The Season of Advent Begins

Prime Timers is a St. Martin's Adult Christian Education (A.C.E.) group, or an A.B.F. (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. As a class we all agreed we had lots to be thankful for over the Thanksgiving weekend just past. Lynn got a call from her daughter, a missionary in Budapest, Hungary. Apparently this is not a regular occurrence! Her daughter reported connecting with her students in a new and hopeful way. They had a Thanksgiving dinner, the first for the students, and are planning a similar event at Christmas. Most of these kids were raised without religion, so these events are a breakthrough.

Prime Timers Monthly Dinner

What with Advent and Christmas right around the corner, our monthly dinner in December will be on Tuesday, December 1, 6:30 pm at Bistro Calais, 2811 Bammel Lane, 713.529.1314. Bammel Lane is in River Oaks south off Westheimer in-between Buffalo Speedway and Kirby. Please call Lynn Swaffar at 281-495-3832 if you are coming.

With Power and Great Glory

Donn Fullenweider led the Prime Timers today on our first meeting of the Advent season. A reading from Jeremiah might seem a strange way to begin the season of hope and expectation that is Advent. Jeremiah was a prophet most likely born in 627 B.C.E. who lived through the Babylonian conquering of Judah and the destruction of the temple. His writing is often apocalyptical, reflecting the desperation of those times. How does this relate to Advent? Jeremiah 33:14: "'The days are coming,' declares the LORD, 'when I will fulfill the gracious promise I made to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah." As a prophet, Jeremiah uses a theme of the people as an unfaithful wife and as rebellious children in chapters two and three. The loss of their country and the temple can be seen as a judgment for breaking the covenant with God. And yet there is also the possibility of redemption.

Psalm 25 continues the theme of thankfulness to the Lord in the face of our rebelliousness and sins. Class members commented that all the imagery in the readings about the end of the world are a reminder that this could happen to any of us at any time, and that being prepared for this is a constant mission. People in the time of Jesus believed that they might see Jesus' return, and the end times, in their own lifetimes. This is reflected in the passage from Luke.

Our material supporting the readings has a passage from Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, who was assassinated in 1980: “The present form of the world passes away, and there remains only the joy of having used this world to establish God’s rule here. All pomp, all triumphs, all selfish capitalism, all the false successes of life will pass with the world’s form. All of that passes away. What does not pass away is love. When one has turned money, property, work in one’s calling into service of others, then the joy of sharing and the feeling that all are one’s family
does not pass away. In the evening of life you will be judged on love.”

Donn suggested that we all promise to do something constructive during the busy Christmas season, such as one of the many outreach opportunities at St. Martin's.

Donn concluded class with a short prayer.

The Readings for Sunday, December 6th are from Lectionary Year Three, Advent-2C. "A Baptism of Repentance"

The Readings this week are Canticle 4 (Luke 1:68-79), Baruch 5:1-9 from the Apocrypha, Malachi 3:1-4 from the Old Testament prophets, Paul's letter to the Philippians 1:3-11 and Luke 3:1-6. The text is from the New Revised Standard Version.

Canticle 4 (Luke 1:68-79) The Song of Zechariah

⁶⁸"Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,
because he has come and has redeemed his people.
⁶⁹He has raised up a horn of salvation for us
in the house of his servant David
⁷⁰(as he said through his holy prophets of long ago),
⁷¹salvation from our enemies
and from the hand of all who hate us—
⁷²to show mercy to our fathers
and to remember his holy covenant,
⁷³the oath he swore to our father Abraham:
⁷⁴to rescue us from the hand of our enemies,
and to enable us to serve him without fear
⁷⁵in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.
⁷⁶And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High;
for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him,
⁷⁷to give his people the knowledge of salvation
through the forgiveness of their sins,
⁷⁸because of the tender mercy of our God,
by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
⁷⁹to shine on those living in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace."

Baruch 5:1-9

¹Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem,
and put on for ever the beauty of the glory from God.
²Put on the robe of the righteousness that comes from God;
put on your head the diadem of the glory of the Everlasting;
³for God will show your splendor everywhere under heaven.
⁴For God will give you evermore the name,
‘Righteous Peace, Godly Glory’.

⁵Arise, O Jerusalem, stand upon the height;
look towards the east, and see your children gathered from west and east
at the word of the Holy One, rejoicing that God has remembered them.
⁶For they went out from you on foot, led away by their enemies;
but God will bring them back to you, carried in glory, as on a royal throne.
⁷For God has ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low and the valleys filled up, to make level ground, so that Israel may walk safely in the glory of God.
⁸The woods and every fragrant tree have shaded Israel at God’s command.
⁹For God will lead Israel with joy, in the light of his glory, with the mercy and righteousness that come from him.

Malachi 3:1-4

¹See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. ²But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?
For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; ³he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. ⁴Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.

Philippians 1:3-11

³ I thank my God every time I remember you, ⁴constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, ⁵because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now. ⁶I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. ⁷It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because you hold me in your heart, for all of you share in God’s grace with me, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. ⁸For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus. ⁹And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight ¹⁰to help you to determine what is best, so that on the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, ¹¹having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.

Luke 3:1-6

¹In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, ²during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. ³He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, ⁴as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,
‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
⁵Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth;
⁶and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” ’

NIV