Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

8 Then the Lord God showed me, in a vision, a basket full of ripe fruit.

² “What do you see, Amos?” he asked.

I replied, “A basket full of ripe fruit.”

Then the Lord said, “This fruit represents my people Israel—ripe for punishment. I will not defer their punishment again. ³ The riotous sound of singing in the Temple will turn to weeping then. Dead bodies will be scattered everywhere. They will be carried out of the city in silence.” The Lord has spoken.

⁴ Listen, you merchants who rob the poor, trampling on the needy; ⁵ you who long for the Sabbath to end and the religious holidays to be over so you can get out and start cheating again—using your weighted scales and under-sized measures; ⁶ you who make slaves of the poor, buying them for their debt of a piece of silver or a pair of shoes, or selling them your moldy wheat:

⁷ The Lord, the Pride of Israel, has sworn: “I won’t forget your deeds! ⁸ The land will tremble as it awaits its doom, and everyone will mourn. It will rise up like the river Nile at floodtime, toss about, and sink again. ⁹ At that time I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in the daytime. ¹⁰ And I will turn your parties into times of mourning, and your songs of joy will be turned to cries of despair. You will wear funeral clothes and shave your heads as signs of sorrow, as if your only son had died; bitter, bitter will be that day.

¹¹ “The time is surely coming,” says the Lord God, “when I will send a famine on the land—not a famine of bread or water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. ¹² Men will wander everywhere from sea to sea, seeking the word of the Lord, searching, running here and going there, but will not find it.

52 Written by David to protest against his enemy Doeg (1 Samuel 22), who later slaughtered eighty-five priests and their families.

You call yourself a hero, do you? You boast about this evil deed of yours against God’s people. ² You are sharp as a tack in plotting your evil tricks. ³ How you love wickedness—far more than good! And lying more than truth! ⁴ You love to slander—you love to say anything that will do harm, O man with the lying tongue.

⁵ But God will strike you down, pull you from your home, and drag you away from the land of the living. ⁶ The followers of God will see it happen. They will watch in awe. Then they will laugh and say, ⁷ “See what happens to those who despise God and trust in their wealth, and become ever more bold in their wickedness.”^[a]

⁸ But I am like a sheltered olive tree protected by the Lord himself. I trust in the mercy of God forever and ever. ⁹ O Lord, I will praise you forever and ever for your punishment.^[b] And I will wait for your mercies—for everyone knows what a merciful God you are.

¹⁵ Christ is the exact likeness of the unseen God. He existed before God made anything at all,^[a] and, in fact, ¹⁶ Christ himself is the Creator who made everything in heaven and earth, the things we can see and the things we can’t; the spirit world with its kings and kingdoms, its rulers and authorities; all were made by Christ for his own use and glory. ¹⁷ He was before all else began and it is his power that holds everything together. ¹⁸ He is the Head of the body made up of his people—that is, his Church—which he began; and he is the Leader of all those who arise from the dead,^[b] so that he is first in everything; ¹⁹ for God wanted all of himself to be in his Son.

²⁰ It was through what his Son did that God cleared a path for everything to come to him—all things in heaven and on earth—for Christ’s death on the cross has made peace with God for all by his blood. ²¹ This includes you who were once so far away from God. You were his enemies and hated him and were separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions, yet now he has brought you back as his friends. ²² He has done this through the death on the cross of his own human body, and now as a result Christ has brought you into the very presence of God, and you are standing there before him with nothing left against you—nothing left that he could even chide you for; ²³ the only condition is that you fully believe the Truth, standing in it steadfast and firm, strong in the Lord, convinced of the Good News that Jesus died for you, and never shifting from trusting him to save you. This is the wonderful news that came to each of you and is now spreading all over the world. And I, Paul, have the joy of telling it to others.

²⁴ But part of my work is to suffer for you; and I am glad, for I am helping to finish up the remainder of Christ’s sufferings for his body, the Church.

²⁵ God has sent me to help his Church and to tell his secret plan to you Gentiles. ^26-27 He has kept this secret for centuries and generations past, but now at last it has pleased him to tell it to those who love him and live for him, and the riches and glory of his plan are for you Gentiles, too. And this is the secret: Christ in your hearts is your only hope of glory.

²⁸ So everywhere we go we talk about Christ to all who will listen, warning them and teaching them as well as we know how. We want to be able to present each one to God, perfect because of what Christ has done for each of them.

³⁸ As Jesus and the disciples continued on their way to Jerusalem^[a] they came to a village where a woman named Martha welcomed them into her home. ³⁹ Her sister Mary sat on the floor, listening to Jesus as he talked.

⁴⁰ But Martha was the jittery type and was worrying over the big dinner she was preparing.

She came to Jesus and said, “Sir, doesn’t it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work? Tell her to come and help me.”

⁴¹ But the Lord said to her, “Martha, dear friend,^[b] you are so upset over all these details! ⁴² There is really only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it—and I won’t take it away from her!”