Faith Without Works is Dead

Davidson Loehr

August 18, 2002

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

INVOCATION:

“Today is a day the Lord has made,” says an old religious writer, “let us therefore rejoice and be glad in it.”

We hardly know how to talk that way any more. Today, we don’t think of a day as being made by a deity. We have more commonsense, mechanical explanations for the recurring phenomenon of a mere day.

But to express the awe, the sheer wonder that we are here, that we are here at all, the old poetry speaks with an eloquence deeper and more profound than mere facts. And so behold, today is a day the Lord has made. Let us therefore be glad and rejoice in it!”

It is so good to be together again!

For it is a sacred time, this

And a sacred place, this:

a place for questions more profound than answers,

vulnerability more powerful than strength,

and a peace that can pass all understanding.

It is a sacred time, this: let us begin it together in song.

PRAYER:

We pray to the angels of our better nature and the still small voice that can speak to us when we feel safe enough to listen.

Help us to love people and causes outside of ourselves, that we may be enlarged to include them.

Help us remember that we are never as alone or as powerless as we think.

Help us remember that we can, if we will, invest ourselves in relationships, institutions and causes that transcend and expand us.

Help us guard our hearts against those relationships and activities that diminish us and weaken our life force.

And help us give our hearts to those relationships that might, with our help, expand our souls.

We know that every day both life and death are set before us. Let us have the faith and courage to choose those involvements that can lead us toward life, toward life more abundant.

And help us find the will to serve those life-giving involvements with our heart, our mind and our spirit.

We ask that we may see more clearly in these matters, and that we have the will to hold to those relationships that demand, and cherish, the very best in us. Just that, just those.

Amen.

Sermon: Faith Without Works is Dead

I hardly ever do sermons on old theological arguments – especially on topics as arcane as whether we are saved by faith alone, or whether we’re to be judged by our works as well as by our words. But I’ve been thinking about this from a new place, and hoped it would be worth your time here today.

It really is an old argument, in both Eastern and Western religion. Eastern religions are pretty clear that your deeds determine your karma, and the kind of reincarnation you’re likely to have. They usually don’t give a lot of credit for just thinking good thoughts.

Judaism has always taught that the two great commandments are to love God with heart, mind and soul, and to love your neighbor as yourself. Those teachings didn’t originate with Jesus. He learned them as a Jew. Even on their day of atonement, which they celebrate on September 15th this year, it is made clear that in order to make atonement with God, you must first make peace with those friends and neighbors you have wronged.

And Catholicism has also taught that it takes both faith and good works – plus a little grace – to be saved, and that the grace is most likely to come to those who have done good works.

All of these teachings came from times when the vast majority of people were illiterate, and almost all teaching was done through stories passed down from generation to generation.

But after the printing press was invented and people began reading, things changed. Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation nearly 500 years ago by teaching that we are saved by faith alone. We need to read the book, to know what we believe, and we are saved by faith alone without the necessity of doing the good works to earn it, he taught.

I’ve always thought Luther was wrong there. But since I’m one of those people who likes to read and think, I’ve also always hoped he might be right. It’s easy for me to slip into believing in salvation by bibliography. Like if I can just get all the footnotes in the right places, I’ll be ok.

Luckily, when I get that far gone, I usually wake up, or whomever I’m talking to will roll their eyes or just doze off. Then I snap out of it and remember, again, that life is both bigger and better than books – even my books.

But I’m not alone here. Everywhere, I think, in all times and places, those who love to think about things have always been in danger of falling off of the world. It’s the special curse of intellectuals.

One of our oldest stories is about an early Greek philosopher who was walking around one day, head in the clouds, staring at the sky, when he fell into a well. For centuries afterwards, the Greeks told this story about those who think too much.

It’s the same story we still tell about absent-minded professors, who forget where they left their hat or parked the car, or who drive to school without their shoes on.

We think over here, the world’s over there, and we lose touch with it as we get seduced by our thoughts. You know what I’m talking about!

It’s the story of thinking rather than doing, faith rather than works. It comes out again and again in some of the jokes about intellectuals.

