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

Each Sunday we meet in the Payne Education Center, rooms 207-209, from 10:10 to 10:50. During Lent this year our mentor, Vice-Rector the 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

Vice Rector the Rev. Massey Gentry is the Prime Timer mentor. During Lent this year all the St. Martin's ABF's are led by their mentors.

Fasting and Renewal of the Spirit

The Rev. Massey Gentry taught the Prime Timers today. His Lenten theme was Fasting. He began by describing his own experience with fasting one day a week during Lent. After several years when Lent came around his family asked him if he was going to fast again. Massey asked why and they said it was because he became "as mean as a snake." This was a wake up call that fasting really has an effect on your life, although not always a spiritual awakening!

Ancient people drew a line between what was sacred and what was profane, what was clean and what was unclean. Food was always defined as clean. For strict Jewish people some foods, like pork, fell into the category of unclean, largely because they observed that pigs would eat most anything. In Muslim countries during the month of Ramadan Massey observed that while they would fast during the day it was pretty much feast and party at night. These examples show that while they may be called fasting it is more of a practice of faith than the kind of fasting that can really change your thinking.

The class was really interested in actual fasting, where you only consume water or juice for several days. Massey allowed that someone fasting for forty days would probably die about half way through. The first day of fasting you begin to feel pretty bad as your normal hunger is not satisfied. Somewhere during the second day, when your body begins to adjust to not having food, is when you can "establish a new center" and see yourself in a new light. Anyone contemplating fasting should realize that this is something you do when you are healthy, don't fast if you are under stress or are sick.

Massey is a fan of hiking and getting out in nature. He described hiking to a place where you want to stay, not just heading for prescribed places. Whether its just a place that feels safe or a place with a great view its a place where you can feel renewed. Kind of like fasting its a way of establishing a peaceful center. Massey referred us to the Old Testament reading from this mornings service, from the fourth book of Joshua describing the twelve stones taken from the river Jordan, that God had made passable for the Israelites, placed in Gilgal to remind the people of the power of God.

Massey had to leave early today as he was preaching. His sermon was based on the story of the Prodigal Son. You can read this for yourself in your Bible. Its Luke 15:11-32.

Prime Timers Contact names and numbers

Mentor

Rev. B. Massey Gentry
mgentry@stmartinsepiscopal.org

Leaders

The Prodigal Son, by Albrecht Dürer. 1496, Engraving at the Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe. Rev. Gentry's sermon brought this story to modern life!

The Return of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt, 1669. Oil on canvas, at The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia.

St Jerome Penitent in the Wilderness, Albrecht Dürer, c. 1496. Engraving, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Our Lenten theme today was fasting.

The Lesson for Sunday, March 25th is titled "The Way to Love and Life"

While Rev. Gentry and the St. Martin's Clergy are teaching the ABF classes during Lent, our program from the Uniform Series of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA continues. Below is the reading for next week.

Key Verse:  1 John 5:11

Focus of the Lesson:  People want to believe that life can go on after physical death. What hope of life after death can we find in Jesus Christ? John affirms that our victorious faith in Jesus Christ will grant us eternal life and empower us to love in the way that God wants.

The reading is 1 John 5:1-12. This text is from the New International Version^®.

   ¹Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. ²This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. ³This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, ⁴for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. ⁵Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

   ⁶This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. ⁷For there are three that testify: ⁸the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement. ⁹We accept man's testimony, but God's testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son. ¹⁰Anyone who believes in the Son of God has this testimony in his heart. Anyone who does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because he has not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. ¹¹And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. ¹²He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.

NIV®

Art from great masters of the past is courtesy of the Web Gallery of Art.