Please read the Scripture passage before the homily.
The reading makes two statements, that we are God’s building, and that Paul laid the foundation. There is not more than one house of God, and we all called to live in it together and in harmony. Infighting, jockeying for positions, and campaigning for oneself are outlawed because they destroy the unity that this one house of God professes to have, and does have.
How did this house come to be? Paul affirms that God had given him the plan and the orders to build the house. Based on the charge given him, Paul dutifully laid the foundation. Once the foundation was in place, the boundary was set for the house. One could not go beyond the foundation and expect the building to be strong and firm. One could not build a three-acre multi-story mansion on a floor plan of nine hundred square feet with a shallow foundation.
In Paul’s analysis, the floor plan is Jesus Christ’s plan, although executed by Paul. If we, the Church, are God’s building, then we must conform to the foundation prepared by Jesus Christ. Any who wishes to build upon this foundation, has to conform to the foundation.
Paul is pleading for his community, that it conform to Christ and to the plan which Christ had Paul lay. Apollos and Cephas are two who came after Paul. They did not come to change the foundation but to build further on that one foundation.
We tend to think of the Church as buildings or as the leadership of the Church. We, however, are the Church, the house, or temple, of God. Buildings only give us places to gather, places to remind us of who we are; they are not the Church. We are the Church.
In our day, as in Paul’s, there are divisions in the Church and struggles over leadership. We are, however, one Church, the one house and temple of God. No one can build on it with strength and beauty unless the builder builds on the one foundation already laid. How am I being built and how am I contributing to unity of the one temple of God?