The apostle for today from chapter 3 of St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians has been called “foundations for living.” The cultures of the first and twenty-first centuries are certainly different, but the foundations for living are the same. What are these foundations for living” that St Paul wishes to communicate to his fellow workers in the first century and to us today?

St Paul begins with a bold assertion: “We are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.” I hope that I and each of us are “God’s fellow workers.” But what does it mean to say that we are “God’s field, God’s building”? An alternative translation for “God’s field” is “God’s cultivated land.” In other words, God prepares each of us for His work, just as land is prepared for crops. God teaches us what we need to know and feel to be able to do His work. Just as a building is constructed by putting together parts and materials, so the Lord helps to integrate each of us as persons—to make us whole, to complete us as persons who are committed Christians.

St Paul then points out that the best foundation on which we can build our lives is Christ. The remarkable fourth century Church leader, St John Chrysostom, preaching on this passage, set a clear and profound target for each of us. He preached, and I quote: “Let there be no interval between us and Christ” [end of quote]. In other words, let there be no intervening space or time between us and Christ. St John Chrysostom continued with the reflection that a “building stands because it is cemented together. . . . Let us then not merely keep hold of Christ, but let us be cemented to Him. . . . He is ‘the head,’ we are ‘the body’. . . . He is ‘a foundation,’ we are ‘a building.’”

So Christ can be the foundation on which we build our lives; and each of us can become buildings that are cemented to Him. Now, cement begins as a fine powder, composed of a mixture of clay and limestone that only hardens when it is mixed with water. So it is with our lives in Christ. We begin slowly as powder that does not have much spiritual power, but then the experiences of life—the experiences of growing as a Christian—become the water that brings us the power to become, as St John Chrysostom has phrased it, “cemented to Christ.”

When I decided to become a Christian 55 years ago this month, I did so because I felt I could not live with my own conscience unless I believed in Christ, because Christ is Truth, with a capital T.  Christ is The Truth. Christ existed before the world and created it with the Father and the Holy Spirit. In Genesis, chapter 1, verse 2, “the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.” And I think and feel and believe that the Holy Spirit moves into each of our lives. As Psalm 103(104) says in the Septuagint translation: “You will send forth your spirit, and they will be created.” The Lord sends forth His Spirit to each of us; and we are then created as unique persons. However, our lives are not predetermined or fixed in some way, but rather we each have free will as to what extent the Holy Spirit is going to move throughout our lives. We have free will over how the powder of our initial faith in Christ is going to become the strong cement of a life lived with no intervening space or time between each of us and Christ.

We are each unique persons. We are each different. St John Chrysostom preached on this passage from St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, and I quote: “Our faith [in Christ] is the foundation, and it is the same for everyone. But in life, not everyone is the same. Some are diligent, others are lazy.” Children, to be diligent is to be hard-working and careful. We all know, whatever our age, what it means to be lazy—to not try very hard, to avoid something that we know needs to be done. St John Chrysostom continued with a very honest reflection about how different each of us are. He preached: “Some are diligent, others are lazy. Some are high achievers, others more average. Some do well in greater things, others shine in lesser matters. Some people’s mistakes are more serious than others’ [mistakes]. This is why we find the variety here. Furthermore, the judgment [of the Lord] applies to the effort, not to the results. A teacher cannot be faulted merely because his [or her] pupils refuse to listen” [end of quote].

The phase that I find most helpful in living a Christian life is that “the judgment [of the Lord] applies to the effort, not to the results.” We should not live our lives with a fear that God is “the great examiner” who is marking our lives for success or failure. That is not how the Holy Trinity relates to each of us with the cemented love that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit share with each other.

It is only in the last few months that I have begun to feel deeply that what matters in my Christian life is not results, but primarily my intention, my hope of serving the Lord and others, my desire to be a committed Christian. After I made a decision to seek to be one with Christ—to desire to serve Him and others, then what happens is up to the Lord, not to my ego. I may wish to succeed in everything I do, in all my relationships and hopes, but that is not life with its ups and downs. So today do join me in desiring to be “cemented to Christ” and in praying that the Lord will guide us into His will for each of our lives.