The St. Martin's Prime Timers wish you a happy Easter!

You are invited to our class each Sunday in the Payne Education Center from 10:10am to 10:50 in rooms 207-209.  Coffee and breakfast treats await you, along with some good old fashioned Bible Study. There is plenty going on this Sunday at St. Martins and we hope you will join us!

Prime Timers Good News

The Prime Timers Good News chicken, Henny Penny, accepts dollars so that members can bring their good news to class. There was no class this week, but of course the Good News was the Easter message.

When All Seems Hopeless

Today Skip Maryan sang in the choir but did not teach a class, all ABF classes suspended for Easter. What follows is last weeks lesson.

Today Skip Maryan continued the lessons from the Book of Job begun last week by Skip Allen. Job is part of our current readings in what is known as Wisdom Literature. As Skip (Allen) told us last week, the Book of Job is about a blameless man with a family and significant wealth who loses everything, his wealth, his family and his health on a bet from God and Satan.

As Skip Maryan continues, the theme of Job could be "Here is how God's Justice Works." This leads to the Great Enigma:  how can God's justice work in the light of human suffering and evil? Is it possible that God is not almighty, that God is not just or that man is innocent?

Classical theology concluded that this relationship is never closed, its the subject of the great adversary (Satan) attempting to frustrate the creation. Job suffers and in his anguish is robbed of God's favor. He is in agony but knows he is a good man.

Woe is me can sum up the first half of Job. Psalm 22, also playing a role in the Passion, is restated. It begins: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? The Calvinists base some of their beliefs on selected lines from Job. Their ideas, now largely discredited, are based on an absolute, literal reading of the Bible. If its in the bible you must follow it explicitly, otherwise you must reject it. This absolutism is represented in this country by Cotton Mather, the Puritan preacher generally credited with allowing the Salem witch trials to occur, although he didn't participate in them.

The Book of Job becomes a book of poetry in its central section, with the literary device of the four "comforters" who discuss Job's plight at great length. Today's reading introduces one of these, Elihu, who advises Job to consider God's wonders. He asks Job to "stop and consider" the folly, impudence, and inappropriateness of his protests of innocence before God.

In the discussion, George Laigle asked if suffering is the result of worship of the God of Self. Could any of us have performed Jesus ultimate selfless act, dying for others? Skip Maryan, perhaps because he just came from the Palm Sunday service, recalled St. Francis' Stations of the Cross, reliving Jesus' crucifixion and death. Another thought came from Charles Givens, who suggested that Stalin and Hitler, two great evils, one from the left, one from the right, might well have cancelled each other out!

Skip Maryan then delivered a benediction prior to closing the session.

Prime Timers Contact names and numbers

Mentor

Rev. B. Massey Gentry
mgentry@stmartinsepiscopal.org

Leader

This is the Prime Timers! Photo taken on Palm Sunday, April 9, 2006. Click on either one for a larger view of the photo!

Its Easter Sunday, rejoice, Christ is risen, Christ is risen indeed.

The Episcopal shield, from the St. Martin's New Church stained glass windows.

The Lesson for Sunday, April 23rd is titled "Where is Peace Found"

Key Verse:  John 20:19

Focus of the Lesson:  People are searching for a purpose in life that brings them peace. How can we find the meaning and peace in life for which we search? The writer of Ecclesiastes, who tradition says was Solomon, implies that it is our nature to seek meaning and peace, but that we might not find this in our lifetime. John, on the other hand, affirms that we find meaning and peace in life when we receive the Spirit of Christ Jesus.

The reading is Ecclesiastes 1:1-9; John 20:19-23. This text is from the New International Version^®.

1 The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem:

2 "Meaningless! Meaningless!"
says the Teacher.
  "Utterly meaningless!
     Everything is meaningless."

3 What does man gain from all his labor
  at which he toils under the sun?

4 Generations come and generations go,
   but the earth remains forever.

5 The sun rises and the sun sets,
   and hurries back to where it rises.

6 The wind blows to the south
   and turns to the north;
 round and round it goes,
   ever returning on its course.

7 All streams flow into the sea,
   yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
   there they return again.

8 All things are wearisome,
   more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
   nor the ear its fill of hearing.

9 What has been will be again,
   what has been done will be done again;
   there is nothing new under the sun.

John 20:19-23

   19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

   21 Again Jesus said, "Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." 22 And with that he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven."

NIV®