Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
Chapter 8
The Vision of the Fruit Basket.[a] 1 This is what the Lord God showed me: a basket of ripe fruit. 2 He asked, “What do you see, Amos?” I replied, “A basket of ripe fruit.” Then the Lord said to me:
The time is ripe for my people Israel;
I will never again pardon their offenses.
3 The songs of the temple shall become wailings on that day;
there will be corpses strewn everywhere.
Be silent! Thus says the Lord God.
Listen, You Who Crush the Poor
4 Hear this, you who crush the needy
and trample upon the poor of the land.
5 “When will the new moon be over,” you ask,
“so that we may sell our grain,
and the Sabbath,
so that we may market our wheat?
Then we can make the bushel measure smaller
and increase the shekel-weight
by adjusting the scales fraudulently.
6 We can buy the poor man for silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals;
we can even sell the refuse of the wheat.”
7 The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob:
Never will I forget any of their deeds.
8 Will not the land tremble because of this?
Will not everyone mourn who dwells in it?
The whole earth will rise like the Nile,
swelling and then subsiding
like the River of Egypt.
I Will Turn Your Feasts into Mourning
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 make you cover your loins with sackcloth
and shave your heads.
I will make it like mourning for an only son
and the end of it like a bitter day.[b]
11 The days are surely coming, says the Lord God,
when I will send a famine upon the land,
not a hunger for bread or a thirst for water,
but for hearing the word of the Lord.
12 People will stagger from sea to sea
and wander from north to east,
in search of the word of the Lord,
but they will not find it.
Psalm 52[a]
Prayer for Help against Calumniators
1 For the director.[b] A maskil of David. 2 When Doeg the Edomite went and told Saul, “David has gone to the house of Ahimelech.”
3 Why do you boast of your evil deeds,
you champion of malice?[c]
All day long 4 you plot harm;
your tongue is like a sharpened razor,
you master of deceit.
5 [d]You love evil rather than good,
and lies rather than truthful speech. Selah
6 You wallow in destructive talk,
you tongue of deceit.
7 [e]This is the reason why God will crush you
and destroy you once and for all.
He will snatch you from your tent[f]
and uproot you from the land of the living. Selah
8 The righteous will see and be afraid;
they will mock him:
9 “This is the man
who refused to accept God as his refuge.
Rather, he placed his trust in his abundant riches
and gathered strength by his crimes.”
10 [g]But I am like a green olive tree[h]
in the house of God.
I place my trust forever and ever
in the kindness of God.
11 I will praise you forever
for what you have done,[i]
and in the presence of the saints
I will proclaim the goodness of your name.
The Supremacy of Christ
In Christ, through Him, and for Him[a]
15 He is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn of all creation.
16 For in him were created all things
in heaven and on earth,
whether visible or invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—
all things were created through him and for him.
17 He exists before all things,
and in him all things hold together.
18 He is the head of the body,
that is, the Church.
He is the beginning,
the firstborn from the dead,
so that in every way
he should be supreme.
19 For in him
it pleased God
to make all fullness dwell,[b]
20 and through him
to reconcile all things for him,
whether on earth or in heaven,
by making peace through his blood of the cross.
21 Christ among the Gentiles.[c]You yourselves were once alienated and hostile in your intent because of your evil deeds. 22 But now, through Christ’s death in his body of flesh, God has reconciled you to himself so that you may stand holy, blameless, and irreproachable in his presence.
23 However, you must persevere in the faith, firmly grounded and steadfast in your belief, and never allowing yourselves to drift away from the hope of the gospel that you accepted and that has now been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, the gospel of which I, Paul, have become a servant.
24 Christ’s Suffering in His People. I find great joy at present in suffering for you, and in my own body I am completing the sufferings that still must be undergone by Christ for the sake of his body, the Church.[d] 25 I was made a minister of that Church, with the commission given to me by God to make fully known to you the word of God, 26 the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and from past generations but that now has been revealed to his saints.
27 To these God chose to make known how rich is the priceless glory that this mystery brings to the Gentiles—Christ in you, your hope of glory.[e] 28 It is he whom we proclaim, admonishing and instructing everyone in all wisdom so that we may present everyone to Christ in a state of perfection.
38 Martha and Mary.[a] In the course of their journey, he came to a village where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. 39 She had a sister named Mary who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying.
40 But Martha was distracted by her many tasks. So she came to him and said, “Lord, do you not 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 anxious and upset about many things, 42 when only one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the better part, and it will not be taken away from her.”
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