Introduction
In the city of Detroit there is a developer group called Cass Community Social Services, which began during the Depression when Cass Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church opened a soup kitchen. But this mission of care was only the beginning. In the 1950s, the church’s pastor expanded the congregation’s social services, creating an evening learning program, a Bible class and a senior’s program.
From there Cass began to work with people with developmental disabilities, providing an inviting place to go, be cared for, receive training, and get help finding employment. Many of those enrolled in the Cass program became church members and serve as ushers and acolytes today. In the 1980s, the church began to work with the homeless, providing a safe place for people to take a shower, do laundry, use the telephone, and look for work.
Today, Cass has found a new endeavor and are now focusing on building tiny homes to provide housing for people in need. According to The Christian Century, “each house is a single-family home of 250 [to] 400 square feet, on its own lot with a lawn. Yes, the homes are really very small, about one-seventh the size of the average new home. A front porch or rear deck add a bit more to the living space.”
The first phase of construction is now wrapping up. Moving into the homes are “…single people and couples who are living on little income: senior citizens, college students and other young people who have aged out of foster care, and people who were previously homeless or incarcerated.”
Rev. Faith Fowler, who directs the project, says, “To have new houses going in is really exciting because these tiny homes are rented and then owned by their residents, an investment which fosters pride, responsibility, and dignity, because these homes are built on the foundation of Jesus Christ.”
This work and development of tiny homes is all being built on a Christian foundation that become homes from God, being built by the people of God, for the people of God.
The Apostle Paul was a skilled master builder and he would have loved this building project in Detroit. And he would have loved it because as he says in our text for today, he “laid a foundation” in the city of Corinth, and then someone else began to build on it (1 Corinthians 3:10). Paul believed that “each builder must choose with care how to build,” whether they use gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw. But in any good Christian building project, said Paul, the “foundation is Jesus Christ” and each builder must chose—with care—how to build it.
Move 1
The Apostle Paul was a skilled master builder who built churches, but also he built, of all things, tents. When Paul arrived in Corinth, he stayed with a married couple named Aquila and Priscilla, and the book of Acts tells us “they worked together— by trade they were tentmakers” (Acts 18:3). So Paul earned his living in Corinth by making tents… temporary, earthly shelters.
Paul knew people needed shelter. So as I said before, Paul would approve of the tiny homes being built in Detroit today, innovative solutions to the affordable housing problem in many communities, built with care upon a foundation that is Jesus Christ.
What Paul wants us to know is that anything we build, anything we want to last, anything we want to make a difference, must be built with care upon the only foundation that will last—the foundation that is Jesus Christ.
Be it affordable housing…the focus and vision of a church… how we raise up a family… how we build a career—any and all of it must start with the foundation of Jesus Christ.
Start there, says Paul, and then from there, build with care—do that, together—and we build up the body of Christ and make earth a little more as it is in heaven.
Move 2
The foundation we got, right? Start with Jesus. And actually, this “building with care”—pretty straight forward. But then again, kind of broad too, right? So what might building with care looks like?
Well we all know there are basic human needs, and the top five needs for human existence are: air, water, food, shelter, and adequate rest— sleep. We know the rules: we can’t go three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food, and after one of my sermons the need for sleep and adequate rest is an absolute need. And we all like to, and appreciate being able to tend to all those needs in a shelter that protects us from the blazing sun, freezing temperatures, wind and rain. All of this is why the tiny homes in Detroit are so important.
Not only is all of that true and known, but over and over again in the Gospels Jesus himself emphasizes the need to tend to and provide for these needs. But are these needs—air, water, food, shelter, and sleep the only top needs for humans beings?
A neuroscientist named Dr. Nicole Gravagna says no. Dr. Gravagna has proposed two more items be added to the list of essential needs for humans to exist—items she bases within 75 years of psychology, neuroscience and sociology. And just what are they? Gravagna proposes the next two basic human needs are: other people, and novelty.
Now, the other people need proposal didn’t surprise me one bit. There is data regarding those incarcerated who spend 23 hours a day in lock-down isolation that gives clear evidence as to what happens to a human being who has that little interaction with other people. And we all have felt, and gotten a glimpse of such during this global pandemic. So the need for other people is not a surprise. We cannot thrive in isolation— hiding in a huge McMansion is not a healthy way to live. It’s better to sit on the porch of a tiny home and say hello to our neighbors, or join a small group at church, or work alongside others in a community mission project. Being connected to other people is key to our emotional and spiritual health.
