priests, the Sunday school
teachers, the saints along the way, all of them planted something in us, the beginning
of faith, hope, a million different and important things, but it is God who does the
growing, the one who takes the seed of faith we’ve been given and grows it into
something wonderful and wondrous. Whether it is the first saint along the way, our first
Sunday School teacher, or the saint who teaches us something new at the end of life’s
journey, each of them is to be honored, and rewarded, but the One who coaxes the
seed to grow is always God, not the Sunday School teacher, and not the preacher.
Spiritual maturity means that we know the different between the two, that we know the
difference between the gardeners of this world, some of whom are so important, and
the One who is the ultimate source of all gardens, and who makes whatever is planted
inside of us grow deep and tall and wide.

And ultimately, that is what I think Paul is trying to get at here, this idea that God is not
interested in our battles over the rightness and wrongness of our particular theological
ideas, as obsessed as we and the Corinthians are in being right about God. We spend
a lifetime building houses in this world, building ideas and opinions, trying to get it right,
keeping up the appearances, dusting the shelves, washing the dishes, mowing the
lawn, when, in the end, all of our best efforts, our most well-meaning labors, our most
well-thought ideas and beliefs, will end up being sold out the front door to strangers,
and that house we worked a lifetime for, well, someone else is probably going to be
moving into it, probably strangers, and all of that effort will seemingly go down the
drain. Like the Corinthians, we so often get lost in this world, confusing a house for a
home, to use the last few words from our text today. We put a lot of efforts into this life,
into getting it right in this world, whether it be having the right idea, or the right spouse,
the right friends, going to the right church, following the right pastor, voting for the right
politician, when in the end, God is not too concerned with all of our efforts to be right on
this side of eternity, with all of efforts to pretty up the exterior of our houses, our bodies,
our lives. We so often think we are building a home here in this life, when, in actuality,
we are only building houses, temporary spaces, where we house our lives, our loves,
our stuff, and even our ideas and beliefs about God. No, I’m not saying that God doesn’
t care about us in this world, but I do think God cares about what we do and not really
about what we think or believe—the goodness with which we live our lives matters more
to God than our particular understandings about the idea of goodness itself, so to
speak.

So, what does matter to God? Seemingly, according to Paul, it is us that matters to
God, each and every one of us, because we are what God is growing, we are what God
is building. Granted, it’s a mess, this building process, but God is obsessed with
building homes, a home within us, and not simply houses in this world, temporary
spaces that collect the stuff we haul around with us in this world, the stuff that’s
eventually going to be given to family or sold to strangers. What I think Paul is trying to
say to us is that WE are what is God is building in this world, WE are what God is doing
in this world, and all of those things that distract us, those things we think we can stuff
our houses with—money, things, power, respect, intellect, security, winning, being right,
whatever—those things will be gone, and all that will be left will be the home we’ve built
in God, within God, for God.

Now, let me be clear: I’ve always been wary of fellow spiritual travelers that say that we
are simply strangers in a strange land, pilgrims in this world, because it seems to imply
that all that matters is the next world, and this world, this world be damned—and so we
can pollute it, damage it, throw it away, all in God’s name. The reality is that God is
doing God’s home building, not house building, home building, in this world, in our lives,
in our hearts, in our very souls, right here on earth, in this life, so to speak. This world
matters, this life matters, because this is where home begins, this is where God dwells
within us, and where God makes a home within us, and not simply a house, something
that will eventually crumble, lost to the dustbin of history and the neighborhood. All of it
begins here, this HOME building project—we can’t forget that, as the Corinthians did,
who thought that what mattered so much to them, the rightness and wrongness of this
or that idea taught by this or that teacher, must matter as much to God. No, what
mattered to God was not the house they were living in, the idea that they so fervently
squabbled over with their fellow Corinthians, but the home each of them had with God,
right inside of them, deep in their souls, that place within them that God so madly loves,
and is so deeply in the midst of working in. Amen.