The Advent Altar at St. Martin's Church

Prime Timers

The Prime Timers were a Bible study group at St. Martin's for eight years. One of the goals of our founder, Jackie Rose, was to have a weekly web page for the group and all the pages are still online here. The group disbanded but the readings below are being kept up to date.

Lectionary readings

The Readings for Sunday, December 9, are from Lectionary Year Two, Second Sunday of Advent, RCL C, Baruch 5:1-9; Canticle 16; Philippians 1:3-11 and Luke 3:1-6. The text is from the New Revised Standard Version. *

Baruch 5:1-9

¹Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem,
and put on forever 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 toward 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.
⁸For God will lead Israel with joy,
in the light of his glory,
with the mercy and righteousness that come from him.

Canticle 16

The Song of Zechariah

⁶⁸ ‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
for he has looked favourably on his people and redeemed them.
⁶⁹ He has raised up a mighty saviour for us
in the house of his servant David,
⁷⁰ as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,
⁷¹ that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.
⁷² Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors,
and has remembered his holy covenant,
⁷³ the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham,
to grant us ⁷⁴that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies,
might serve him without fear, ⁷⁵in holiness and righteousness
before him all our days.
⁷⁶ And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
⁷⁷ to give knowledge of salvation to his people
by the forgiveness of their sins.
⁷⁸ By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
⁷⁹ to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.’

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 defence 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.
⁵ Every 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;
⁶ and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” ’

NRSV