There was a man who was a devout Christian. He prayed every night for the needs of the world. And each night he would conclude his prayer by saying, “And please, Lord, let me win the lottery this week. I’m praying for that million dollar jackpot.” The man prayed night after night, week after week, but still he did not win the lottery. But every evening he faithfully prayed, “And please, Lord, let me win the lottery this week.”

Finally, one night after months of this prayer, God spoke to man and said to him, “Go and buy a ticket!”

Faith, without works, is dead. Or at least it won’t win you the million dollar jackpot.

This morning we read one of the most controversial passages in the whole Bible. 
Really? you say. Yup. A real scorcher. Know what it was?

“Faith without works is dead.”

Don’t fall out of your seats, I know it is a live one!

Seriously, this passage has caused more trees to die for paper, and violent debates on faith over many, many centuries.  The man who perhaps was most incensed by this passage was Martin Luther, the Christian monk turned pastor who set off the German Reformation that led to the splitting of the protestants from the Catholics.

Luther hated this passage. He felt that we are saved by grace alone. That grace is God’s gift to us. Thus, to put works into the picture--that people could actually do something about their own salvation--ruined it. Works somehow tarnished the gift The need for works also meant that if someone converted on deathbed, it was not valid. Where were the works? Luther asked how we could put such a limit on God as requiring something else other than the free love of the Creator.

James’ position on faith plus works is called “works righteousness” and it has been anathema to the church for centuries.

The reason it was so important to Luther and many others that faith alone was sufficient is that in traditional Christian theology everyone is worried about permanently falling out of favor with God, of not being saved, which meant going to hell.

If grace was enough, if all we had to do as people was to accept salvation and God would do the rest, then salvation was easier, it did not exclude anyone, presuming of course that everyone could (not considering would want) to make that faith proclamation. No one had to go to hell. God’s love was enough. And it was free.

Faith would save you. Faith alone.

But what if we look at this from a different angle. What if faith is not so much about believing in God to avoid hell, or worrying about eternal damnation.

What if the question is not what are you saved from, but what are you saved to or for?

I don’t believe our faith is about being saved from hell as a real physical place we are destined for after we die. I actually don’t believe in hell at all. It doesn’t reconcile with my image of a loving God. I believe we are all born from goodness and received into goodness when we die. But then what needs saving?

In our United Church of Christ Statement of Faith we proclaim that “God seeks in holy love to save all people from aimlessness and sin.”  And I think that is a pretty good description. I do know that many people are saved by their faith. Saved from despair, saved to see life as worth living, saved from isolation.

Our faith, God, can save us from aimlessness, from a lack of meaning in our lives. Through faith we can discern a greater purpose and greater mystery than we fully understand. And sometimes sin is so tempting, so delicious or so impossible to extricate oneself from, that it takes faith to see us through. We may be saved by our faith.

But, if faith grounds us in a deeper reality of God, than what we are saved to seems the more important question. We are not saved from hell but saved to enact our faith in the world.

“Faith without works is dead.”  I don’t think many of us in this congregation disagree with James on this. James is not saying that someone that believes and does nothing does not believe. In many ways he has been made into a theological punching bag. Luther himself cut out the book of James and pasted it into the back of his Bible right next to Revelation, Luther’s other hated book.

What James is saying is that faith without works is dead meaning it is not alive; it is not dynamic, growing, changing, or engaging. It is not the living out the precepts of faith, to love one’s neighbor as oneself.  If we truly have faith, we will act on it.  We are compelled to it. Faith calls for action.

Jesus knew this. In today’s gospel lesson he sneaks into a village of Tyre. He doesn’t want anyone to know he is there. He needs some R and R. So he comes in quietly and wants his presence to be a secret. Why?  Because Jesus knows that if folks find out he is there, they will come to him and faith requires action. If no one knows he is there, no one will bother him and he can have his moments of rest.

But instead, this pushy foreigner--woman of all things--barges in and demands action. Her faith pushes her to go beyond all politeness and societal rules to beg for the life of her daughter. And Jesus’ faith, though sorely tried--he comes off badly in this story--finally demands action and he tells the women her daughter has been made well.

Faith calls us to action. Faith pushes us. Faith is not dry theological statements or warm fuzzy hymns. Faith is dirty, gritty: the in-action, just, living of our lives. It is not easy. It is not even necessarily in our first inclination.

Faith without works is dead. James shouts it loud and clear so we are sure to hear it. Because perhaps more than anything our problem is not having faith but how we hear our faith.

Here’s an example. Those folks who have ever been in a long term relationship might have had the experience of “spousal selective hearing.” This is the problem of people living together in a relationship and listening to each other often enough that a certain deafness crops up in their relationship. Somehow “it’s dinnertime” always gets through loud and clear but the “honey, could you fix…” mysteriously goes unheard. Spousal selective hearing is the culprit. I’m told it is a widespread problem.

I think sometimes we experience “Christian selective hearing.” Our ears aren’t open to what God is calling us to do. James makes some pretty pointed comments about this. To paraphrase: Why do you fawn over the rich and disdainfully treat the poor. What kind of Christians are you? Remember the commandment to treat your neighbor as yourself and you still give the great seats to the rich and then shun the poor.

Perhaps we think issues of how people are dressed in worship were only issues in James' day. But we still often associate how one dresses for worship with how serious one is about God and discipleship. How would we react if someone dresses in shorts to serve communion? Or wears sweats to be greeter or liturgist? What about people who smell bad or are really dirty? Are they welcome too? Even in the library with the nice furniture? Even to our houses for a progressive dinner?