But this final human need of novelty—I did not see that one coming. But novelty means the quality of being new, original, or unusual.
Dr. Gravagna says, “Novelty creates the opportunity to learn and the ability to fail. Without regular novelty, motivation wanes and a healthy sense of well-being is lost.” Meaning, doing the same old thing in the same old way is not going to work forever.
And since novelty is anything that is new, original or unusual, Paul would connect novelty as an appropriate method to include when building with care.
Is there a new way we can care for the needs of others we haven’t thought of? Is there an original idea that, sure, we could fail at, but could possibly make a small difference that might actually become a world of difference? Is there something that though it might seem unusual, could foster pride, responsibility, and dignity for others? These are the questions the body of Christ must be asking if we are to build with care anything that lasts.
Move 3
Tiny homes, built with care, on the foundation of Christ. What do these buildings tell us about what is essential to life, on earth and in heaven?
First, it tells us we are challenged to care for each other in this life and to work together to make sure everyone has adequate food, water, shelter and sleep—to be present to one another and create opportunities for pride, responsibility, and dignity. Paul wants members of the church to “have the same care for one another” (1 Corinthians 12:25) and remember that all of the commandments of God are summed up in the words, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Romans 13:9).
This means trusting the path Jesus clearly gives voice and direction to, is the path we take. It means working for the common good, instead of pursuing only personal success. It means valuing what cannot be seen— honesty, integrity, sacrifice, love— instead of the things of this world that can be seen because, as Paul says in his second letter to the Corinthians, “what cannot be seen is eternal.” These are the keys to successfully building with care. But it takes us all doing it together, says Paul.
Conclusion
It’s the first Sunday of August. We have a bit more of summer left, but we are already looking ahead to a “new year” in the life of the church.
There are plans in the works for us to return to a “more normal” routine—although it will still be a new normal—and only if we can do so safely.
So I hope we will be ready to continue to do what we are doing to help tend to the basic needs of God’s children—giving drink to the thirsty, food to the hungry, clothing to the naked, visiting the imprisoned, caring for the sick.
And I hope we will also be the kind of builders who chose, as Paul says, to build up the body of Christ, together—and we do so with care and novelty—by being creative, new, original, and maybe even unusual.
Because building with care and novelty, upon the foundation that is Jesus Christ, as servants of God working together will not only fulfill our call as a church, but it will become an investment which tends to all the basic needs of life, along with pride, responsibility, dignity, and love.
So let us enjoy the last few weeks of summer—but let us also prepare ourselves to come together to build up the body of Christ, and the community around us, with care and novelty in whatever manner God calls us to build. Amen.
Pastoral Prayer, August 1, 2021
Holy God, like the Israelites in the wilderness, we too have experienced your care and provision.
Like the Psalmist in the midst of many dangers, toils and snares, we too know you prepare a place of safety and security—even in the midst of our enemies.
Like the many who were fed from meagerness by your son, we too know how you will always feed our bodies and souls.
And because we know, because we have experienced such blessings, you call us to extend those blessings to the world around us—to care for others as deeply as we care for ourselves.
And so we begin that work now…
We pray for the many who do not have enough— enough food to eat, or shelter to keep warm; enough employment, or money to pay their bills; enough medicine or medical care.
May you care for them, and if that care is to come through us, help us to make it so.
We pray for those who have more than enough, but still struggle to find meaning and purpose in life; who indulge in dangerous or self-serving activities to dull their pain or loneliness.
May you care for them, and if that care is to come through us, help us to make it so.
We pray for the lost, the lonely, the broken, the defeated, those who are discouraged and on the edge of giving up.
May you care for them, and if that care is to come through us, help us to make it so.
God, your grace reaches out to all of us. You call us to live as citizens of heaven, working together with one heart and mind here on earth. Strengthen us to live in a manner worthy of the Good News we have received, offering our lives in service to your children, so the needs of all are tended to by all, and where there is grace and life enough for all.
May this become the reality in our day. And in whatever way it is to come through us, help us make it so.
Hear now the prayers of our hearts as we offer them to you in this time of Holy Silence.
All this we pray in the name of Christ Jesus who taught us to pray, saying, “Our…”