St. Paul in stained glass 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, July 21, are from Lectionary Year C, Proper 11: Amos 8:1-12; Psalm 52; Colossians 1:15-28 and Luke 10:38-42. The text is from the New Revised Standard Version. *

Amos 8:1-12

¹This is what the Lord God showed me—a basket of summer fruit. ²He said, ‘Amos, what do you see?’ And I said, ‘A basket of summer fruit.’ Then the Lord said to me,
‘The end has come upon my people Israel;
I will never again pass them by.
³ The songs of the temple shall become wailings on that day,’ says the Lord God;
‘the dead bodies shall be many,
cast out in every place. Be silent!’

⁴ Hear this, you that trample on the needy,
and bring to ruin the poor of the land,
⁵ saying, ‘When will the new moon be over
so that we may sell grain;
and the sabbath,
so that we may offer wheat for sale?
We will make the ephah small and the shekel great,
and practise deceit with false balances,
⁶ buying the poor for silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals,
and selling the sweepings of the wheat.’

⁷ The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob:
Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.
⁸ Shall not the land tremble on this account,
and everyone mourn who lives in it,
and all of it rise like the Nile,
and be tossed about and sink again, like the Nile of Egypt?

⁹ On that day, says the Lord God,
I will make the sun go down at noon,
and darken the earth in broad daylight.
¹⁰ I will turn your feasts into mourning,
and all your songs into lamentation;
I will bring sackcloth on all loins,
and baldness on every head;
I will make it like the mourning for an only son,
and the end of it like a bitter day.

¹¹ The time is surely coming, says the Lord God,
when I will send a famine on the land;
not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water,
but of hearing the words of the Lord.
¹² They shall wander from sea to sea,
and from north to east;
they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord,
but they shall not find it.

Psalm 52

To the leader. A Maskil of David, when Doeg the Edomite came to Saul and said to him, ‘David has come to the house of Ahimelech.’

¹ Why do you boast, O mighty one,
of mischief done against the godly?
All day long ²you are plotting destruction.
Your tongue is like a sharp razor,
you worker of treachery.
³ You love evil more than good,
and lying more than speaking the truth.
Selah
⁴ You love all words that devour,
O deceitful tongue.

⁵ But God will break you down for ever;
he will snatch and tear you from your tent;
he will uproot you from the land of the living.
Selah
⁶ The righteous will see, and fear,
and will laugh at the evildoer, saying,
⁷ ‘See the one who would not take
refuge in God,
but trusted in abundant riches,
and sought refuge in wealth!’

⁸ But I am like a green olive tree
in the house of God.
I trust in the steadfast love of God
for ever and ever.
⁹ I will thank you for ever,
because of what you have done.
In the presence of the faithful
I will proclaim your name, for it is good.

Colossians 1:15-28

¹⁵ He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; ¹⁶for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. ¹⁹For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, ²⁰and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

²¹ And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, ²²he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him— ²³provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven. I, Paul, became a servant of this gospel.

²⁴ I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church. ²⁵I became its servant according to God’s commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, ²⁶the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints. ²⁷To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. ²⁸It is he whom we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

Luke 10:38-42

³⁸ Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. ³⁹She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. ⁴⁰But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.’ ⁴¹But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; ⁴²there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.’

* "New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved."
NRSV