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If you've traveled with small children in a car, you've probably heard this conversation more than once. Sooner or later, whether the journey is half an hour or half a day, someone asks, "When do we get there?"

"Soon."

"How much longer?"

"A few minutes."

How long do we have to wait? It is an essential question asked in scripture. Job, the psalmist, and God's people wonder over time how long they will have to wait until God's will is done on earth as it is in heaven. We pray that phrase in the Lord's Prayer as our way of recognizing that things still aren't as they ought to be.

Some worry whether asking God how long it will be smacks of backtalk and impertinence. Oddly enough, God seems to respect backtalkers. God is different from earthly rulers who surround themselves with yes-men. Unlike the Wicked Witch Of The West who, in the musical, The Wiz, sings, "Don't nobody tell me no bad news." God seems to want to hear our complaints.

In today's scripture, God reminds Abram of the wonderful plans he has for him. Instead of saying, "Thanks, Lord," Abram replies, "O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus? ... You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir"(Genesis 15:2-3).

One would expect a pagan god on his high throne to react to such uppityness with a little thunder bolt therapy, but one element of our faith is that God is secure on the throne. There are no rivals, no other claimants to the title. God is one. And God, from a powerful position, replies like a secure ruler. A polite ruler. A mannered ruler.

The advice columnist known as Miss Manners once pointed out that manners are not, as some people might describe them, arbitrary rules designed to shackle ordinary folks. Just the opposite. The purpose of manners is to protect the powerless from the powerful by linking everyone in a network of responsibility and accountability. God sets the example by being polite to Abram. God makes an enormous promise to Abram even though Abram has impolitely bemoaned his current state of affairs and is impatient for change.

Abram believes the promise, and he believes it before God catalogs the rewards that will be given him; all the lands that will belong to his descendants. Abram's response brings yet another blessing ("and it was reckoned to him as righteousness"). Abram receives an embarrassment of riches. He will not complain anymore about delays.

This is the essence of faith -- to stare into the void and jump, to know that knowledge can carry you so far and no farther. The Old Testament rarely speaks in the positive sense of the word belief. On most occasions, it speaks of those who don't believe in God. Some suggest that it is because belief is presupposed in everyday life. It is in crisis situations, however, that we know whether we actually believe.

This scene of blessing takes place after a crisis situation. It was necessary for Abram to rescue his nephew Lot after he was caught up in battles between a confusing array of kings. Abram is caught up in larger politics on the world scene, and the blessing he received earlier from God proves to be powerful. "I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse ..." (Genesis 12:3).

This scene is followed by a strange and awe-inspiring ceremony, in which God takes upon himself the weight of the covenant. Abram is directed to split a sacrifice in half. Buzzards come, a sign of foreboding, but a mysterious flame appears in the dark and crosses between the pieces. A human who would make a covenant of this sort would be saying, "May this tearing a body in half happen to me if I let you down."This is what God is saying, as well. It is a solemn pledge from the Creator to the created. Both covenant and pledge are instigated and guaranteed by God. Like the hymn says, "What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss to bear the dreadful curse for my soul?"

This is a staggering promise -- that a man and a woman in their old age could and would still have a child and, more importantly, a future with hope. Is this what we show to our seniors? Think of the people we know in nursing homes. These are caring places with dedicated workers. Nevertheless, many who live in these places are confined to wheelchairs or have very limited mobility. Their struggle with despair can be very difficult. What share in the ministry of the church, what place in the prayer ministry, do we encourage in our nursing home residents?

When we visit our loved ones and friends there, we should bring them hope -- not a vague everything-will-be-okay sort of hope -- but a practical hope built upon possibilities around us. We must remember that God isn't through with us no matter how old we are. We may have more limitations depending on our circumstances, but God is still calling us to pray and to minister to and for each other. There are practical ways to serve each other, even within the confines of a nursing home.

Finding meaning is important at all stages of our lives, and redefining it based on our circumstances can be just as important. The scripture assures us that Abram believes God, and this is credited to him as righteousness. However, both Abram and Sarai see the basic absurdity of the situation and both laugh at different times. It is one more example of the way God accepts our reactions as part of a full relationship. There is not some sacred way to approach God that precludes everything else. We need not always restrict ourselves to pious mouthings. We can argue with God, we can express anger, we can laugh.

Because we love.

In the same way, our understanding of salvation through the cross, dying to live, losing to gain, may seem absurd to the world.

We can laugh along with the joke because we know that despite its absurdity, it is true. Laughter is as essential as awe when it comes to our good news, our gospel. Laughter is perspective. We see clearly, while the world barely sees at all.

Some might be content to accept the fact that, as Genesis 15:6 says, "And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness" and not worry about how exactly the thing works. Is Abraham's belief a reflection of his faith or a reflection of his works?

You see, both the Apostle Paul and James, the brother of Jesus, quote this verse, yet they seem to quote it in quite different contexts. In Galatians 3:5-7 we read: "Well then, does God supply you with the Spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard? Just as Abraham 'believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,' ... those who believe are the descendants of Abraham."

But James writes: "Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, 'Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,' and he was called the friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone" (James 2:23-24).

The controversy between faith and works was not settled by the Apostle Paul 2,000 years ago -- it is an essential tension and a constant contradiction that is not settled within our heart of hearts.

If our salvation is by faith alone, can't we all just profess our faith in Jesus as our Lord and Savior and just be done with it? We could stay home on Sunday mornings and put our feet up and read the paper and maybe eat leftovers and get some real rest on the sabbath.

If our salvation is by works alone, then does it really matter what we profess as long as we're doing the work of Jesus Christ? Do we even have to know about Jesus to do his work?

When Paul wrote his letter to Galatian Christians, faith in Jesus was still centered in Jerusalem, and many assumed a new Christian had to adopt Jewish cultural practices.

But in the Roman Empire there were many different cultural practices. People didn't think the same way. To some, circumcision was not the mark of a covenant but a disfigurement of a body they considered beautiful. While worship of one God was attractive, the complex food laws made no sense when consumption of meat was a social practice that involved, at least technically, the worship of a pagan god.

Paul was advocating for the acceptance of new converts who would follow Jesus but not shed their own cultural and ethnic backgrounds. In today's terms, it was as if everyone had to become Irish or Italian or Ukrainian in order to become a follower of Jesus. Yet, anyone who has lived in a multicultural setting knows that worship takes delightfully different forms in the African churches, in the many Hispanic traditions, among Asians of various sorts, as well as all the different European varieties.

At the Jerusalem Council described in Acts 15:1-35, James, the brother of Jesus, and the other Jerusalem leaders met with Paul, Barnabas, and others to discuss the matter. The result, described both in Acts and in Galatians, seems to indicate that Paul "won."Salvation was by faith in Jesus, not in the acts of a believer.

Central to Paul's arguments was his interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures. According to Paul, Abraham acted by faith. There was no Hebrew Law for him to obey. Paul quoted Genesis 15:6 to show that Abraham "believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness" (Galatians 3:6).

If Paul won, James doesn't seem to know it. In his letter, James also refers to Abraham when he writes, "Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, 'Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,' and he was called the friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone" (James 2:21-24).

James went on to say, "If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,' and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead" (James 2:15-17).

In the same letter he also wrote: "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world"(James 1:27).

In examining this contradiction, I would first remind us all that neither Paul nor James were twenty-first-century North Americans. They were both Jewish, both citizens of an empire that spanned the western world, and both struggled with cultural assumptions that divided genders, races, and social and economic classes as a matter of course. Both were martyred for their faith.

As Jews, they believed there were two ways, a yetzer ha'tov, a good way, and a yetzer ha'ra, a bad way. They believed we were able to make choices between those two ways. But in one of those "Same Planet, Different Worlds" kind of things they took those same building blocks and came to look at the world in different, complementary ways.

Remember Paul, who insists that we are saved by faith and not works, nevertheless is constantly promoting good works. At the Jerusalem conference, Paul agrees to take up a collection for the poor in Jerusalem. He speaks of that collection's importance in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9. On another trip to Jerusalem one of his good deeds was to pay the fees to release four Christians from a Nazarite vow (Acts 21:24).

Faith in Jesus seems essential, but Jesus himself doesn't seem to care much about it. I do not recall a single verse in which he says of himself, "Proclaim my name and be saved." He is always pointing to his Heavenly Father. The Sermon on the Mount seems very works-oriented. In Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus describes an end-time judgment scenario based totally on good works.

It seems to me that most Christians give lip service to Paul's formulation about grace over law, they also believe in their hearts, as it is stated in Matthew 25 and James 1:27, that our works save us.

Does either extreme, faith or works, have much to do with faith in Jesus Christ? Haven't we all met Christians who insist that since they have "come forward" and expressed their faith in Jesus they can no longer sin? They claim whatever they do is not a sin, whether it's ignoring a parent's medical condition, looking down with contempt on people of other races, or simply living in callous disregard of the sufferings of others around the world, they cannot be touched by reason or argument. They are never wrong.

On the other hand, haven't we met those who are so dedicated to the work of Jesus yet would be hard pressed to quote a single verse of a gospel outside the Sermon on the Mount? Jesus becomes a convenient hat rack on which to hang their arguments.

If there is any conundrum associated with scripture, any apparent contradiction for which we should give thanks, it may be that the tension between faith and works is essential to building the real body of Christ. Every denomination, every small Bible study group, each race and ethnic enclave, all the Christians spread across every continent, should be pulling each other back and forth, challenging, teaching, and most of all, loving each other.

Life is messy. It's never fully resolved. Things don't always have to work out. When it comes to the great questions, do we have to have an answer today, or can it wait until next Tuesday? Most of all, can we give ourselves time to work on these problems together?

Remember the thief on the cross? Was he saved by faith or works? Faith in what? There was no risen Lord -- or even a fully crucified Jesus. Then was he saved by works? But he didn't do anything. He didn't rescue Jesus, or alleviate his physical sufferings. The thief spoke.

I'm not going to try to settle whether the thief was saved by works or faith. I just know he's home free. And when it comes to the millions who serve Jesus by declarations of faith or words or actions or simply good intentions, I'm not going to try to settle exactly how the mechanism works that saves them.

I'm just going to praise God. Amen.