Sermons

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Field, Building, Temple
Pentecost Sunday, June 3, 2001
Series on I Corinthians
Pastor Dan Baumgartner

I Corinthians 3:5-18

We’re going to be continuing our sermon series this morning on I Corinthians, Paul’s letter to a young Christian community in the Greek city of Corinth. We’ll be reading several sections from chapter 3.

You know, Anne [when she did the children's sermon] didn’t quite give you the whole story of the red high-top tennis shoes. For years I had thought that Anne would look great in high-top Converse. Anne never quite shared my enthusiasm. But in my immense creativity one Christmas back in Minnesota, I thought it would be a great idea to get BOTH Anne and Dana high-top Converse tennis shoes as a gift. It wasn’t easy finding a suitable color for both of them, but after searching the city and special-ordering through a shoe store, I came up with bright red. Dana took right to hers, and wore them everywhere. Anne, however, remained…less than enthusiastic. She thought, and probably correctly, they weren’t quite “her.”

They remained in the box…first in the closet, then in the basement. Unopened, unworn and difficult to return. They barely made the cut list to come to Seattle with us, avoiding the Salvation Army pick-up list. They became something of a joke between us… “Maybe I should wear the red high-tops.” It became such a joke that I knew if Anne ever did wear them, the end of the world was probably imminent. Imagine my surprise, then, last Pentecost Sunday here…to see this lady walk in with red high-top Cons to church. And then realize it was my wife!

I think it was her way of holding open the expectation of the day…if she could wear red high tops to church…who knows what else might happen? The red shoes have now moved from being a good family joke…to something of a symbol that reminds us that God might do anything. It’s a good reminder on Pentecost.

With the Pentecost story from Acts fresh in our minds this morning…Paul’s letter calls us to reflect on THE CHURCH. I don’t know what you think of when I say “Church.” Maybe you remember being in Sunday School as a child, or going to an all-church retreat. Perhaps you remember people raising their hands in worship, or maybe the smell of incense at a Catholic mass. Perhaps “Church” brings back confusing thoughts, or was always something mysterious you never quite understood. Maybe you think of a location. Or a building. Or a particular tradition. Maybe you think of an institution. To each of those things, I can almost hear Paul saying, “Well…hmm…yes, I guess I can see that…but it’s more. It’s much more.”

I’m preaching to myself a little bit here. I’m the one who is still occasionally surprised to find myself pastoring a church. I’m the one who always had a bit of a “love-hate” relationship with the church. I’m the one who had times where I thought I could be closest to God by being alone on a beach, or in the mountains. But the church is a funny thing. The church is always more than we think it is because GOD is always something more than we think He is…and the church was God’s idea! He solidified it at Pentecost, sending His Holy Spirit upon a bunch of bewildered followers of Jesus wondering what they should do with the rest of their lives.

When the Apostle Paul talks about the church…he always speaks in terms of a concrete community of people. Not an individual, not a lone person, but a community. In Corinth. In Seattle. At Bethany. That is actually a difficult concept for us, I think. Our world is a world of individuals and individualism. We see everything in terms of how it will affect ME, what MY needs are, how I practice my spirituality. This morning, I want you to try and hear Paul talk about the church…the community…as US. All of us.

In this passage, Paul presents us with three distinct pictures of the church.

In the first, Paul says, the church is a FIELD. He refers back to Apollos, one of the teachers of the Corinthian church (verses 5-9):

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. (NRSV)

The church is a FIELD. I grew up driving to rural Idaho several times every year. It was always amazing to see the difference in the fields before and after the seeding had been done. In the winter in the Palouse, all those rolling hills are very stark and bare with either smooth, white snow or black dirt as smooth as a bald head. In some places you can see for miles and miles, one bare rolling hill after another.

But in the summer we’d make another trip, and it was totally different. Healthy stalks with heads of grain practically bursting out the top. Millions upon millions of wheat stalks, waving gently back and forth…as far as you could see. The fields had been through the services of several rounds of work. Someone had ploughed, someone had furrowed, someone had planted seeds. Sometimes someone had to irrigate to make sure there was enough water.

Now, those were all very important roles, just like the planter and the waterer that Paul talks about here. They are very important jobs. But. The planter and the waterer could do their job perfectly and nothing would happen. They could not make those seeds come to life. That took God’s hand. Unless the seeds had the power of God to grow, nothing happened. The quality of the seed…was the bottom line.

“You, the church,” are the field, Paul says. Don’t forget that it is God’s field.

God makes it healthy. We can plan, we can strategize, we can preach, we can take surveys, we can serve, we can lead worship or ensemble… All important roles. None more important than the other. Just don’t forget…it’s God’s field. Our job is to trust that the seed is good…God’s in charge. Can we trust that? Pentecost will remind us that the church will most likely grow and change in ways that it is impossible for us to know ahead of time.

