We are a small Episcopal Church on the banks of the Rappahannock in Port Royal, Virginia. We acknowledge that we gather on the traditional land of the first people of Port Royal, the Nandtaughtacund, and we respect and honor with gratitude the land itself, the legacy of the ancestors, and the life of the Rappahannock Tribe. Our mission statement is to do God’s Will in all that we do.

Articles

From Epiphany to the Transfiguration

February involves the transition betweeen Epiphany and Lent and on that of Lent

Epiphany is about 2 revelations – Christ to the world through the wise men as well as revelation of Christ to us through baptism. On the first Sunday after the Epiphany, we celebrate the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord. His baptism is seen as the primary baptism, the one on which all baptisms follow, the recognition that his followers belong to God as “Christ’s own forever.”

During the three to eight weeks after the Epiphany, we learn in the gospel lectionary readings about Jesus’ miracles of healing and his teachings. This is a continuation of the theme of the revelation of Christ to his followers. “Come Follow Me”. Jesus has not only arrived but through him the kingdom of God as one who fulfills and extends God’s teachings through the Sermon of the Mount. The last Sunday in Epiphany, the transfiguration can be seen as the bridge between Epiphany and Lent.

At the beginning of the Epiphany season, at the Baptism of Jesus, the liturgical color was white. In the Gospel reading in Matthew at his baptism said, “And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” In the Transfiguration which we will celebrate on Feb. 26, the 8th Sunday after Epiphany, the Gospel of Matthew records, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” The liturgical color once again is white.

Transfiguration serves as the culmination, the climax, of Jesus manifesting his glory and his identity as the Son of God. From this point on, Jesus sets out to Jerusalem, to suffer, die and be resurrected. We will see this story during Lent beginning March 1. This same glory he will return to, once he has completed the saving mission for which he came. Coming full circle, we will one day be in life with Christ as “Christ’s own forever.”

Story of a painting – Rembrandt’s “Presentation in the Temple”

Rembrandt returned to the subject, "Presentation of Jesus in the Temple" at least 5 times from 1627 to 1654, two paintings, three etchings.

The subject is the biblical story of Simeon. Jesus was still an infant when Joseph and Mary took him to the temple to be presented to God. There they were approached by Simeon, a devout old man who recognised the child as the Saviour and praised him to God.

The most famous of these works was in 1631 when he was about 25 and still living in Leiden. Later that year he moved to Amsterdam. This painting is the high point of Rembrandt’s Leiden years: it represents the sum total of his artistic abilities at that

Most of his paintings are in very dark tones out of which his figures seem to appear to the foreground. Rembrandt was the master of dark and light and most of his pictures are made in this style of struggle between dark and light, night and day, sorrow and joy.

The key to the picture is how carefully and delicate the figures are painted, even those in the darkest part of the painting. The beautiful contrast, between the light on the central group and the soft dimness of the remoter parts of the cathedral, illustrates a style of work for which Rembrandt was very famous.

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Healing Narratives in Mark

By Lawrence

The new messianic community: healing, restoration and conflict

Jesus’ ministry is about gathering into being a new community – a messianic community – which is a sign of the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is the world as it ought to be and will be under God. The message of the kingdom is the Good News that Jesus preaches (1:14). It has “come near” in Jesus and begins to take shape – takes on “ground space” – in the community of disciples and followers that Jesus gathers around him. This new community is an anticipation and sign of the kingdom of God.

Significantly, this happens on the margins. Jesus’ ministry takes place in Galilee, far away from Jerusalem. He is baptised in the vicinity of the city, but in the wilderness. This is the place of resistance to the Temple and the religious purity system centre there. The point is that the purity system breaks down community by exclusion. The focus of Jesus’ ministry is among theexcluded.

We need therefore to be constantly alert several narrative-structural features of the healing narratives, in addition to the healings themselves:

· Jesus is a healer, not a curer. This is the “healing and wholeness” point. Jesus pays virtually no attention to the symptoms of illness, so crucial in medical diagnosis. He is not a super-doctor! He does not attempt to explain the causes of illness, either in medical or spiritual terms (eg as a result of sin).

· A fundamental feature of the healing narratives is the restoration of community. Peter’s mother-in-law is healed in order to participate in the Sabbath meal (with all the importance that attaches to table fellowship). Lepers are healed in order to be re-integrated into the community. The purity system excludes sick people from participation in communal life and blessing, and the healings that Mark records almost invariably entail the restoration of the healed person to the wider community.

