When Stacy was pregnant, I would often sit behind the pastor of the church that I served in Austin and hear him preach week in and week out. One particular week, when he himself was a new daddy to a one-year-old, he was telling the congregation about some things that they would have to sacrifice in order to be parents. One of those sacrifices was TV. He didn't get to watch TV ever, he said. No more of that. I thought, "Wow! I didn't even think that I cared for TV until you told me that I couldn't have it!" So, I'm here to tell you that now that Mac is 18 months old, that's a fib. I get to watch TV. I watch plenty of TV. Mac and I watch Doodlebops, and Jo Jo's Circus, and Barney and Friends. And we get to watch Sesame Street, too.

Friends, I'm here to tell you that Sesame Street has let me down. I'm disappointed. That's right! The PBS children's program that introduced me to Bert, Ernie, Oscar, and Cookie Monster has swayed from my trust, and I'll never be the same. Here's the source of my disappointment:

Snuffalupagus is real now. Everybody knows about him.

You remember Snuffalupagus? He's the lovable mammoth with no tusks, large, dopey eyes and long eyelashes. He's the gentle creature with a gently voice to match; the one who walks slowly on all fours next to his best friend Big Bird around the neighborhood where the air is sweet. Now that you can picture him, let me give you a little history lesson, even though for some of us this is simply reminiscence.

See, when I was a kid watching Sesame Street, Snuffalupagus was only real to Big Bird, the Shaquille O'Neil-sized canary incapable of flying. Nobody else knew him. Every time Big Bird gathered the neighborhood kids together to introduce them to his friend, Snuffalupagus would run off because he was too shy. The whole neighborhood thought Big Bird was a delusional nutcase with an imaginary friend who he insisted was real. But I knew Snuffalupagus was real, and so did all the kids who would tune in for the latest episode of Sesame Street. We believed in Snuffalupagus and we had faith that one day Big Bird would show 'em all and his imaginary buddy would materialize into a real being that everyone at Sesame Street could bear witness to.

Well, we should have been careful in our wishful thinking, because now everyone on Sesame Street does know that Snuffalupagus is real. I guess somewhere in the writing of the show, he got over his shyness and the writers felt that it was high time Big Bird was legitimized. So, Big Bird isn't crazy anymore and Snuffalupagus is a prominent, public figure on Sesame Street. But the children that still tune in to Sesame Street every day have that much less to believe in anymore. Now Snuffalupagus is just another Muppet that can count to ten and sing songs about letters.

Why does this disappoint me? It's not that I'm sad about Mac and me not having something in common to bond over now that Sesame Street is different for him than it was for me when I was a kid. I mean, as Mac gets older, we can bond over Spider-man, college football, rock music and Jesus Christ. There's no setback there. I'm disappointed because, now that Snuffalupagus is real, a little magic has been drained from the show. Now that everyone can see Snuffalupagus, there's a little less imagination there – there's a little less faith there. And that element of the show is maybe the most important thing for children to learn: imagination.

What made Snuffalupagus real wasn't other kids on the show seeing him the flesh. What made that character real was the kids watching their TV sets and witnessing a relationship between Big Bird and his friend, Snuffalupagus. Big Bird believed in his friend. And that's all that mattered. What made Snuffalupagus real was one individual's belief in him, and that one individual having a relationship with the friend he believed in.

See, reality without imagination is dead. I know it sounds strange, but reality without imagination isn't real. Think about it for a moment. Anything that comes to fruition starts with imagination. Imagination makes reality real.

It's the same with faith. Our actions don't gain merit or favor with God based on our actions themselves. Our actions receive a blessing from God when they are born out of faith. When the crowd brings Jesus the blind and deaf man to heal him, it's a pretty bold step on their part, coming forward like that.

But what does Jesus do? He takes the man aside, away from the people. And when no one can see or hear what is going on, that's when Jesus restores sight and hearing to the blind and deaf man. That's about one person sharing a moment – a relationship – with Christ, and Christ then acting on that relationship to perform a healing miracle.

