We begin with Jesus Christ. And we end with Him too. He is the Alpha and the Omega. We wake up with Him in the morning, and we go to sleep with Him at night. He is there when we come into being, and when we die. And after death, too, He is there.

Now, let’s say that we are builders. You and I are building a house. Where should we begin? Well, you can’t build until you have a solid, level, adequate foundation. So that’s the beginning. At the same time, you begin with the end in mind; in other words, you need to have a construction plan. In both cases, when we’re building a spiritual building - when we’re working on ourselves as we strive to fulfill our calling to be the Temple of the Holy Spirit - what we need is Jesus Christ. St. Paul says in today’s Epistle reading that Jesus Christ is the one and only foundation for us to build on. So He’s the Alpha - the beginning. But He’s also the Omega - the end. He’s the purpose and the plan. He's the reason and the image, or icon, of what we are to become.

So we start with Him, and we keep Him in mind throughout every step of the process. This is why we practice the Jesus Prayer in the Orthodox Church. This is why we put icons of Christ everywhere. This is why we want to constantly nourish ourselves with Scripture, lives of Saints, words of the Holy Fathers, and everything that points the way to Him. Those are our construction plans. He is the plan, actually, but those are the details of the plan that help us to know how to follow Him as the plan.

If Christ is our foundation, then we can build wherever we are. Even if He calls us out onto the water with Him, like the Apostle Peter, we can build right there, because wherever Christ is becomes solid ground. Say He’s calling us to go somewhere or do something we never dreamed of doing, and which we feel we’re not even capable of doing. If He’s calling us, we can build, and our building will be solid. But we can’t ever forget the Plan! If we lose our focus on Him, we start to sink - even if we’re standing on what we thought was solid ground! Christ is the solid ground, and without Him there is no solid ground.

Okay, so we know how we have to begin. But what next? How do we get from the starting point to the finishing point? How do we receive what Christ has to offer us, and use it for our edification, that we might be glorious Temples of the Holy Spirit as He intends for us to be?

We need to know what materials to use for construction. St. Paul mentions the straw, the wood, and the solid and precious materials like gold, silver, precious stones. I can’t help thinking of the “Three Little Pigs” whenever I read this passage. One built his house out of straw, one out of sticks. And one used solid, sturdy bricks. And we know what happened. The Big Bad Wolf came along, and the houses made of straw and sticks didn’t stand a chance. But the brick house withstood the assault.

So we have to ask ourselves, “What are we building with?” Do we use the straw of the inflated ego? Do we puff ourselves up and pretend that we’re something, and make ourselves feel good about things by justifying everything we do? If so, our house will not stand. Do we use the sticks of criticizing and abusing others, envying and coveting and blaming, and lifting ourselves up by pushing others down? If so, our house will not stand. But if we use the solid bricks that God gives us to use - made with patient endurance of temptations and struggles, acts of mercy towards others, and prayerful cries for help in everything - then we stand a chance of building a house that will last. Of course, the mortar of God’s grace is what holds it all together. But we are God’s fellow-workers, as St. Paul says, and we’re expected to build.

Now, sometimes we think we’ve been doing pretty well. We’ve been stacking bricks right and left, and admiring how high the walls are getting and “gee, I wonder if everybody else notices how nice these walls are.” And just then, a really strong gust of wind whips up - and it has a wolfish odor to it - and bricks start tumbling. What happened? Well if we look closely we notice that we neglected the mortar. And we tried to stuff straw and twigs here and there and make them look like bricks. Nice try.

Actually, sometimes its a wolfish puff, and sometimes its a consuming fire. The Lord is “a consuming fire,” as it says in Hebrews. What this means is that in His presence, it becomes clear what we’ve built. The fire is actually His love, and His love melts away all that’s false, and leaves only what’s true in us. So, did we try to sneak in some hay? It won’t survive His presence. Thank God for that. The prayers before communion speak of this consuming fire of God’s love, which we receive when we receive Christ’s Body and Blood. We pray, “let me not be consumed…[but consume] the accusations of my sins.”

In His love, He helps us find our weak spots, and fix them. Oftentimes, we don’t want to admit they’re there, but they are, and He helps us to see that. We’d prefer to keep our heads in the sand, but He lets our weak spot in the wall get pounded until we see it crumbling, and we can’t avoid it any more. And this is the opportunity we need, an incredible blessing! A chance to have a wolf-proof house, and one that can contain the fire of God’s love! So someone criticizes us. We don’t like it. We don’t want to admit what they say is true. We justify ourselves, we lash out, we have a fit. But then we hear it again from someone else. We begin to see it in ourselves, slowly accepting the truth of it. This is a glorious thing - the dawn of a new day. If only we will see that weak spot for what it is, and ask the ultimate Master Builder to help us redo what needs redoing!

This is what we call repentance, and because we don’t tend to get things right the first time, it’s what we spend most of our time doing as Christians. When Holy Trinity in Santa Fe was getting ready to build, one local contractor told us “I don’t do Santa Fe style.” When he was asked what “Santa Fe style” was, he said, “you do it wrong, and then fix it later.” Unfortunately, we do a lot of “Santa Fe style” building in our spiritual lives. Thanks be to God we have the gift of repentance.

In the end, it’s the gift of God - the gift of His love and of our repentance, the gift of His sacrifice and our partaking of that sacrifice in the Holy Mysteries - that is our hope, and enables us to stand. In the words of Fr. Zacharias (from the monastery in Essex, England), “We must simply keep the gift of God in our heart, so as to be able to stand in that day when the Lord will shake heaven and earth. Then all those things which are created will pass away, and only those things that are marked by the uncreated grace of His Cross and Resurrection will remain forever.” Amen.