· Unsurprisingly, the healings are therefore in effect (though not intention) a direct confrontation with the religious purity system. We need to be alert to the reaction of those who see healing as a threat. So, for example, the healing of the man with the withered hand (3:1-6) is set in terms of the conflict over Sabbath keeping (as is Peter’s mother-in-law, by implication). Healings are theologically significant and provide the context for many of the deadly conflicts over the Law between Jesus and the Pharisees. The account of a healing concludes with the Pharisees and the Herodians conspiring together to destroy Jesus (3:6).

· The healings are messianic actions. Not only are they the presence of the saving actions of God (the plundering of the Strong Man’s house) but they directly provoke the opposition of the religious authorities that results in Jesus’ suffering and death (which is what is to define his messiahship).

· They make sense of the “great reversal” of the kingdom. Jesus heals among the marginalised and outside the dominant religious system. The dominant system has no place for these people, so that the idea that God is at work through the Messiah among these is anathema to the leaders. This is part of the reason why “the first shall be last and the last first”. Grace is seen in God’s radical inclusion of the excluded. Those who are unable to accept this cut themselves off from Jesus, the new messianic community and the kingdom.

· Jesus did not see himself primarily in opposition to the religious system of his day, but as a prophetic, “purification” movement within Judaism.There is a dynamic tension in all the gospels over what would have happened had Jesus and his message been accepted. The passion predictions suggest that Jesus was fully aware that he had come to be rejected and that his death was inevitable. His weeping over Jerusalem suggests his hope that he would have been accepted and that the kingdom he inaugurated would come about. The healing stories reflect this tension. In the cleansing of the leper (1:40-5), Jesus urges the leper to go to the priest and go through the proper cleansing and restoration rituals. It is clear that Jesus wished to establish the new messianic community withinJudaism, rather than in opposition to it. The healing narratives help to plot the movement of Jesus’ initial hope of acceptance, then through opposition to rejection and inevitable death. They help to emphasise the fact that Jesus died because of the life of the kingdom he lived, rather than only a result of the divine plan of salvation through suffering and death. They make his life, as well as his death and resurrection, significant for Christian discipleship.

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Binge reading and other online resources on the Gospel of Mark

Article from BuildFaith

Mark opens with words from the prophet Isaiah: “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,” and indeed the gospel itself serves as a messenger for the life and ministry of Jesus. Written around 65-75, Mark proclaims the good news that Jesus is the messiah and Son of God.

From BuildFaith – “Last summer, my church hosted a gathering where we read the Gospel of Mark together, as a group, out loud, all at once. In short, we decided to binge-read all the episodes of Mark in one night. We gathered in the parsonage with about thirty people squeezed into an oddly-shaped circle (you could just as easily do this on a Zoom gathering), and read the Gospel together. We picked Mark because it was the shortest of the Gospels and we could read through it in one evening.”

Click the link above to see how it went.

Other online resources for the Gospel of Mark:

1. Bible Project on the Gospel of Mark

2. Gospel of Mark on Apple podcasts. Check out the app on Apple devices (iPad,Mac,Apple Watch, iTunes) and search for “Gospel of Mark”.

Advent 4 – Apollo 8, Christmas Eve at the moon

It has been more than 50 years since this mission and since the first 10 verses of Genesis was read to 1.5 billion people, the largest audience to that time.

It was commemorated by a celebration at National Cathedral on Dec. 11, 2018 called “Spirit of Apollo”. The webcast is here.

Dean Randy Hollerith introduced it. Hollerith called it an “this amazing mission that I would call a pilgrimage. It revealed not only dark side of the moon and but gave our most powerful images of our small and fragile world God’s precious gift awash in an unimaginably large universe. I think of it as a holy journey not only what it accomplished and what it showed of our place in our God’s grand’s creation.”

The six-day mission lifted off on Dec. 21, 1968, with its crew of Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders.

The voyage had many firsts.

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Advent 4 – Cry of a Tiny Baby

A post from teacher and theologian David Lose: "So maybe I shouldn’t describe this Christmas carol as “unlikely” in that Bruce Cockburn has explored the Christian story and theology, along with issues of human rights, throughout his forty-year career. But it may very well be unfamiliar to you. If so, you’re in for a treat, as the Canadian folk and rock guitarist, singer-songwriter’s beautiful retelling of the Christmas story blends elements of both Luke’s tender narrative of the in-breaking good news of God to the least likely of recipients – a teenage girl, her confused fiancee, down-and-out shepherds – with Matthew’s starkly realistic picture of a baby that threatens kings by his mere existence. 

