I am honoured - I have been tagged along with the great and the good to share a scripture which 'haunts me', which I (try to) inhabit.  It has to be James 2:26b 'faith without deeds is dead.'  I loved this verse when I first heard it many years ago, I love it still, and it challenges me always.

As I studied a bit of theology, I found out that James was one of the 'dodgey bits' that nearly didn't get canonised, that people think, as well as they can think about any Biblical author, it "might well have been Jesus' little brother" who wrote it - might not have been, but it might.

The text is not salvation by works, but something more subtle - faith is manifest by what it does.  It is incarnated or inhabited or just plain lived!

My ordination service drew on two passages that for me exposit something of what James is saying (even if they were perhaps written down later) - Matthew 25:31-36 (sheep and goats) and Matthew 28: 16-20 (the Great Commission) which give the 'both/and' of 'mission in many modes.'  My call to ministry came from 2 Timothy 4: 1 - 5 - showing God's warped sense of fun that part of one of the allegedly more misogynous epistles was the call to a woman minister, but it too fits with what God says to me in James 2: 26b - 'Catriona if you have faith, then do it' (Which, by the way, reminds me of a memory verse from a GB parade service when I was about 14 'faithful is he who also will do it'.  I have long ago forgotten chapter and verse but the words came back as I typed).  Oh, and I love the bit about people wanting to hear things that 'tickle their ears' (thank you to those who slogged to teach me Greek) rather than what God actually wants them to say - this challenge to a prophetic edge also haunts me.

On the 'Fresh Expressions' DVD is a minister (Methodist I think) who says that when his number is up and he stands before God, he wants to be able to say 'I tried' - this for me is the practical outworking of 'Faith without deeds is dead.'  I get loads of things wrong, I struggle and sometimes have to say 'I believe, Lord help my unbelief,' but I try.

Faith without deeds is dead - a truth and a challenge.  I love it, it scares me, but I try to live it.

Most of the best people to tag have already been tagged, so I can't tag them but I'd love to know the responses from fellow Baptist bloggers Kez Lama, Andy Amoss, URC's Craig and K8, and "anyone else who knows me."  (Sorry Craig I don't seen to have a working link for you)