A friend who taught undergraduate philosophy courses told me that every year, her students’ very favorite story was the one she told about another great intellectual, the French philosopher Rene Descartes, whose most famous line was “I think, therefore I am.”

One night, Descartes went to a fine restaurant, and each time the waiter suggested another course, Descartes ordered it until he was so full he could hardly move. When the waiter returned to ask if he would like to order dessert, Descartes said “I think not” – and he vanished.

Sometimes I think that’s the abiding fear of people who think too much. We’re afraid that if we stop thinking we’ll disappear.

As though thinking were enough. As though faith is enough, as though it isn’t really necessary to spend time in the world after all. We tend to follow Martin Luther’s goofy idea in this, whether we’ve ever been inside a Lutheran church or not.

This also shows in some of the best jokes about Unitarians.

I’m remembering a famous scene from the television series “Welcome Back, Kotter” from about twenty years ago. Someone had been hurt, or was lying unconscious. One person shouted “Get him a priest!” Another said “He’s a Unitarian.” “Oh,” said the first, “then find him a math teacher!”

And the great joke about what you get when you cross a Unitarian with a Jehovah’s Witness: Someone who knocks on your door for no apparent reason.

In a perverse sort of way, I think we often like these stories, because they imply that we’re smarter than the average armadillo, and we like thinking that religion is about being smarter rather than being more whole and authentic.

But there’s another side to these jokes, another side to the idea that just faith, just thinking, is enough to make a religion or a life out of, and it isn’t always funny.

This week, for instance, I got a call on my office voicemail from a local nonprofit agency that does a lot of good works in the Austin community. It’s an organization I haven’t worked with, and was a call from a person I’ve never talked to or met. I won’t reveal their identity until I’ve had a chance to meet them, we’re still playing phone tag. But this person was almost laughing throughout the message. They had read that i was going to preach that faith without works is dead, and was amazed that I’d even try it. Then they laughed and dared me to come down for a tour of what it actually looks like to do good works.

I may not think the characterization was fair or even true, but it is a common perception of religious liberals.

And a month ago I had a much more sobering comeuppance, played in the same key.

I was preaching in Fort Worth, and went a couple days early to have some time with my colleague Diana and her sister Georgia’s family. We were guests at Georgia’s home in Ponder, Texas. Ponder is a small town (about 450) north of Fort Worth, known for a great Texas restaurant (The Ranchman’s), and the bank “Bonnie and Clyde” robbed in the movie of thirty years ago. They also have a great bumper sticker that just says “Ponder, Texas – Just Think About It!” Georgia owns the bank, it’s where I sleep when I visit.

We were all sitting rocking on Georgia’s front porch, and Diana and I were heavy into talking about work: how to talk to Unitarian churches about giving money to the church, since both the churches we’re serving are starting their annual pledge drive.

Georgia belongs to a quite fundamentalist Baptist church, I think it’s in the holiness movement (though I’m not sure just what that means). Diana and I were going under great steam when we realized we had left Georgia completely out of the conversation, and were ignoring her on her own front porch.

Diana said something about not meaning to be rude, but thought Georgia probably wasn’t very interested in this topic.

Georgia allowed as how she had been listening in, but was very confused. “I just can’t imagine having to plan tactics to talk to people about supporting the church,” she said. “Each week when I go to church, I put a $100 bill in the collection plate. If I don’t have money that week then I don’t, but usually I do. I figure if we don’t support it, who will?”

I suddenly felt very silly.

Georgia’s little church has sent their youth to Montana for a summer to help Blackfoot Indians clean and repair the homes on their reservations. They’ve done this for years, the church pays for it. They’ve paid to send youth into Mexico for two or three weeks at a time to do the same for needy people there. And one of Georgia’s daughters has had two trips to Thailand, where she spent two months teaching English to Thai adults, and she’s going back next summer. Thailand is 95% Theravada Buddhist, about 4% Muslim, less than 1% Christian. When I asked her daughter if she thought there was much chance of converting the Thais to Christianity, she seemed shocked and said no, they’re pretty happy being Buddhists. “Why are you doing it?” I asked. “In our church,” she said, “we were taught to serve.” I wasn’t sure I had anything from “my” church to offer her.

