Exodus 3:4 "...And Moses said, 'Here I am.'"

Prime Timers, a St. Martin's Adult Christian Education (A.C.E.) group, also known as an A.B.F. (Adult Bible Fellowship), is for people in the Prime of Life, age 50 and beyond. Class meets in the Parlor near the Church Offices each Sunday from 10:15 am to 11:00. We are following a course of study from the United Council of Churches titled Call Sealed with a Promise. You are invited to join our group as we begin a new unit titled "Called Out of Egypt" and spend some time with us studying the Old Testament.

Marketplace at St. Martin's Episcopal Church!

Here are Prime Timers Donn, Maria, cast member Carol, Lynn, cast member Larry and Marty at St. Martin's big August event, Marketplace, with the Activity center transformed into an authentic Judean market!

Carpenters at work.

Jewelry for sale.

Prime Timers Maria and Lynn pick up some fruit at the Marketplace!

No St. Martin's event is complete without Prime Timers Carol and Larry!

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.  Marty gave thanks for the Marketplace event during the past week, especially Prime Timers Carol and Larry, who participated as cast members. George gave thanks for some rain on his farm property, and Donn is grateful his stepson underwent successful cancer surgery, the doctors saying he won't need any follow up treatment. His stepson is in his thirties.

Eat at Fred's

The Prime Timers monthly get together will be Tuesday, August 18, at 6:30pm at Fred's Italian Corner Restaurant, 2278 West Holcombe Boulevard at Greenbriar, 713-665-7506. Please let Lynn Swaffar know if you are coming, (281) 495-3832.

Moses Disobeys

Donn Fullenweider led the Prime Timers on our journey with the Israelites, Moses and Aaron today with some more miracles, and some scientific explanation! The Israelites are near the end of their forty year journey, and as we witnessed many times this summer, they are griping and cursing their fates. We need water! Numbers 20:4 "Why did you bring the LORD's community into this desert, that we and our livestock should die here?" This event is like a bookend to a similar event described in Exodus 17:1-7 where Moses asks God for water to take care of his people. Both this place and the one in our reading are called "Meribah" from the Hebrew word for strife or contention.

Biblical maps of the journey in the wilderness show the Israelites leaving Egypt and then going south along the Gulf of Suez to Mt. Sinai, where they turn to the north following the Gulf of Aqaba. At Ezion Geber they take off into the desert in a circle that ends up back at Ezion Geber. It is in this circle where they come to Kadesh and the Desert of Zin (Sin). A big question in this story is what exactly is Moses sin here? God tells Moses to talk to the rock where Moses strikes it to bring forth the water, but this hardly seems enough for God to deny Moses and Aaron entrance to the Holy land. More likely it involves Moses and Aaron not trusting God. Mention of the event is made in Psalm 95:

¹ Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD;
   let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.

² Let us come before him with thanksgiving
   and extol him with music and song.

³ For the LORD is the great God,
   the great King above all gods.

⁴ In his hand are the depths of the earth,
   and the mountain peaks belong to him.

⁵ The sea is his, for he made it,
   and his hands formed the dry land.

⁶ Come, let us bow down in worship,
   let us kneel before the LORD our Maker;

⁷ for he is our God
   and we are the people of his pasture,
     the flock under his care.
   Today, if you hear his voice,

⁸ do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah,
   as you did that day at Massah in the desert,

⁹ where your fathers tested and tried me,
   though they had seen what I did.

¹⁰ For forty years I was angry with that generation;
   I said, "They are a people whose hearts go astray,
   and they have not known my ways."

¹¹ So I declared on oath in my anger,
   "They shall never enter my rest."

Donn mentioned James Kugel's (from his book "How to Read the Bible") description of the ancient Bible interpreters explanation for the rock that pours forth water in these two passages. They noted how there was no complaint about a lack of water in between these events, almost forty years apart, and concluded that the Israelites took the rock Moses struck wherever they went; that the rock was transported with them! Modern scholars feel that the two accounts are different authors describing the same event and that the compilers of the Pentateuch, or first five books of the Bible, left both accounts in the Bible.

Can you strike a rock and produce water? Donn found a story by a famous archaeologist describing digging a trench under a rock in the desert to reach some water; accidentally breaking part of the rock; and seeing water gush forth! The rock was capping some kind of artisan well. So it is not far fetched to think of producing water by striking a rock in the desert!!!

The bigger lesson from today's Scripture is that God works through imperfect beings, as George said "God always uses flawed people for His works since there are no other kind!" Do we expect too much of our leaders? How can we help them? It seems that in today's world we are very cynical about people in authority and that we seem to enjoy seeing them brought down. Are we reaching a point where nothing is accomplished? Are we all like the griping Israelites, bemoaning our fates, but with no Moses to save us? Or is the rock that Moses struck like the rock that is Jesus, or this from Matthew 16:17-19: "Jesus replied, 'Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. ¹⁸And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. ¹⁹I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.'" George recalled former St. Martin's rector Bagby saying that if you ever found a perfect church, don't join it because you might ruin it!

Donn concluded class with this short benediction:  "We hear your call, O God, and ask that you send us forth empowered by your Spirit to live and serve as your covenant people."

The Lesson for Sunday, August 23rd,  is "God Calls for Obedience"

Key Verse:  Deuteronomy 6:4-6

Focus of the Lesson: When people obey laws, they expect that life will be good. Why do people care at all about laws and try to follow them? Deuteronomy states that God gives laws for our benefit.

The reading is Deuteronomy 6:1-9, 20-24. This text is from the New International Version. (NIV)

   ¹These are the commands, decrees and laws the LORD your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, ²so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the LORD your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. ³Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the LORD, the God of your fathers, promised you.

   ⁴Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. ⁵Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. ⁶These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. ⁷Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. ⁸Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. ⁹Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

   ¹⁰When the LORD your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you—a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, ¹¹houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant—then when you eat and are satisfied, ¹²be careful that you do not forget the LORD, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

   ¹³Fear the LORD your God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name. ¹⁴Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you; ¹⁵for the LORD your God, who is among you, is a jealous God and his anger will burn against you, and he will destroy you from the face of the land. ¹⁶Do not test the LORD your God as you did at Massah. ¹⁷Be sure to keep the commands of the LORD your God and the stipulations and decrees he has given you. ¹⁸Do what is right and good in the LORD's sight, so that it may go well with you and you may go in and take over the good land that the LORD promised on oath to your forefathers, ¹⁹thrusting out all your enemies before you, as the LORD said.

   ²⁰In the future, when your son asks you, "What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws the LORD our God has commanded you?" ²¹tell him: "We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. ²²Before our eyes the LORD sent miraculous signs and wonders—great and terrible—upon Egypt and Pharaoh and his whole household. ²³But he brought us out from there to bring us in and give us the land that he promised on oath to our forefathers. ²⁴The LORD commanded us to obey all these decrees and to fear the LORD our God, so that we might always prosper and be kept alive, as is the case today. ²⁵And if we are careful to obey all this law before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness."

NIV