Welcome to the St. Martin's Prime Timers Adult Bible Fellowship.

We meet each Sunday in the Payne Education Center, rooms 207-209, from 10:10 to 10:50. During Lent this year our mentor, Vice-Rector Rev. Massey Gentry will be teaching. His Lenten theme is the Five Keys to Observing a Holy Lent. This is a special time of year for all Christians and you are invited to join us.

Prime Timer News

The Prime Timers Shrove Tuesday theme was the 60's! You can click on all these photos for a better look!

Prime Timers Mentor, the Rev. Massey Gentry at the St. Martins Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper.

The Rev. Ron Morris as Moses! The Seekers theme was "Before Christ."

The Single Adults ABF theme was the Seventies, with their mentor the Rev. John "Travolta" Graham. On the right is the Shrove Tuesday award.

Lent is the season for repentance.

Our mentor, Vice-Rector the Rev. Massey Gentry is teaching the Prime Timers during Lent and this weeks theme was repentance. Repentance, Massey began, is at the very core of the message of Jesus. The very first words of Jesus in Mark 1:15 are "The time has come," he said. "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!"  What does Jesus mean when he talks about repentance?

Massey described "make up" repentance. He was one of only a few boys in his family and hung out with his cousin, who lived around the corner. If young Massey hit the cousin with a baseball bat (!) then the cousin would be entitled to a free hit back, making up for the wrong. There is also the concept of karma, where bad things are balanced out with good. Neither of these is what Jesus meant by repentance.

Repentance requires acts and being. That means its not enough just to perform acts of contrition, kind of like the baseball bat example. You also need to feel repentance with all your being. There is a kind of goofy show on NBC this season, "My Name is Earl" about a ne'er do well guy who wins the Lottery and then goes about trying to right all the wrongs he's done to others in his life. Another show is "NYPD Blue" that ran from 1993 to 2005. This award winning show could be called "the redemption of Andy Sipowicz," referring to the character played by Dennis Franz. He had a drinking problem, went through a bad divorce and yet turned into one of the strongest most interesting characters on the show.

No discussion of repentance in the Anglican church would be complete without mention of St. Augustine, for with repentance you can have salvation and grace. He lived from 354 to 430 and his writings led to concepts such as the just war, and expressions like "love the sinner and hate the sin." He influenced Martin Luther and John Calvin. He is a major force in the early church both Roman Catholic and the Anglican communion. His works are still read around the world.

While the idea of repentance and amendment of life is a strong idea in the church, how many people can actually make this kind of change? Massey gave an example from his early ministry in Alabama, where the county he preached in had four prisons. Some of his early work consisted of visiting people who had done crimes and were paying their debt to society. One person was a sex offender who had done some terrible things. He was released from prison and within one year had committed another sex crime. Perhaps this person is beyond redemption.

Then again how likely is it that we can change our own habits? Sometimes we simply can't change no matter how hard we try. This is where grace comes in. It is really up to God to determine if we are redeemed. Someone brought up the movie Amazing Grace, the story of Englishman William Wilberforce and his struggle to end the slave trade in England. We all know the song Amazing Grace, it was written around 1772 by John Newton recalling an experience in a storm on a slave ship in 1748.

It is interesting to note that rulers of the past were generally not baptized until just before they died! I guess this was a form of hedging your bets among the ruling class.

Finally Massey recommended this reading from the book of Common Prayer, The Reconciliation of the Penitent, starting on page 447.

Prime Timers Contact names and numbers

Mentor

Rev. B. Massey Gentry
mgentry@stmartinsepiscopal.org

Leaders

The Rev. Disco John Graham accepts the Shrove Tuesday Award for best float. The theme was the 70's.

Rev. Jerald Hyche brought back the 80's with a Miami Vice theme.

Our Rector, the Rev. Larry Gipson is retiring this year. Some of our Young People created "Future Larry" as their float. Rev. Gipson is looking at a TV and in his hand is a remote control.

The Rev. Bob Brown as a Bomber Pilot. The theme was the Forties!

The Rev. John Bentley as a Cold War Rebel in a Fifties theme complete with penny loafers!

The Seekers crew. Click on this to read the tablet in Shirley McAlister's hand!

Seven Christian Habits:

1.  A personal, intimate relationship (through the Holy Spirit) with God as He is revealed in Jesus Christ in which I believe and trust in Him and His love for me and for my salvation in this life and the life to come.

2.  Daily personal prayer and weekly worship of God in His Church by which I receive the renewal of my emotional-spiritual energy which I need to live my life.

3.  Regular study of the Bible to understand how God has related to His people and what His will has been.

4.  Adjusting my will to the will of God for me as revealed in Scripture, prayer, worship and my relationship with Him.

5.  Service (which is ministry, which is love, which is doing good to God, others and self):

a. At home to family and friends.
b. At work to co-workers.
c. At Church.
d. In the world, especially by leading others to God in Christ.

6.  Fellowship (renewing relationship) with Christian people.

7.  Stewardship of my resources:

a. Of my relationships.
b. Of my time and talent.
c. Of my money, giving to God and His work my tithe (as I calculate it).

The Lesson for Sunday, March 11th is titled "Striving for Pure Love"

Key Verse:  1 John 3:2

Focus of the Lesson:  Even people who love each other sometimes react angrily or harshly to one another. When we fail to show pure love to one another, what does that say about us as Christians? John acknowledges that we are all prone to such emotional lapses, yet he encourages us to keep striving  for purity in our love--because it is by our overall abiding love that God judges us, not by our occasional failures.

The reading is 1 John 3:11-24. This text is from the New International Version^®.

Background Scripture:  1 John 3

   ²Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

   ¹¹This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. ¹²Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother's were righteous. ¹³Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you. ¹⁴We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. ¹⁵Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.

   ¹⁶This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. ¹⁷If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? ¹⁸Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. ¹⁹This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence ²⁰whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.

   ²¹Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God ²²and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him. ²³And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. ²⁴Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.

NIV®