St. Martin's Episcopal Church Prime Timers

Welcome!

Expectation Grows!

Prime Timers is a St. Martin's Adult Christian Education group, also known as an Adult Bible Fellowship. We are people in the Prime of Life, age 50 and beyond, with a welcome for all who come to the Parlor near the Church Offices each Sunday from 10:15 am to 11:00. We are following a program based on the Revised Common Lectionary and will meet during the busy Advent season as Church Activities permit.

Prime Timers Celebrate Good News

We celebrate our members Good News at Prime Timers with a $1 contribution to Henny Penny, our Good News chicken. Periodically Henny donates the money she collects to a charity, currently the Amistad Mission in Bolivia. Donn gave thanks for this webpage!

Giovanni Bellini, Madonna and Child with St John the Baptist and a Saint, 1500-04, Oil on panel, at the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice.

Preparer of the Way

Donn Fullenweider led the Prime Timers today on this third Sunday of Advent. Our scripture today is Luke 3:7-18, with John the Baptist, the last prophet, calling the crowds coming to be baptized "You brood of vipers!" We have another prophet in our readings, Zephaniah. He is a minor prophet from the seventh century B.C.E. As James Kugel in "How to Read the Bible" points out, from the time of Samuel on, prophesy is presented as an established institution in Israel, and the difference between major prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel and the twelve minor prophets is primarily due to the amount of writings attributed to them! The "big three" alone account for almost twenty percent of the Hebrew Bible. Anyway, Zephaniah belongs to the period of the fall of Assyria and the growing menace of Babylon.

Donn found a wonderful website in Australia, The Laughingbird Liturgical Resources who as their "gift to the wider Church from the South Yarra Community Baptist Church in Melbourne, Australia" have paraphrased the readings from the Revised Common Lectionary. For example, here is the reading from Zephaniah 3:14-20 in modern language:

Lift your voices, all you children of Israel,
sing and shout for joy!
Let your hair down, Jerusalem,
celebrate with all your heart!

The LORD has let you out of jail
and forced your enemies to turn tail and run.
The one who rules over Israel - the LORD -
is right alongside you, so you have nothing to fear;
no disaster can touch you now.

The great day is coming, Jerusalem,
when you will hear this message:

“Relax! Don’t be afraid, people of Zion;
your hands can stop trembling now!
The LORD, your God, is right alongside you;
a champion who always comes out on top.
God will be bursting with joy over you,
celebrating as though it was always your birthday!
God will nourish you with love
until the spring is back in your step.”

The LORD, your God , says to you:

“I will bring your misfortune to an end;
and set you free from its humiliation.
Those who have kicked you around
will have me to deal with!
I will rescue and reunite
the crippled and the refugees.
No longer will they be treated with contempt;
I’ll see that they are honoured all over the world.
When that time comes,
I will gather you together and bring you all home.
With your own eyes
you’ll see me restore all that is rightly yours.
Then you will be honoured everywhere;
everyone on earth will sing your praises.
I, the LORD, have spoken.”

©2000 Nathan Nettleton www.laughingbird.net

Kind of sounds like the coach giving a pep talk to the team. Next we read Isaiah 12:2-6, here it is in paraphrase by Laughingbird:

You alone, LORD, are able to set us free,
so we put our trust in you, and have nothing to fear.
All our strength and power come from you, LORD GOD,
you have become our hero, our saviour!

You will put your saving love on tap,
deep draughts to be enjoyed by everyone.
On that day we will all say to one another,
“Thank the LORD! Let God’s name be on everyone’s lips!”

We will tell the world what you have done,
we will shout your name and declare you to be number 1.
We will sing your praises for all you have accomplished,
and give you the glory all over the earth.
With all the citizens of Zion, we lift our voices to you
with shouts and laughter and songs of celebration,
for you are the ultimate, the greatest, the Holy One
and you live among us, your people!

Notice that while paraphrased, the author pays great respect to the original, not skipping anything, just finding a more modern way to say it! Moving along, we read a short passage from Paul's letter to the Philippians 4:4-7:

Celebrate the Lord non-stop. I repeat - celebrate! Let your hair down! See that you get a reputation for gentleness - pushiness only gets up everyone’s nose and we can’t afford that when the Lord is so close.
Don’t go getting anxious about anything, but pray about everything. Worrying never fixed anything, so take action: repackage your concerns as prayers. Spell out to God what it is you want, giving thanks in advance, and get it off your chest. You’ll find it is such a relief! The peace of God, which no one can ever make sense of, will move in and take over. The fears and anxieties will be pushed aside and your troubled hearts and minds will take refuge in Christ Jesus to relax and recover.

Philippians 4:7 is where Paul says "And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

Finally we read the Scripture from Luke 3:7-18 with John the Baptist providing lots of advice to the people wanting to be baptized:

John’s baptism became the ‘in thing’ and people flocked out to be baptised by him. John was not convinced by them though, and bellowed, “You slippery bunch of snakes! What makes you think that running down here for a quick wash will get you off scot free when the judgment comes? You’ve got to walk the walk. Show by your actions that you’ve turned your lives around as you say you have. And don’t go thinking you’ve got the inside running just because you can trace your family tree back to Abraham. I’m telling you straight, descendants of Abraham are thick on the ground and, at the snap of a finger, God could turn these rocks into a few more. Family trees count for nothing; it is what sort of fruit the tree bears that matters. If the fruit is rubbish, God will have no hesitation in wielding the axe, cutting the tree off at the ground and tossing it on the fire.”

