Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
A Vision of a Basket of Fruit
8 I had another vision from the Sovereign Lord. In it I saw a basket of fruit. 2 The Lord asked, “Amos, what do you see?”
“A basket of fruit,” I answered.
The Lord said to me, “The end[a] has come for my people Israel. I will not change my mind again about punishing them. 3 On that day the songs in the palace will become cries of mourning. There will be dead bodies everywhere. They will be cast out in silence.”[b]
Israel's Doom
4 Listen to this, you that trample on the needy and try to destroy the poor of the country. 5 You say to yourselves, “We can hardly wait for the holy days to be over so that we can sell our grain. When will the Sabbath end, so that we can start selling again? Then we can overcharge, use false measures, and fix the scales to cheat our customers. 6 We can sell worthless wheat at a high price. We'll find someone poor who can't pay his debts, not even the price of a pair of sandals, and we'll buy him as a slave.”
7 The Lord, the God of Israel, has sworn, “I will never forget their evil deeds. 8 And so the earth will quake, and everyone in the land will be in distress. The whole country will be shaken; it will rise and fall like the Nile River. 9 The time is coming when I will make the sun go down at noon and the earth grow dark in daytime. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken. 10 I will turn your festivals into funerals and change your glad songs into cries of grief. I will make you shave your heads and wear sackcloth, and you will be like parents mourning for their only child. That day will be bitter to the end.
11 “The time is coming when I will send famine on the land. People will be hungry, but not for bread; they will be thirsty, but not for water. They will hunger and thirst for a message from the Lord. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken. 12 People will wander from the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean and then on around from the north to the east. They will look everywhere for a message from the Lord, but they will not find it.
(A)God's Judgment and Grace[a]
52 Why do you boast, great one, of your evil?
God's faithfulness is eternal.
2 You make plans to ruin others;
your tongue is like a sharp razor.
You are always inventing lies.
3 You love evil more than good
and falsehood more than truth.
4 You love to hurt people with your words, you liar!
5 So God will ruin you forever;
he will take hold of you and snatch you from your home;
he will remove you from the world of the living.
6 Righteous people will see this and be afraid;
then they will laugh at you and say,
7 “Look, here is someone who did not depend on God for safety,
but trusted instead in great wealth
and looked for security in being wicked.”
8 But I am like an olive tree growing in the house of God;
I trust in his constant love forever and ever.
9 I will always thank you, God, for what you have done;
in the presence of your people
I will proclaim that you are good.
The Person and Work of Christ
15 (A)Christ is the visible likeness of the invisible God. He is the first-born Son, superior to all created things. 16 For through him God created everything in heaven and on earth, the seen and the unseen things, including spiritual powers, lords, rulers, and authorities. God created the whole universe through him and for him. 17 Christ existed before all things, and in union with him all things have their proper place. 18 (B)He is the head of his body, the church; he is the source of the body's life. He is the first-born Son, who was raised from death, in order that he alone might have the first place in all things. 19 For it was by God's own decision that the Son has in himself the full nature of God. 20 (C)Through the Son, then, God decided to bring the whole universe back to himself. God made peace through his Son's blood[a] on the cross and so brought back to himself all things, both on earth and in heaven.
21 At one time you were far away from God and were his enemies because of the evil things you did and thought. 22 But now, by means of the physical death of his Son, God has made you his friends, in order to bring you, holy, pure, and faultless, into his presence. 23 You must, of course, continue faithful on a firm and sure foundation, and must not allow yourselves to be shaken from the hope you gained when you heard the gospel. It is of this gospel that I, Paul, became a servant—this gospel which has been preached to everybody in the world.
Paul's Work as a Servant of the Church
24 And now I am happy about my sufferings for you, for by means of my physical sufferings I am helping to complete what still remains of Christ's sufferings on behalf of his body, the church. 25 And I have been made a servant of the church by God, who gave me this task to perform for your good. It is the task of fully proclaiming his message, 26 which is the secret he hid through all past ages from all human beings but has now revealed to his people. 27 God's plan is to make known his secret to his people, this rich and glorious secret which he has for all peoples. And the secret is that Christ is in you, which means that you will share in the glory of God. 28 So we preach Christ to everyone. With all possible wisdom we warn and teach them in order to bring each one into God's presence as a mature individual in union with Christ.
Jesus Visits Martha and Mary
38 (A)As Jesus and his disciples went on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha welcomed him in her home. 39 She had a sister named Mary, who sat down at the feet of the Lord and listened to his teaching. 40 Martha was upset over all the work she had to do, so she came and said, “Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her to come and help me!”
41 The Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha! You are worried and troubled over so many things, 42 but just one is needed. Mary has chosen the right thing, and it will not be taken away from her.”
Good News Translation® (Today’s English Version, Second Edition) © 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved. For more information about GNT, visit www.bibles.com and www.gnt.bible.