That wasn't for the crowd to see. That was for generations of disciples, like you and me, to witness for ourselves. This morning we witness Jesus in a relationship with someone who is hurting, someone like you and me, and what does this have to do with our worship? What does witnessing Jesus and the blind and deaf man have to do with strengthening our relationship with God as we worship this morning?

It has everything to do with us. By reading Scripture together, we are taken into the story, to be with Christ and the blind and deaf man. And it's there, as faithful flies on the Gospel wall, that we see Jesus put his fingers in this man's ears. And it's here that we see Jesus look up to heaven and say something. "What is he saying? Did you hear what our friend Jesus said?" 'Ephphatha.' Open! That's what he said." We share this story together in worship because it strengthens our faith.

A child needs imagination to gain a healthy concept of reality. And everyone needs faith to carry out good and healthy deeds, or good and healthy works. We're also reminded again today of that difficult Scripture to apply to our lives, that "faith without works is dead." But I don't need to preach on that. The lesson is all right there in the text: "faith without works is dead." Or as we might say in Texas, "If you're going to talk the talk, you gotta’ walk the walk."

Maybe what we need to hear this morning is something that the United Campus Ministry students were reminded of on their trip to New Orleans last month. The message is simply this: If faith without works is dead, then works without faith are dead, too.

The United Campus Ministry college students went to New Orleans. As they had already experienced it before, they knew the hard work they were getting into. They knew they were going to have to roll up their sleeves and work in the heat and the humidity and the smell. They worked hard. For an entire week they were working on this one house where their objective was to strip and clean it down to the original frame so that it could be rebuilt. Toward the end of their week, their minister, Kyle Walker, was talking with the owner of the house who said, "I've got bad news. They came and told me that they have a different plan, and they are going to demolish the house completely and start all over." With a very heavy heart and heavy shoulders, Kyle had to walk into that house and tell his friends to drop their hammers. When they dropped their hammers and what they were doing, you know they were thinking: "Everything we've done has been in vain. Why did we go through all this! What a waste of our time! What a waste of our emotional energy." But as they looked around and started to see the community who were working with each other, who were so devastated by the heat and were looking at each other with anger, confusion, and frustration in their eyes. The students started to realize the point in what they were really sent there to do.

What the UCM students realized in their good works was that while what they were doing was good and helpful, it could all be destroyed in a moment without the strong cement and mortar of faith. On the surface in New Orleans the challenges are bleak. We could pack up our cars and trucks right now, skip school and work for a week to roll up our sleeves and help clean the city and make for good living conditions for our sisters and brothers only a few hours away in Louisiana. It's not that hard to do. But the problem is that at any moment during our efforts, the city could come by and declare the very house and the very neighborhood that we are working on "condemned." At any moment a contractor or a builder could change a situation for a displaced resident and make a hundred good works by a hundred good citizens suddenly vanish behind bureaucratic red tape. At any moment another hurricane could warm up to make landfall. So why all the works? Why all the good deeds?

This is why, and this is what the UCM students might tell you in their own words: The good works aren't about bricks and cement in New Orleans, they're about building up hope. The good works are necessary, because God's children, people like you and me are hurting. The good works are the stuff of miracles that bring a faithless street to life a year after Hurricane Katrina changed the physical landscape. And good works are good works, but without faith, they are dead.

That faith is what was energized in the UCM students in their recent New Orleans experience, and that same faith was shared with everyone that they encountered on their trip. I wish that some of those students were sitting with us right now in worship, because their testimony is something we need to hear just as badly as we needed to hear the account of Jesus' healing miracle out of Mark's gospel.

It's an exciting time at our church, and Friends Congregational Church (UCC) is a wonderful place to be. There's a lot going on. There are a lot of you here. There are people who are interested in being a part of this community of faith. There are people who we recently received in the membership of this church. There are people stepping up to volunteer for activities like teaching our children, youth and adults during the education hour before our worship service. There are a lot of people volunteering to be on our different VISTA responsibilities and committees. There's a lot going on. It's exciting. On paper, that all good. We're moving fast. And we're doing a lot of good works. But you never know what could happen tomorrow.