That got their attention! “What should we do then?” they asked him.
John replied, “Live differently. If you have two coats and someone else has none, then share. If you have food, do the same again — share. That’s the sort of thing you should do.”
Even some of the people who collected taxes for the Roman occupation forces came out to be baptised. “Teacher, what should we do?” they asked.
John replied, “Don’t rip anybody off. Collect only what the law prescribes and no more.”
Some members of the security forces came too and asked, “What about us? What should we do?”
“No stand-over tactics and no protection rackets,” John replied. “No intimidation or throwing your weight around to extort money out of people. You get paid your wages — be satisfied with that.”
John’s activities struck a chord with the deep yearning for a national saviour, and people began to speculate that perhaps John might be the one who God had chosen. John was quick to hose down such ideas, saying, “I’m only baptising you with water. The One who is coming is way out of my league — the chance to polish his boots would be more than I could aspire to. When he gets started, it won’t be just water that he’ll be immersing you in. He’ll baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire. He’s ready to start with his flame thrower in hand. He’ll release an uncontrollable fire into the dry bushland of your lives, completely incinerating the rubbish and germinating the good seeds that lie in wait for that day.”
John made a lot of speeches like that. He was constantly on the job, getting the Word out, bringing the people up to speed with the good news about what God was doing.

The class enjoyed hearing these alternate interpretations of the Bible, and if you enjoyed reading these and would like to support the "cash strapped" church that created them, click here!

Donn asked the class if John the Baptist is a saint. This brought George to point out that there is a difference between Saints in the Church and Saints in the Bible. John the Baptist is refered to as St. John the Baptist and as a prophet can be called "a messenger sent by God to speak on His behalf." (Kugel p439) In the General Calendar of the Roman Catholic church June 24th is celebrated as the birth of St. John the Baptist, and August 29th is recognized as the day John the Baptist was beheaded. So you can be pretty sure he is a saint!

Is John the Baptist relevant today? The class wished that more people would listen to his wisdom. One member mentioned this AP story in the Houston Chronicle about a huge Christian Church in China. Here is an independent church with the co-pastors put in jail and "police and hired thugs" breaking windows and injuring parishioners. From the article "While the Chinese constitution guarantees freedom of religion, Christians are required to worship in churches run by state-controlled organizations: The Three-Self Patriotic Movement for Protestants and the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association for Roman Catholics." Many small countries look to the Chinese model as a way of having authoritarian order and prosperity too, but you should watch out what you ask for!

Finally class members mentioned the difference between us and our forefathers during the revolution. Someone read a talk by former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich who described what George Washington accomplished. If you have a few minutes it is worth hearing this talk by Newt and his co-author Bill Forstchen from their new book, To Try Men's Souls. You probably remember Washington crossing the Delaware, did you know it was in the dead of winter, that many soldiers in his troop didn't have shoes and walked eight miles with burlap around their feet?

Donn concluded class with a short prayer.

The Readings for Sunday, December 20th are from Lectionary Year Three, Advent-4C. "Magnificat"

The Readings this week are Micah 5:2-5a; Canticle 3 (Luke 1:46-55); Psalm 80:1-7; Hebrews 10:5-10. The Scripture is Luke 1:39-55. The text is from the New International Version.

Micah 5:2-5a

² "But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
though you are small among the clans of Judah,
out of you will come for me
one who will be ruler over Israel,
whose origins are from of old,
from ancient times. "

³ Therefore Israel will be abandoned
until the time when she who is in labor gives birth
and the rest of his brothers return
to join the Israelites.

⁴ He will stand and shepherd his flock
in the strength of the LORD,
in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God.
And they will live securely, for then his greatness
will reach to the ends of the earth.

⁵ And he will be their peace.

Canticle 3 (Luke 1:46-55) Mary's Song

⁴⁶And Mary said:
"My soul glorifies the Lord ⁴⁷and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, ⁴⁸for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed, ⁴⁹for the Mighty One has done great things for me— holy is his name. ⁵⁰His mercy extends to those who fear him,
from generation to generation.
⁵¹He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
⁵²He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble.
⁵³He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.
⁵⁴He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful ⁵⁵to Abraham and his descendants forever, even as he said to our fathers."

Psalm 80:1-7

¹ Hear us, O Shepherd of Israel,
you who lead Joseph like a flock;
you who sit enthroned between the cherubim, shine forth

² before Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh.
Awaken your might;
come and save us.

³ Restore us, O God;
make your face shine upon us,
that we may be saved.

⁴ O LORD God Almighty,
how long will your anger smolder
against the prayers of your people?

⁵ You have fed them with the bread of tears;
you have made them drink tears by the bowlful.

⁶ You have made us a source of contention to our neighbors,
and our enemies mock us.

⁷ Restore us, O God Almighty;
make your face shine upon us,
that we may be saved.

Hebrews 10:5-10

⁵Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said:
"Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me;
⁶with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased.
⁷Then I said, 'Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll—
I have come to do your will, O God.' " ⁸First he said, "Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them" (although the law required them to be made). ⁹Then he said, "Here I am, I have come to do your will." He sets aside the first to establish the second. ¹⁰And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Luke 1:39-45

³⁹At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, ⁴⁰where she entered Zechariah's home and greeted Elizabeth. ⁴¹When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. ⁴²In a loud voice she exclaimed: "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! ⁴³But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? ⁴⁴As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. ⁴⁵Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished!"

NIV