I want to begin the sermon today by reading the first part of an article that appeared in Reader's Digest sometime ago. The title of the article is "Mama Hale and Her Little Angels". This is the bold introduction to the article:

"The baby will not stop screaming. On the third floor of a brownstone in New York City's Harlem, a woman holds the two-week-old infant in her arms. The little body trembles and twitches with pain, but Clara Hale has no medicine to offer against that agony, unless you count love. In an old bentwood rocker, she soothes the hurting child. "I love you and God loves you," she promises. "Your mother loves you too, but she's sick right no, like you are." She coaxes the baby to nurse at a bottle. She bathes the child, croons softly, tries a little patty-cake game.

"After a while, maybe you get a smile," she tells a visitor. "So you know the baby's trying too. You keep loving it -- and you wait."

Clara Hale is 79 years old, a tiny, birdlike woman with nut-brown skin and a curling halo of white hair. "The baby craves something he doesn't understand," she explains. The "something" is heroin, and it may take a month before the baby is cleansed of the addiction that began in his mother's womb.

A physician, a psychiatrist, a psychologist and a social worker have examined the infant and written a prescription the same one Mrs. Hale found by instinct 15 years ago, when she started cradling such drug-poisoned babies: lots of patience and calm, mixed with megadoses of love. Her cure works, but that is just the beginning of being one of "Mama Hale's children." (Claire Safran, The Reader's Digest, September 1984, pp. 49-50)

It's a moving story that tells of Clara Hale spending a lifetime caring for other women's children. In a fifth-floor walkup, she raised 40 foster children as well as three of her own. And now she operates a place called Hale House, a unique haven in the heart of the drug darkness of New York's Harlem. The time the article was written, she had cared for 487 babies of addicts.

Mama Hale would understand our scripture lesson from James today. She puts it into practice. As she would understand the title of the sermon as a description of practical Christianity: "Faith working in love."

I like what Dr. Hans Kung, the brilliant Roman Catholic theologian from Tubigan, Germany, said, "Whoever preaches one-half the Gospel is no less a heretic than the person who preaches the other half of the Gospel" (Viewpoint, General Council on Ministries, January, 1987, page 4).

That's the temptation of every preacher -- to preach one-half of the Gospel -- that's the tight- line we walk, preaching a Gospel of faith alone, or works being essential for being Christian. James is an unequivocal champion of works. He minces no words. Listen to him again in verses 14- 17:"What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works? Can his faith save him? If a brother or sister is ill- clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and filled," without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead."

This isthe primary emphasis of James' entire Epistle. We must be doers of the word and not hearers only. This is what has caused so many problems for the Epistle through the years. This is the reason Luther called it a "right strawy epistle". Luther was calling his church back to the core of the Gospel: Justification by grace through faith. Faith alone" was his battle cry, and he felt that James was undercutting that core of the Gospel by contending that Salvation also had to do with works..

The battle has raged ever since. The battle reached a current high pitch with the publication of John McArthur's book, The Gospel According to Jesus. McArthur takes on the big boys like Charles Ryrie, the author of the Ryrie Study Bible, two or three other professors at Dallas Theological Seminary, and a number of other well- known theologians in the evangelical world. The current battle swirls around a concept called "Lordship Salvation" in conflict with a "belief only" position.

Basically, those who hold the "Lordship salvation" position contend that Jesus doesn't come to us as Savior, offering us eternal salvation. And then come to us later as Lord with a call to surrender ourselves to him, to clean up our lives and follow him as disciples. He comes to us as one and at the same time as Savior and Lord. To be saved requires that we surrender to Christ as Lord and are regenerated by His grace. Now I agree with that much of the thesis -- but not to the extreme McArthur takes it.

At the other extreme -- or the other half of the Gospel is the "belief only" position. It goes to the extreme that one can be a Christian without being a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. Does that sound strange? It does when you say it, doesn't it? One can be a Christian without being a follower of Jesus Christ. As strange as it sounds -- and though you may not have heard it precisely expressed that way, that is the position of a large wing of evangelical Christians, represented by such outstanding persons as Ryrie of Ryrie Study Bible fame.

They are so committed to preserving the Gospel of "faith alone", that they separate the offices of Christ. They say that Christ comes to the sinner only as Savior, and makes no claims of Lordship. It is only after you become Christian, that the Lordship of Christ has any claim upon your life. The bottom line of that is that it encourages people to claim Jesus as Savior by simple intellectual affirmation, by saying yes in your mind to "four spiritual laws" or a belief plan of salvation, and defer until later, or never the claims of Christ in the transformation of life. This leads people to believe that their behavior has no relationship to their spiritual status.

(The result of such a belief-only position:) Thus there is nothing uniquely different about Christians in terms of the way they live their live in the world and those who are not Christian. One-third of the U. S. population claims to be "born again". Think of that. One- third of the population! Do you think our nation could be drowning in drugs, wallowing in pornography, allowing millions to go hungry and without shelter, cheering a self-serving Senate and House into cutting welfare in order to balance a Budget that for years has been unbalanced because it gave more attention to the rich than to the poor. Do you think we would be in the mess we are in if one-third of us were really Christian and would listen to James.