I’m reminded that it’s been about three months now since we started our evening service here at Bethany. If you haven’t been to a 6 pm service, I encourage you to come and try it. It was a big step for us, one we talked about for a whole year. It’s mostly the same as our morning service, though it has a different feel, being in the evening and being smaller. It’s had a consistent core of people, 50-75. It works for some because of size, some because of time, or because someone was out of town over the weekend. The third service is taking on a life of its own, and we’ve tried hard not to micromanage it. From the very beginning, it seemed to be something the Holy Spirit was calling us to. But one of the very funnest things to me has been to see how God has used all sorts of different people and gifts to come together in this service. A new ensemble has emerged. People to usher and serve communion and sing. It’s a small picture of why Paul addresses here THE WHOLE CHURCH, not just individuals. We NEED each other…in order to see and understand and experience the fullness of God.

I saw another picture of that yesterday, in miniature. The elders met for a day retreat. Twenty-one people, with staff and elders. In everything we did, I was struck by the importance of being together. We had read a book called "Making Room," a look at Christian hospitality. As we discussed it, voices from all over the room brought perspective and experiences that far surpassed an individual reading alone. Then as we prayed for our congregation in groups, one person would pray something and that would spark other prayers on related topics that we needed to take to the Lord. As we met in small groups to share, different people would ask questions on entirely different topics…all helpful.

It is God’s church, a work of the Holy Spirit…and while we want to be faithful to doing our parts…we want to remember that it’s God’s church, and we can trust that HE will take care of the seeds. YOU TOGETHER, the church, are like a field…

…But, Paul says, You the church are a building project (verses 10-13):

According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Each builder must choose with care how to build on it. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw — the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. (NRSV)

This building project has a master builder, a sophos arxitektwn, in the Greek…that should make all you architects feel good. Now, the foundation has already been laid.

God has taken care of that. The earth has been moved, the cement poured, it’s solid.

Now God is turning it over to the subcontractors. That’s scary. They might use the right materials (three listed that are extremely durable). But they might choose the wrong ones (three listed extremely perishable).

Isn’t it amazing that when God chose to use the church, his people, to impact the entire world…he allowed so much flexibility, so much choice, so much human control…to be a part of it? The foundation laid in Christ…the love of God laid bare on the cross…the fact that God acted on behalf of his people in an unbelievably surprising, unbelievably grace-filled way, loving even people who would not have His love..is a given. But what if the builders that follow try to add on to the building, what if they build a new wing…without the foundation under it? Eventually, disaster.

It’s happening all the time, actually. John Shelby Spong was a Bishop in Newark, New Jersey for many years, and has recently written a number of books. One from 1998 is called “Why Christianity Must Change or Die.” In it, he calls for a “New Reformation,” based on twelve theses he has developed. Among them are things like this -- Thesis #1: “It is nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity…the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.” Or Thesis #6: “The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God that must be dismissed.” They get worse.

Spong is in the building business as well. And he has every right to build whatever he wants…but he is building a wing out where there is no foundation. Anyone is free to build…you can do that. Just don’t call it the church. Don’t call it Christianity. Call it something else, because the CHURCH is built on a foundation of the cross of Christ. You, the church…are a building project…

But not just any building. You are God’s Temple (verse 16).

YOU (plural) are the temple of God, the Spirit of God dwells in YOU (plural).

This is where Paul makes a remarkable, shocking claim. Paul came out of a Judaism still based upon worship at the temple in Jerusalem. The temple was the focal point for worship, the location for the real presence of Yahweh. The further into the temple you went, the closer you came to the Holy of Holies, where the presence of God dwelt. And now Paul says… YOU are the place where God’s Spirit dwells. The community is where God has taken up residence. It’s here that worship is rightly offered to God, not a sacred location. God chooses to be present in a specific community of people.

If we believe that…then we are opening ourselves to surprise, and wonder and new things. God’s Spirit acts in ways beyond our control, sometimes beyond our understanding. You may find it surprising that you are even here this morning…maybe church is the last place you expected to be.

But God’s Spirit blows and changes our lives. You might look back through the last year and see what has gone on, and though you haven’t wanted to admit it…you see where God’s hand has been in your life. You may find it surprising what God does when we are together. Richard Hays says that thinking of our community as the place where the Spirit of God lives would “encourage us to open ourselves to the possibility of manifestations of the Spirit in our midst.” The Spirit is manifested in all sorts of ways…including healings and words from God and speaking in tongues and interpretations…if the church is truly where God’s presence resides…then it could happen. It DOES happen.

It happened in Corinth, and created all sorts of problems, as we will see in some chapters to come. But Paul will deal with those problems…NOT eliminate the possibility of God’s Spirit moving. Are we open to the Spirit? Willing to be surprised? In your life? In worship?

I love Annie Dillard’s words about worship…admonishing us not to think so lightly about coming into worship, into the presence of Almighty God actually here with us…she says instead we should have the ushers hand out life preservers and crash helmets! It happens…because YOU the church…are God’s temple.

Field, building project, temple. The church is always something more than we thought, because God is always more. Paul reminds us this morning:

• that it is God’s church
• that we experience the fullness of God TOGETHER
• that if we are open to the Holy Spirit…anything can happen

Let’s pray.