The Prime Timers showing "hatitude" at the annual St. Martin's Shrove Tuesday Pancake (or Red Beans and Rice) Supper.

The Dance Floor

Prime Timers Murray and Annette!

St. Martin's Rector Russell Levenson with a parishoner.

This is a Great Time to Join the Prime Timers!

We are a Christian Education group at St. Martin's for Episcopalians aged fifty and above. If you are near the Parlor in between the 9:15 and 11:00am services, come on in, you are invited! We follow a course of study based on the Revised Common Lectionary, the three year cycle of readings from the Bible you hear at every church service. Next week's readings are right here, at the bottom of the page.

Prime Timer Good News!

A Prime Timer tradition is hearing what others are up to, and charging a dollar for the privilege! We donate the money we collect to charities supported by the church.

Empowered for Ministry

Going into the reflective season of Lent, we are reading about Christ's temptations in the desert. This occurs right after Jesus is baptized and before he recruits his Disciples. Our study guide reminds us that temptation and testing is a part of our faith. Moses is tested on Sinai as he receives the Law (Dt. 9:18) "Then I lay prostrate before the Lord as before, for forty days and forty nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all the sin you had committed, provoking the Lord by doing what was evil in his sight." Likewise Elijah's time near Mt. Horeb (1 Kings 19:8) "He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God."

Satan is always there to test the faithful, chosen by God. Who can forget Job? (Job 1:6-12) "One day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. ⁷The Lord said to Satan, ‘Where have you come from?’ Satan answered the Lord, ‘From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.’ ⁸The Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil.’ ⁹Then Satan answered the Lord, ‘Does Job fear God for nothing? ¹⁰Have you not put a fence around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. ¹¹But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.’ ¹²The Lord said to Satan, ‘Very well, all that he has is in your power; only do not stretch out your hand against him!’ So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord." The Old Testament reminds us again in Zechariah 3:1 "Then he showed me the high priest Joshua standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him."

It's Lent, don't forget that Satan is most likely at your side as well. What is he whispering in your ear?

From our class notes, Lauren F. Winner, an author of faith based books, wrote in Sojourners (March-April, 2003):
“In today’s gospel reading, Jesus enters the wilderness to duke it out with the devil. During Lent, we follow him there to wrestle with demons as Jesus wrestled with Satan, our 40 days of Lent mimicking Jesus’ 40 days in the desert. In this way, Lent is perhaps the easiest season of the liturgical year, because this
Lenten struggle is the place where we live year round—wrestling with Satan and trying to model our own strivings on the strivings of the Lord. ... Why do we read about baptism at Lent? Because Lent ... points toward Easter, that holy day on which the church has traditionally emphasized the rite of baptism, the sacramental inauguration of new life in Christ. We can have some measure of peace in our desert wrestlings because we know the outcome of the story. Jesus beats the devil not in the desert only but in rising from the dead.”

Elisabeth gave a short prayer to conclude class.

Lectionary readings

The Readings for Sunday, March 4th are from Lectionary Year Two, Lent 2-B, "Take Up Your Cross": Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16; Psalm 22:22-30; Romans 4:13-25 and Mark 8:31-38. The text this week is from the New Revised Standard Version.

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16

¹When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. ²And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.’ ³Then Abram fell on his face; and God said to him, ⁴‘As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. ⁵No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. ⁶I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. ⁷I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.

¹⁵ God said to Abraham, ‘As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. ¹⁶I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.’

Psalm 22:22-30

²² I will tell of your name to my brothers and sisters;
in the midst of the congregation I will praise you:
²³ You who fear the Lord, praise him!
All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him;
stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!
²⁴ For he did not despise or abhor
the affliction of the afflicted;
he did not hide his face from me,
but heard when I cried to him.

²⁵ From you comes my praise in the great congregation;
my vows I will pay before those who fear him.
²⁶ The poor shall eat and be satisfied;
those who seek him shall praise the Lord.
May your hearts live for ever!

²⁷ All the ends of the earth shall remember
and turn to the Lord;
and all the families of the nations
shall worship before him.
²⁸ For dominion belongs to the Lord,
and he rules over the nations.

²⁹ To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down;
before him shall bow all who go down to the dust,
and I shall live for him.
³⁰ Posterity will serve him;
future generations will be told about the Lord,
³¹ and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn

Romans 4:13-25

¹³ For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. ¹⁴If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. ¹⁵For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation.

¹⁶ For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us, ¹⁷as it is written, ‘I have made you the father of many nations’)—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. ¹⁸Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become ‘the father of many nations’, according to what was said, ‘So numerous shall your descendants be.’ ¹⁹He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. ²⁰No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, ²¹being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. ²²Therefore his faith ‘was reckoned to him as righteousness.’ ²³Now the words, ‘it was reckoned to him’, were written not for his sake alone, ²⁴but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, ²⁵who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.

Mark 8:31-38

³¹ Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. ³²He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. ³³But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’

³⁴ He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. ³⁶For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? ³⁷Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? ³⁸Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’

NRSV