"If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and filled," without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead."

Aren't we mocking the Gospel when we reduce the requirements of it to simply believing that Christ died for our sins -- and all He requires of us is to give intellectual assent to that and accept by faith the eternal security he offers?

With that long, long introduction, let's focus on our scripture lesson.

I.

As you look closely at this word of James, you realize that James' is not asking whether works without faith can save us. But rather, whether faith without works can save. His answer to that is a resounding "no".

Before we take issue with James, see the similarity between his words in our text, verses 14 - 17, and Jesus' parable of the Last Judgment in Matthew 25. This is the only time Jesus told us what Judgment is going to be like. Do you remember the parable? When the Son of Man comes in his glory and gathers before him all the nations of the world, he's going to separate the sheep from the goats. He's going to place the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. He will say to those on his right hand -- the sheep -- "Come, blessed of the Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me."

That was a surprise to both the righteous and the unrighteous, because neither of them knew when they did that sort of thing to Jesus. "When," they asked, "when did we see you hungry?"

His response to their question is unforgettable: "As you did it or did it not unto the least of these, you did it or you did it not unto me."

Nothing about belief -- nothing about right doctrine -- nothing about proper churchmanship.

I think of Linus and his sister, Lucy, in Charles Schulz's PEANUTS cartoons.

Linus says to Lucy in the first frame: "You think you are smart just because you are older than I am!

Lucy gets up and walks off but Linus follows, saying, "You just happened to be born first! You were just lucky!"

Then he screams, "I didn't ask to be born second." And in the final frame, he adds in despair, "I didn't even get a chance to fill out an application."

When it comes to the Last Judgment, there are no applications to fill out -- the conditions have been predetermined by Jesus Himself. Listen to James in light of that.

So, James' question is not whether works without faith can save us -- but rather whether faith without works can save.

II.

So, let's press for clarity by putting the issue into some bold affirmations.

One, there is no salvation without discipleship.

What do I mean by that? I mean we can't claim Jesus as Savior without a willingness to surrender to Him as Lord.

Two, an emphasis on faith that does not include fidelity to Christ's call to walk in newness of life is a distortion of the Gospel. What do I mean by that? I mean what James was saying in our scripture lesson. Faith that does not give attention to ethical issues -- to telling the truth, seeking to live morally clean lives, shunning evil, fighting personal immorality and social injustice, feeding the hungry, caring for the needy, seeking the lost, suffering for those the world has said no to -- that kind of faith -- a faith that does not give attention to ethical issues is dead.

Three, a faith that emphasizes ethics and good works as a saving way of life is a false faith. Does that sound contradictory to what I have been saying? What do I mean? I mean that ethics and good works do not save us, but rather are the expression of the transforming work of the Spirit within us.

III.

That brings me to my final point. As good a definition of practical Christianity that you will find comes from Paul. It is this: Faith working in love.

That comes from Galatians 5: 6: "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail, but faith working through love."

Phillips translates this: "Faith which expresses itself in love." The NEB says: "Faith active in love." Paul is saying that when God comes to judge us, the question is not going to be whether we were obedient to the law -- or whether we are circumcised or uncircumcised. The question is going to be whether in the revelation of God's love expressed ultimately in his crucified son, we have turned to Him in faith. And when there is a testing of that faith, it will involve not the doctrinal positions to which we have given intellectual ascent, but whether our faith expressed itself in love.

So, I use Paul's word as a graphic description of what James is calling for: Faith working in love -- a good definition of practical Christianity. Let me close now by going back to Mama Hale.

Along the drug grapevine, word spread about "crazy lady, five flights up," who would give your baby a home. Before long, there were 22 children sleeping in cribs in the Hale apartment. When social workers found out, they insisted that she move into a bigger place. Not far away was a vacant, city-owned brownstone that eventually became Hale House, financed with public funds and private contributions. "Lorraine manages all that," Mama Hale says of the financing,..."my job is just to love the children." The ones who worry her most are the toddlers who arrive scruffy and neglected. One little girl and her younger brother, left alone while their parents pursued drugs, were used to searching for scraps in a near-empty refrigerator. In their first lunch at Hale House, they stared wide-eyed at the food. When told to clasp their hands and say the blessing, they began to cry. "They were worried that someone would take it all before they had a chance to grab some," says Mama Hale. When the boy thought no one was looking, he slipped food into his pockets.

"You don't have to do that," Mama Hale said gently. "You're coming back for dinner." Against the disorder of the world they will return to someday, she teaches them a sense of order. Regular meals and bedtimes. A clean house and clothes. "Be honest," Mama says. "Be smart," she urges. Lulling a six-month-old baby to sleep, she croons, "One day, when you go to college..." "They don't always know what I'm saying," she says, "but they know I love them." That is part of her "gift," as she calls it, her secret for saving children and changing their lives.

On her bedroom door is the second half of her message, a small sign that says: "You can make it." (Ibid. p. 53)

Well, they can -- and we can -- when faith works in love.