To me, it was astounding that a little Baptist church could do such far-ranging good works. I don’t know what percentage of her pay Georgia is giving to her church, but it must be over 15%. And she isn’t doing it because she’s scared of hell. Georgia isn’t scared of anything. She’s doing it because she can’t imagine ever doing otherwise. She’s doing it because she really believes that faith without works is dead.

The visit with Georgia was disturbing. It made me understand, more fully than I had before, that religion, like life, isn’t mostly about thinking. It’s mostly about doing.

A lot of little Unitarian churches are content to define themselves as friendly little places where you can find a few like-minded people and have interesting discussions. It isn’t enough.

And while people support churches like Georgia’s with 5, 10 or 15% of their income, Unitarian churches are lucky if people invest even 2% of their income in them.

Some studies say the average annual income of people who attend Unitarian churches is about $50,000. Two percent of that would be $1,000 a year, which is just a little above our average pledge here. First Baptist Church downtown has about a hundred more members than we do, and a budget that is three times the size of ours. If you haven’t been there, I urge you to visit it. I think it is stunning to begin to realize what a church like this could do in Austin and in Texas if we invested as much of ourselves and our income here as some other churches are doing.

It’s not that liberals are stingy. That’s simply not true. But we weren’t taught how to become parts of a vibrant institution, how to make that institution strong enough to help influence the thinking about important religious and moral issues in the larger community. Or sending our youth to other states and countries to lend a helping hand to neighbors they have never met.

We’re moving in this direction, and we’re actually moving there pretty fast. In the past year, we have accepted the gift of 142 acres of land and buildings west of Kerrville, which we are working to develop into a spiritual retreat center to serve our district and eventually the whole country. We designed and built an all-ages playground that lacks only the covered stage to be finished, and that is already serving our members of all ages in new ways. We started an innovative contemporary service to be more attractive to younger people, and are averaging about 70-80 now, most of whom are new to the church.

The list could go on, and it will go on. In fact, the members of the church who are working at all the church activities now have so much excitement and so many plans for the newer and better services we can offer that they want to increase our budget by about 40% next year. That’s part of a dramatic kind of conversion experience, I think. A conversion from a typical Unitarian church that mostly thinks and does internal programs to one that wants to balance faith with works, to make a positive difference in the lives of our members, our children and our larger community.

Why is this so hard for liberals when it seems so easy for Georgia’s church and other conservative churches?

I think it’s because there’s an assumption in a religion just of faith or thinking that we haven’t examined, an assumption which is false.

Liberal religion often acts like it’s only for adults, like people are already finished by the time they arrive, like their character is already formed, and all they need to do is discuss interesting ideas. Salvation by faith, salvation by thinking, we think therefore we are.

But that’s not true. We’re not finished. We come to church partly to get finished, to learn and experience more of the activities and involvements that can make us more complete people.

A healthy church is the best place we have to develop a whole range of sensitivities and skills that make us more complete people. And while faith – thinking – plays an important part, it doesn’t play the biggest part. The biggest part of becoming whole comes from doing, from works.

Our small groups are ways to be part of a small safe group where you can learn to know and be known by others at more significant levels than just talking about work or money. I recommend them to you.

Those with creative or leadership skills can help this institution become far more important and influential in our lives and the lives of the larger community. That’s a great opportunity.

And everyone has the chance to learn here how it can enlarge you to define yourself as part of something bigger, how it feels to know you are helping to serve causes worth serving with your time, money and energy.

Faith without works, thinking without doing and being, are dead because they can’t give us the depth and breadth of life we need.

This is where it can happen. And it’s worth all the time, money and spirit you invest in it.

The form of today’s sermon was unusual because its real message came in the prayer I read earlier, and the sermon was designed to flesh out and lead back to it.

Now see if this morning’s prayer makes a different kind of sense to you: