The lord be with you. A reading of the holy gospel according to Mark. Jesus said to his disciples, do not think that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets. I have come not to abolish them, but to fulfill them. Of this much, I assure you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter of the law, not the smallest part of a letter of the law shall be done away with until it all comes true.
That is why whoever breaks the least significant of these commands and teaches others to do so shall be called least in the kingdom of god. Whoever fulfills and teaches these commands shall be great in the kingdom of god. And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Nothing could be clearer than these words of our lord in this passage from Saint Mark.
How he does not reject in any way the old law. And if he has come, as he did, and he said this very clearly, to establish a new covenant, it wasn't on the destruction of the old. It was building on the old. The old became the foundation of the new, and the new became the fulfillment of the old. Now I've mentioned that the first time I met or encountered this word fulfilled Christian was over the telephone.
When my phone rang and a strange voice asked for the reverend so and so, and I didn't happen to be he, And I just don't know how we got into it, but it turned out that this lady was calling for a minister in a local church here, and she mentioned that she was Jewish and had be and become had become a Christian. And I had mentioned something like, oh, I don't know, convert or something of that sort. And she said, oh, no. She says, I am not a convert. She said, I am a fulfilled Christian.
That was the first time I'd heard that. But nothing could hit the mark so accurately as that simple expression, a fulfilled Christian. That she, coming from her Judaism, had to renounce nothing of it. And so far as it was the word of God and based upon the old law, And all that came from being a Christian was was the perfection of the old, was the completion of the old, was its blooming and its growth and its blossoming. Now, all of this you say is fine, but look at the look what we were reading, during the, season after the resurrection of our Lord, morning after morning from the book of the acts, and where you heard the the the only history we have of the primitive church.
There is none other. And what do you find there? Do you find the the disciples of our lord, the handful of apostles on Pentecost Sunday going out and and and establishing an entirely new way of life, an entirely new religion? Do you find anything remotely like that? And the answer, of course, is positively no.
What did they do? Page after page of the book, of the acts of the apostles emphasizes how whenever Paul or James or John or whoever went into a town, whether it be in the Greek speaking world or in the or in the the world of of Syria, of Antioch, or up in Asia Minor, wherever they went, they went into the synagogue. It was only in Greece when Paul stood up and addressed the the citizens of Athens, but that was in the open air. And even in even in Athens, Paul became a member of the Jewish community, and not only a member ethnically, but religiously. He said, I'm a Jew just as much of a Jew as you are.
As as indeed he was. He was only by a very special privilege that he was a Roman citizen from Tarsus. So we are apt to forget this that the Christian church in its beginnings rest solidly upon Judaism, upon the synagogue, and it was only when they were cast out that they became a sect to themselves. This is something we should remember. We haven't cut ourselves off from the old testament.
We have not cut ourselves off from all those those centuries which preceded Jesus Christ and were personified in the, what shall I call it, the history of the chosen people, the misery, the tragedies, the triumphs of the chosen people. We are part of that. That is our ancestry. It isn't enough that our bible has the old and the new testament, they constitute a book. And I when Billy Graham speaks of the of this book, he never refers to John or James or so forth.
He re say he says the bible says, and then he flourishes at huge volume up there which he never reads from, has his notes in front of him. But the thing is, he talked about the Bible, the whole business. Now this has special significance for us because it ties us with with our history. It helps us to know who we are. You hear a good bit these days about personal identity, finding yourself, knowing who you are, all of these phrases.
We know who we are. I often think about this. Now I'm not exaggerating. Within the last twenty four hours, I met a young person trying to find himself. What do we mean in the name of heavens when we say trying to find myself?
Because, well, when you say that, I am trying to find myself, who am I and who is the self I'm looking for? You see, it's so absurd if you if you try to read anything literal into it. So what do we mean when we say I'm trying to find myself? It means I'm lost. I'm floundering.
I don't know where North is. I don't know where I am and therefore I can't get to it even if I know where North is. You know, as what Lincoln said, during the midst of the civil war, that is a big help in any situation. First to decide where you want to go and then answer the question, where am I? We know those.
We have those answers and the the wisdom of the centuries is compressed in the answer to those questions. Where am I? Who am I? Where am I going? These are frightfully basic questions and to those basic questions we have a complete answer.
I say complete. It's not that I understand the answer in all its details, that's ridiculous. Some people you know speak of God as if they were on a hotline with him every morning. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying we have the basic overall answers to these basic overall questions And nothing could be more basic than to say, who am I?
Where am I going? And where am I? And our blessed lord has given us those answers. We are not wanderers. We are not confused people unless we unless we elect to be confused, unless we choose that.
Because the truth is there for our taking, but there's a little point there for our taking. Christ doesn't stuff it down my gullet. I have to be receptive. Now, most of us are receptive. This isn't a matter of a great change in our lives but it's a matter of reaffirming our confidence.
We need this. It we need it. It's it isn't a lack of a sign of a lack of faith to say, oh God help me to to have faith. Oh no, that's the truly religious man or woman because faith is a gift. I don't earn it, it's not a reward.
And so to come back to our blessed lord's words today, let us take them to heart. Take them seriously to heart and to realize who we are. We are not Johnny's come lately. We are not men and women of the twentieth century. We are men and women of timeless time.
In the name of the father and the son and holy spirit. Amen.