I want to approach again this question that we have considered over the course of the last two services – of what faith is and what it makes us do.

Krisnamurti used to tell people at his lectures ‘ I dont have any answers here, I am enquiring with you in to this question.’ and so, borrowing his spirit of open enquiry, I hope that you’ll be prepared to investigate some ideas with me if not to come to any concrete conclusions then at least to turn over some ideas.

Recently Pope Francis ridiculed ‘faith merely as a system of ideas, an ideology… ‘ instead he said ‘faith always leads to witness’

So faith must produce an inward effect that provokes an outward reaction.

Although I agree with him, there is a problem with this which is that if it was only faith which made us do good then those with out faith would see no need to do good things at all and we know that this is not true; humanists and atheists are no more or less altruistic, trustworthy and community minded than anyone else. (There are lots of studies on this dear reader – feel free to look some up – I did)

The theologian Stanley Haberwas said “Any religion that doesn’t tell you what to do with your pots and pans and genitals can’t be interesting.” He is stressing another, different and very practical view of religion; that scripture and theology provides us with an indispensable guide to life. But again if it were really only possible to live a good life with the assistance of scripture and theology then religious people would be the only ones who were successful and fulfilled; they would naturally find themselves in the majority and atheist-humanism would be slowly dwindling into non-existence – and I’m not sure that this is an entirely accurate picture either…

If I consider the difference between faith seen as a purely spiritual matter and faith regarded as a practical strategy I quickly enter one of the oldest and most complicated theological disputes; the difference between justification by faith or by works.
This dispute split Jesus disciples in the first century.
Paul argued, especially beautifully in the book of Romans, that faith alone could redeem fallen humanity, and James told us that faith without works is dead.
Paul was convinced that it was faith in Jesus which would redeem Jew and Gentile alike but  James, who tradition claims was Jesus brother, was having none of it, none of this spiritualised supernaturalism, ‘faith’ he says matter of factly, ‘faith without works is dead’. Very much the argument that Pope Francis made at Christmas.

There is a story I love from the continuing Jewish tradition of which James was part; the Rabbi Semlov said in the eighteenth century that we who have faith know that God will care for the orphan and protect the widow, but we must nevertheless act as if we did not know this, although we must have faith, we must behave, he said, as if there is no God and take God’s responsibilities on ourselves.

In this way perhaps we manifest the presence of God in our own lives.

I cant get to the bottom of this question in this address but I do want to share another thought on the subject before I close-

Our story today of the two brothers  is a foundational myth, a story of the creation of the great Temple of Jerusalem. The two brothers are separated by their father’s death; from being sons of one family, working together on the same farm, they are split into two separate new family groups, each with his own farm. From their consideration, their empathy for the situation of the other, they are prompted to an act of love, and this act leads to a re-union when they fall together and weep in the field in the night. God observed the act of selflessness and love between two brothers and decided that on the spot where their tears fell, the spot where they are reunited,  was the right place where the temple of his worship could be built.

This story seems to me to show that faith, religion, the temple, grows up from acts of love, or charity to use biblical terminology. That our good works, give rise to faith.

To be trite here its a little like the point some new age people make; do we smile because we are happy or are we made happy by smiling? Well, they say, try smiling; after all what have you got to lose?

Perhaps it could be that doing what we know to be good and right and true is a way of growing faith? Of revitalising faith. Perhaps if we are aware that our congregation is dwindling and our denomination is faltering and infact our whole religious culture appears to be diminishing we should respond not by battening down the hatches and grimly facing the inevitable but instead by preparing strategies to give more, to reach out more, as Semlov said; although we know there is a God perhaps we must behave as if there was no God. Perhaps we must “take upon us the inner truth of things and be God’s spies” as the book of Timothy puts it.

Well we could always try it – after all what have we got to lose?

I first heard the story of Two Brothers when it was told by a Unitarian minister who said it came from the Mishnah, but he was wrong. Although it is popularly believed to come from the tradition of ancient Jewish tales and traditions, it was in fact discovered to come from a collection of tales of the Palestinian Arabs

That moving myth of re-unity and brotherly love and the founding of the cradle of Judaism is a Palestinian-Arab story.