"In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams...²¹ Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved."
(Acts 2:17, 21)

Prime Timers is a Christian Education group at St. Martin's for Episcopalians aged fifty and above. We are following a course of study based on the Revised Common Lectionary, the three year cycle of Bible readings used throughout the Anglican Communion and by many Protestant denominations worldwide. Next week's readings are right here, at the bottom of the page! You are invited to join us in the Parlor near the church offices, Sunday after the 9:00am service, 10:15am to 11:00.

The Pentecost, by El Greco, 1596-1600, Oil on canvas, at the Museo del Prado, Madrid

Prime Timer Good News!

A Prime Timer tradition is hearing what others are up to, and charging a dollar for the privilege! Currently we donate the money we collect to the Amistad Mission in Bolivia, helping underprivileged kids.

Today Marty told about his cousin's daughter graduating Cum Laude from High School and Elisabeth celebrated one of her grandchildren who just finished his Junior year. Both these kids have jobs for the summer, in fields they think they want to pursue!

After class we found out that our leader Carol just returned home after six weeks of rehabilitation after knee replacement surgery! She sounds great and of course is happy to be back home, and almost made it in to church this morning! Husband Larry wanted to come to church as well!

Sharing in Christ's Life

George Laigle led the Prime Times today while our leader Carol Hartland is away. This is the Sunday before Pentecost, and also the Sunday after most Houston area High Schools began Summer break. Our class notes describe this as "Expectation Sunday" but none of us could recall hearing this description. Rev. Fields jokingly began his Sermon this morning telling us about the Festival Sundays, with their accompanying songs and prayers, so this Sunday might be called a Sunday where nothing happens!

Expectation, of course, refers to Pentecost, the story of next week's readings. See the reading from Acts 2 below. In this weeks reading from John Jesus tells the disciples his earthly work is done, and asks that Father protect the disciples as they carry on Jesus' work. Jesus work is to make God's true nature known to us, and now the disciples, and all Christians, are charged with continuing this good work.

As the conversation turned to the difference between what the disciples went through at the time of Christ's death and resurrection to today, George reminded us of this chronicle of an amazing visit to the Rocky Mountains by Isabella L. Bird in the late 1800's. You can read it yourself by clicking on the name: "A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains." These were pioneer days and there were no national parks to visit! She tells the story in a series of letters to her sister. Just imagine the problems she ran into just trying to post the letters. Just to give you some of the flavor of these letters, here is an excerpt from Letter three, posted in Cheyenne, Wyoming after a train ride (Truckee is a town on the edge of what is now the Donner state park in California):

"As I lay down, the gallop under the dark pines, the frosty moon, the forest fires, the flaring lights and roaring din of Truckee faded as dreams fade, and eight hours later a pure, pink dawn divulged a level blasted region, with grey sage brush growing out of a soil encrusted with alkali, and bounded on either side by low glaring ridges. All through that day we traveled under a cloudless sky over solitary glaring plains, and stopped twice at solitary, glaring frame houses, where coarse, greasy meals, infested by lazy flies, were provided at a dollar per head. By evening we were running across the continent on a bee line, and I sat for an hour on the rear platform of the rear car to enjoy the wonderful beauty of the sunset and the atmosphere. Far as one could see in the crystalline air there was nothing but desert. The jagged Humboldt ranges flaming in the sunset, with snow in their clefts, though forty-five miles off, looked within an easy canter. The bright metal track, purpling like all else in the cool distance, was all that linked one with Eastern or Western civilization."

Shelley and Jim Douglass are faith based activists. She currently runs a Catholic worker house near Birmingham, Alabama. She has written:
“The cloud, Luke’s sign of God’s holiness from the transfiguration to the ascension, is a context for the central reality of the cross that we, like the apostles, don’t want to see.
“So the young men wearing white—the symbol of martyrdom— put it to us: ‘This Jesus, who has been taken up from you [on the cross] into heaven [into God] will come in the same way as you saw him go’—on a cross we’d like to forget. Do I recognize Jesus’ coming on the cross now? Do I see him coming in each suffering sister and brother? As a would-be disciple, do I see his coming on the cross as my cross? Gandhi, who said he wasn’t a Christian, put Jesus’ cross at the center of his life. He said, ‘Living Christ is a living cross. Without it life is a living death.’”

Marty gave a short prayer to end today's class.

Lectionary readings

The Readings for Sunday, June 12th are from Lectionary Year One, Day of Pentecost-A, "In Wind and Fire": Psalm 104:25-35, 37b; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13; John 20:19-23 and Acts 2:1-21 The text this week is from the New Revised Standard Version.

Psalm 104:25-35, 37b

²⁵ Yonder is the sea, great and wide,
creeping things innumerable are there,
living things both small and great.
²⁶ There go the ships,
and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it.

²⁷ These all look to you
to give them their food in due season;
²⁸ when you give to them, they gather it up;
when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
²⁹ When you hide your face, they are dismayed;
when you take away their breath, they die
and return to their dust.
³⁰ When you send forth your spirit, they are created;
and you renew the face of the ground.

³¹ May the glory of the Lord endure for ever;
may the Lord rejoice in his works—
³² who looks on the earth and it trembles,
who touches the mountains and they smoke.
³³ I will sing to the Lord as long as I live;
I will sing praise to my God while I have being.
³⁴ May my meditation be pleasing to him,
for I rejoice in the Lord.
³⁵ Let sinners be consumed from the earth,
and let the wicked be no more.
Bless the Lord, O my soul.
Praise the Lord!

1 Corinthians 12:3b-13

³...no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says ‘Let Jesus be cursed!’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.

⁴ Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; ⁵and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; ⁶and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. ⁷To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. ⁸To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, ⁹to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, ¹⁰to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. ¹¹All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.

¹² For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. ¹³For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

John 20:19-23

¹⁹ When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ ²⁰After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. ²¹Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ ²²When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’

Acts 2:1-21

¹When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. ²And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. ³Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. ⁴All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

⁵ Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. ⁶And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. ⁷Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? ⁹Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, ¹¹Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.’ ¹²All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘What does this mean?’ ¹³But others sneered and said, ‘They are filled with new wine.’

¹⁴ But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them: ‘Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. ¹⁵Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. ¹⁶No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
¹⁷ “In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
¹⁸ Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
¹⁹ And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
²⁰ The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
²¹ Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. ”

NRSV