I'm not trying to be a wet blanket or a party pooper, although every party needs one, dear friends. I'm simply drawing a parallel between the UCM student's New Orleans experience and the life of our church right now so that we might do a faith check. After all, that is the primary reason why the Church gathers: to share our life of faith! That life of faith is the foundation that got us from our start in 1977 to this day, September 10, 2006. And that life of faith is in the cement and mortar that will strongly hold us together as we move forward and grow together. Friends Church is a wonderful place to be, and it should also be a wonderful place to become. That is true and it can remain true if our works are born of faith.

Today being September 10, the eve of it having been five years since 9/11, 2001, and today being the start of our stewardship drive, I'm reminded of one last story I want to share with you about a Baptist pastor and his church in of Abilene. He is a friend of a friend of mine, and my friend told me this story. Their stewardship campaign was supposed to start the Sunday following 9/11, 2001. They had a lot of speakers geared up to talk. They had a lot of slick materials and presentations. It was going to be a wonderful time, capitalizing on what was already going on in the life of the church. That week there was devastating news on TV, devastating news in print. Chapels were chock full of people who went there to pray and be with each other and yell at God and ask difficult questions because everyone was so devastated and angry. The pastor of the Abilene church said, "You know what? I think the congregation's been through enough. They don't want to hear any more about that. So on Sunday when we gather, we are going to kick off that stewardship campaign. We're going to do something different. We're going to take their minds off of 9/11."

You can kind of see where this is going. What you can't see is the little detail that a lot of the members of that church and community were retired Air Force. Everyone was very upset with the fact that not a word was uttered about September 11, 2001 having happened in our nation, in our world, just a few days before. That stewardship campaign fell on deaf, angry ears that called for that pastor to be fired. He still works there, but people were upset. When he called my friend and said, "What was I thinking?!" My friend said, "Well, you weren't thinking."

Well, should we start our stewardship drive together today? Are we ready? Absolutely. But how we do it determines if the timing is right and the effort is worth it. Being a steward means that we have something to give – something to serve. There's no reason for our stewardship drive to drop buckets down dry wells, so let's be filled before we talk about giving. Let's pray for this church. Let's pray for each other. And in our prayers we might see where and how it is that we all can give and serve.

I want to ask you something. I know that we have an active prayer life at Friends. We share our joys and concerns every Wednesday night and every other Sunday morning. And even if you're not in worship, you can find out what's going on and what you can pray for on the emailed prayer chain. Those are prayers that are constant and we can feel that resonating in the life of this church. But do you pray for this church? Do you pray for the people who are here? Do you pray for the people who aren't here? Do you pray for our choir? Do you pray for our choir director? Do you pray for the committees that hustle and bustle to bring their programs together but rarely show their faces publicly? Do you pray for people who volunteer to be on the VISTA committees? Do you pray for me? I can feel that you do, but I'm reminded and compelled to say again today that not only am I so thankful for a year that has brought us to this point, and having felt all those prayers that it has taken to get to this point, that we would have a more purposeful prayer life in this time of stewardship that would call us to not only pray for well-being, but to pray for new questions that would constantly seek out answers—new ways that we can be Church to and for one another. New ways that we might pray for each other.

That's step we can take to prepare not only for this stewardship drive, but for the upcoming year in the life of Friends Congregational Church. Works without faith are dead, so let's take a deep breath of God's new life in Christ and get to work on God's time, not our own.

So, now I'm asking are we ready for a Stewardship drive?

Are we ready to pray for this church?

Are we ready to pray for each other?

Is God our shepherd this morning?

Is Christ in our hearts this morning?

Is the Holy Spirit alive in this place this morning?

Are we a people of faith this morning?

Faith without works is dead, and works without faith is dead. So let us imagine the new realities and hope together. Amen.