Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

6 In the year that King Uzziah died, [in a vision] I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and the skirts of His train filled the [most holy part of the] temple.^(A)

² Above Him stood the seraphim; each had six wings: with two [each] covered his [own] face, and with two [each] covered his feet, and with two [each] flew.

³ And one cried to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!

⁴ And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who cried, and the house was filled with smoke.

⁵ Then said I, Woe is me! For I am undone and ruined, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!

⁶ Then flew one of the seraphim [heavenly beings] to me, having a live coal in his hand which he had taken with tongs from off the altar;

⁷ And with it he touched my mouth and said, Behold, this has touched your lips; your iniquity and guilt are taken away, and your sin is completely atoned for and forgiven.

⁸ Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send? And who will go for Us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.

⁹ And He said, Go and tell this people, Hear and hear continually, but understand not; and see and see continually, but do not apprehend with your mind.

¹⁰ Make the heart of this people fat; and make their ears heavy and shut their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and turn again and be healed.

¹¹ Then said I, Lord, how long? And He answered, Until cities lie waste without inhabitant and houses without man, and the land is utterly desolate,

¹² And the Lord removes [His] people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.

¹³ And though a tenth [of the people] remain in the land, it will be for their destruction [eaten up and burned] like a terebinth tree or like an oak whose stump and substance remain when they are felled or have cast their leaves. The holy seed [the elect remnant] is the stump and substance [of Israel].

Psalm 138

[A Psalm] of David.

¹ I will confess and praise You [O God] with my whole heart; before the gods will I sing praises to You.

² I will worship toward Your holy temple and praise Your name for Your loving-kindness and for Your truth and faithfulness; for You have exalted above all else Your name and Your word and You have magnified Your word above all Your name!

³ In the day when I called, You answered me; and You strengthened me with strength (might and inflexibility to temptation) in my inner self.

⁴ All the kings of the land shall give You credit and praise You, O Lord, for they have heard of the promises of Your mouth [which were fulfilled].

⁵ Yes, they shall sing of the ways of the Lord and joyfully celebrate His mighty acts, for great is the glory of the Lord.

⁶ For though the Lord is high, yet has He respect to the lowly [bringing them into fellowship with Him]; but the proud and haughty He knows and recognizes [only] at a distance.^(A)

⁷ Though I walk in the midst of trouble, You will revive me; You will stretch forth Your hand against the wrath of my enemies, and Your right hand will save me.^(B)

⁸ The Lord will perfect that which concerns me; Your mercy and loving-kindness, O Lord, endure forever—forsake not the works of Your own hands.^(C)

15 And now let me remind you [since it seems to have escaped you], brethren, of the Gospel (the glad tidings of salvation) which I proclaimed to you, which you welcomed and accepted and upon which your faith rests,

² And by which you are saved, if you hold fast and keep firmly what I preached to you, unless you believed at first without effect and all for nothing.

³ For I passed on to you first of all what I also had received, that Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One) died for our sins in accordance with [what] the Scriptures [foretold],^(A)

⁴ That He was buried, that He arose on the third day as the Scriptures foretold,^(B)

⁵ And [also] that He appeared to Cephas (Peter), then to the Twelve.

⁶ Then later He showed Himself to more than five hundred brethren at one time, the majority of whom are still alive, but some have fallen asleep [in death].

⁷ Afterward He was seen by James, then by all the apostles (the special messengers),

⁸ And last of all He appeared to me also, as to one prematurely and born dead [^[a]no better than an unperfected fetus among living men].

⁹ For I am the least [worthy] of the apostles, who am not fit or deserving to be called an apostle, because I once wronged and pursued and molested the church of God [oppressing it with cruelty and violence].

¹⁰ But by the grace (the unmerited favor and blessing) of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not [found to be] for nothing (fruitless and without effect). In fact, I worked harder than all of them [the apostles], though it was not really I, but the grace (the unmerited favor and blessing) of God which was with me.

¹¹ So, whether then it was I or they, this is what we preach and this is what you believed [what you adhered to, trusted in, and relied on].

5 Now it occurred that while the people pressed upon Jesus to hear the message of God, He was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret (Sea of Galilee).

² And He saw two boats drawn up by the lake, but the fishermen had gone down from them and were washing their nets.

³ And getting into one of the boats, [the one] that belonged to Simon (Peter), He requested him to draw away a little from the shore. Then He sat down and continued to teach the crowd [of people] from the boat.

⁴ When He had stopped speaking, He said to Simon (Peter), Put out into the deep [water], and lower your nets for a haul.

⁵ And Simon (Peter) answered, Master, we toiled all night [^[a]exhaustingly] and caught nothing [in our nets]. But ^[b]on the ground of Your word, I will lower the nets [again].

⁶ And when they had done this, they caught a great number of fish; and as their nets were [^[c]at the point of] breaking,

⁷ They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and take hold with them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink.

⁸ But when Simon Peter saw this, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.

⁹ For he was gripped with bewildering amazement [allied to terror], and all who were with him, at the haul of fish which they had made;

¹⁰ And so also were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon (Peter). And Jesus said to Simon, Have no fear; from now on you will be catching men!

¹¹ And after they had run their boats on shore, they left everything and ^[d] joined Him as His disciples and sided with His party and accompanied Him.