A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. The crowd said to Jesus, what sign are you going to do for us so that we can see and so that we can put our faith in you? What is the work that you do? Our ancestors had manna to eat in the desert. According to the scripture, he gave them bread from heaven to eat.
Jesus said to them, I solemnly assure you, it was not Moses who gave you bread from heaven. It was my father who gives you the real heavenly bread. God's bread comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. And, of course, you know how they replied, sir, give us this bread always. Then Jesus explained to them, I am the bread of life.
No one comes to me shall ever be hungry. No one who pleads in me shall thirst again. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen.
You sometimes hear it said, and I've said it, and I will say it again. People don't change much. That is generally true, generally true. But we have some startling examples of of what appears to be startling changes. Startling changes.
Today, we have in the act of the apostles the story of Saint Stephen, what called the first martyr. And we are told here that the witnesses, that is those who stoned Stephen, those who killed him, who murdered him, piled up their cloaks, their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. Saul. And Saul, as you know, is Paul. Paul of Tarsus, the Pharisee.
The man, the young man who became one of the prime persecutors of the Christians, the followers of the new way, and who wound up by being Christ's apostle to the Gentiles. But in today's story, this narrative of our lords of the of Saint Stephen, we are told that Saul was one of the witnesses, and he, being young, was in charge of the clothes so that they wouldn't be stolen while their owners stoned Steven. Last night, 09:00 on public television, we had the first of a three evening series called Concealed Enemies. It's a story of Whitaker Chambers and Alger Hiss. And I think I can safely say everyone here this morning lived through that trial.
I don't know how much you remember about Whitaker Chambers, but certainly he went through a tremendous change. A tremendous change of being a good God fearing atheist, being a not only a party member of the communist party, but part of their apparatus. He became a Christian, and I say this very carefully, don't take it as true, but it's my recollection he eventually died a Catholic. I'm not sure of that, but he definitely became a Christian. And as you know, finally appeared to accuse Hiss of being traitor.
Now, here are two instances, one from way way back, and one very contemporary, of people who have changed. See, well apparently they have changed. What could be a greater change than a young man, a very well educated young Jew, who's a Roman citizen, who is fervently a Pharisee, fervently, enthusiastically, intelligently giving his whole life to the law, to the law of God. And he's right on the he's Johnny on the spot. He's right with the gang who's murdering Stephen because he wants to eliminate that upstart, this somebody from up around Galilee that made all these pretensions, you know, of being with the Messiah and all that.
He wants to eradicate the very memory of that man, and he's still a young man, Saul. Then look at the change. He's actually en route. He's actually on the road to into Damascus in order as a Jew to arrest these men and women who are following the new way, the way of Jesus when something happens, something tremendous happens. He's blinded and he hears voices, and you know, he there's a lot of stuff goes on.
I use that word stuff in quotation marks intentionally. It's not slang. I don't know what went on there, but something went on. Something happened. And Saul became a changed man, or at least he seemed changed.
Because now, instead of persecuting the Christians, he becomes one of them. Can you imagine a bigger change than that? From condemning Jesus, now he hails him as the son of God. Can you imagine a bigger change than that? So you'd say, well, there certainly is a startling change.
And you could go to do the same thing with well, changing certain things. You can do the same thing with Widermore Chambers. Because going from atheism to Christianity and becoming practically a martyr because when he when he appeared publicly, he knew he was laying his life on the line and his family. That's no joke. You'd say, well, these these are certainly examples of of people of men who have whose lives have been radically changed.
Yes, I agree. Their lives have been radically changed. But I am not asserting that that there was that much of a change in the men, in a certain sense, in a certain sense. How was Paul changed or solved? Here's a man who wants to give his whole life to God, who stands absolutely committed to giving his all to the law of God, to safeguarding God's prerogatives, and to making human beings more aware of God.
Can you fault anybody for that? Is that wrong? That very same man, see, when he be when he goes from Saul to Paul, he doesn't change his attitude towards God Almighty. He just sees that he was following a wrong road, and now he wants to be on the right road. He sees that he was following a wrong leader, and now he wants to follow the right leader, Jesus Christ.
He sees that the man, the must this this man from up in Galilee, from Nazareth, the son of Joseph the carpenter, he sees that this man or whatever is not what he thought he was, but is something immensely more than what he thought. So he goes along with him. Now what has changed? A lot has changed, but in another sense a lot hasn't changed. Do you follow me?
You take chambers, you take them in in 1935 and '36 in that area, where you had so many of intellectual, wonderful people who who had given up religion, who had given up God, and who saw this world as the beginning and the end of everything, how they gave themselves and everything they owned and everything they had to a cause that they looked upon as man's salvation and the only salvation in this world. They were pursuing truth as they saw it, with an honest, sincere spirit, and giving them giving their all for it. Then suddenly something happens. They hear a full machine or something else happens, or a Saint Mother Teresa Therese Teresa comes along, or something. Now you say they're completely changed.
You say Mugbridge is a changed man. Well, is he or isn't he? In many ways, he's utterly In other words, what I'm saying is I'm saying with Saint Augustine, that you see there's always an antecedent to what happens. Is a prelude, there is an introduction, there's a preface to faith. There's a such a thing as natural virtue.
And when we see some of these tremendous changes, and I'm not minimizing the changes, I'm really saying let's look a little deeper and see maybe something something at the core of this thing hasn't changed. And so as we look at this story of Saint Paul, let's not exaggerate. On the other hand, let us see the truth that here's a man. Once he saw the truth, nothing got in his way to following it. Nothing got in his way to following it, and he became the apostle to the Gentiles.
Iles. He is the one who went into the Greek world and brought it to the foot of the cross. In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the spirit. Amen.