James knows inequality is the world we live in but he states over and over again that faith calls us to act differently. And action in his book is the key. What good is it if we do nothing? No good. “God be with you” is a little thin when we are hungry or need a place to stay. James doesn’t pull any punches. He knows the poor are getting the crumbs, when they are getting anything at all.

Even Jesus struggles with Christian selective hearing when he refuses to heal a woman because she is a Gentile, from the wrong side of the lake, with the wrong background.
That is, until she reminds Jesus of his faith through her own. “Even the dogs get the crumbs.”

Faith without works is dead, yells James.

And doesn’t Jesus know it. After healing the woman he moves on to heal a man deaf and unable to speak, a person also with the wrong background and living in Decapolis which essentially translates as the ten pagan cities. This would be a place no faithful Jewish person would go unless they had to. But as Jesus starts to perform the healing he goes through this strange ritual with fingers and ears and spit. And then he sighs. This is actually a lousy translation. What the text really says is Jesus moans, cries out, groans—then says “be opened.”

Jesus groans. Why? Well, I can imagine him saying, “How can this be so hard? Why me? Why isn’t belief enough? Ahhhh, God, I am sick of this.”

But Jesus is called back into action. Faith leading to works. Healing, fixing, tending, loving.

Can faith without works save you?

It depends on what you think about being saved, and what is inside your circle to be saved.

It has been five years since 9/11. We have invested a lot of faith, money, time energy into protecting ourselves, enhanced security measures, detention centers, torture chambers, airport screenings. Our nation has a lot of faith in military solutions and power and might.
But what works have we done? How have we loved our neighbors as ourselves, or loved our enemies and prayed for those who persecute us. How many works have we see on the justice front?

Will our faith save us?
Faith without works, faith without reaching out to heal nations and peoples and reduce our unjust consumption is dead. It will in fact create death.

It has been one year since Hurricane Katrina struck and the nation watched as thousands of people, mostly poor, mostly black, were abandoned. We have invested a lot of faith in  a new levee system, in the promises of mayoral candidates. But a year later, it is hurricane season again. What do we have to show for works? Thousands with no homes, police departments with no buildings, a city without a real plan, the rich developers embraced, the working poor displaced. James would recognize New Orleans as just like the church he writes to. Faith without works is dead. The real death of a city and so many who lived there.

Can faith without works save us?
Faith, without works of reconciliation, justice, understanding, is dead.

Our reading from James, if we hear it, can lead us into living faith. A difficult but real faith. Faith that is alive.
It is part of why we come here as a church. Together, we hear more clearly. Here scripture is lifted up and we hear it more clearly. Here we are challenged to hear the voice of God, a God who advocates and is on the side of the poor.

And as we hear it we are challenged to go live it. For this is what we believe. That faith needs works. Faith needs the living out of what we believe in concrete action.

I am always amazed by the faith statements submitted to the National Public Radio series This I Believe. Listeners, both famous and ordinary, are asked to write about what they believe. This week I listened to Jody Williams the Nobel Peace Prize winner who was honored for her work with the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines.

This is what she writes:

I believe it is possible for ordinary people to achieve extraordinary things. For me, the difference between an "ordinary" and an "extraordinary" person is not the title that person might have, but what they do to make the world a better place for us all.

When I was a kid I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up, And I certainly didn't think about being an activist. I didn't even really know what one was.

My older brother was born deaf. Growing up, I ended up defending him and I often think that is what started me on my path to whatever it is I am today.

When I was approached with the idea of trying to create a landmine campaign, we were just three people in a small office in Washington, DC in late 1991. I certainly had more than a few ideas about how to begin a campaign, but what if nobody cared? What if nobody responded? But I knew the only way to answer those questions was to accept the challenge.

If I have any power as an individual, it's because I work with other individuals in countries all over the world. We are ordinary people: My friend Jemma from Armenia; Paul from Canada; Kosal, a landmine survivor from Cambodia; Haboubba from Lebanon; Christian from Norway; Diana from Colombia; Margaret, another landmine survivor from Uganda; and thousands more. We've all worked together to bring about extraordinary change. The landmine campaign is not just about landmines -- it's about the power of individuals to work with governments in a different way.

I believe in both my right and my responsibility to work to create a world that doesn't glorify violence and war, but where we seek different solutions to our common problems. I believe that these days, daring to voice your opinion, daring to find out information from a variety of sources, can be an act of courage.

I know that holding such beliefs and speaking them publicly is not always easy or comfortable or popular, particularly in the post-9/11 world. But I believe that life isn't a popularity contest. For me, it’s about trying to do the right thing even when nobody else is looking.

I believe that worrying about the problems plaguing our planet without taking steps to confront them is absolutely irrelevant. The only thing that changes this world is taking action.

I believe that words are easy. I believe the truth is told in the actions we take. And I believe that if enough ordinary people back up our desire for a better world with action, I believe we can, in fact, accomplish absolutely extraordinary things.
--Jody Williams Nobel Peace Prize All Things Considered, January 9, 2006 •

Jody Williams and James, though 2,000 years apart, are saying the same thing. Faith without works is dead.

What is the point of your faith?
Or rather, what is the endpoint of your faith?

For in even the smallest ways, if you are acting upon what you believe, faith is alive within you calling you forth.

So, listen up. God’s spirit is moving in our midst calling, ever calling us to greater acts of faith. Faith that is lived out in works done in Christ’s name.

Amen.