Here’s the link to a video with the words .   

Advent 4 – Space in the Manger

by Meghan Cotter. Meghan is executive director of Micah Ecumenical Ministries, a faith-based nonprofit that offers holistic care to the community’s street homeless

"Some time back, I watched a friend in need attempt to repair five years worth of disintegrating relationships. The library, a local gymnasium, a number of area businesses and even her family had cut off ties in response to her boisterously disruptive behavior.  

" She’d picked up criminal charges—a few nuisance violations, a trespassing or two and an assault on an officer. At times, even the agencies trying to help her had been left with little choice than dismissing her from their facilities. But the more the community isolated her, the more volatile became her symptoms. She grew angrier and louder. Her self-appointment as the spokesperson for her homeless peers turned radical, even threatening. Feeling ignored and stripped of personhood, she waltzed into a church one Sunday, intent on being heard. Just in time for the sermon she rose from the congregation, rolled out a sleeping bag and unleashed a number of choice words to convey the plight of Fredericksburg’s homeless.

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Advent Compline

Join us online for the 20 minute service on Zoom , Dec. 7, 14, and 21 at 7PM.

Link Meeting ID: 863 3487 7905 Pass 868383

Compline was a service to close the day, an opportunity to give thanks for the joys and graces experienced, a chance to confess sins committed throughout the day, and the perfect moment to close the day the same way it started: in prayer. If Morning Prayer is designed to start the day off right then Compline is designed to end it well. It frames you for sleep and puts the day in perspective. It helps you recommit yourself to prayer during Advent. Give it a try!

St. Peter’s Chrismas Play, a 25 year tradition

St. Peter’s Christmas play has been different from the typical Children’s Church play. It will be held on 2nd Advent this year, Dec. 3, 2022

First it has involved parishioners of all ages and not just children. Second it takes up most of the Sunday service. Lastly the play is written fresh every year. No repeats. The tradition began in the 1990’s under the Rev. Karen Woodruff when there were many children in the parish.

Here is a collection of Christmas pageants from 2010.

This year St Nicholas will visit the 11AM service and the St Peter’s youth will take the lead in playing holiday music for the congregation.

Thanksgiving

“Almighty and gracious Father, we give you thanks for the fruits of the earth in their season and for the labors of those who harvest them. Make us, we pray, faithful stewards of your great bounty, for the provision of our necessities and the relief of all who are in need, to the glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.” Amen.

Poem – “Christ has no body but yours”

Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world. No hands, no feet on earth but yours, Yours are the eyes with which he looks Compassion on this world, Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good, Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, Yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now but yours, No hands, no feet on earth but yours, Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world. Christ has no body now on earth but yours  “

—Teresa of Avila (1515–1582), mystic, reformer, writer

Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada (later known as Teresa de Jesus) was born in Avila, Spain, 28 March 1515, one of ten children whose mother died when she was fifteen. Her family was of partly Jewish ancestry. Teresa, having read the letters of Jerome, decided to become a nun, and when she was 20, she entered the Carmelite convent in Avila. There she fell seriously ill, was in a coma for a while, and partially paralyzed for three years. In her early years as a nun, she was, by her account, assiduous in prayer while sick but lax and lukewarm in her prayers and devotions when the sickness had passed. However, her prayer life eventually deepened, she began to have visions and a vivid sense of the presence of God, and was converted to a life of extreme devotion.

In 1560 she resolved to reform the monastery that had, she thought, departed from the order’s original intention and become insufficiently austere. Her proposed reforms included strict enclosure (the nuns were not to go to parties and social gatherings in town, or to have social visitors at the convent, but to stay in the convent and pray and study most of their waking hours) and discalcing (literally, taking off one’s shoes, a symbol of poverty, humility, and the simple life, uncluttered by luxuries and other distractions). In 1562 she opened a new monastery in Avila, over much opposition in the town and from the older monastery. At length Teresa was given permission to proceed with her reforms, and she traveled throughout Spain establishing seventeen houses of Carmelites of the Strict (or Reformed) Observance (the others are called Carmelites of the Ancient Observance).

The Mutual Ministry Review – “All work…”

St. Peter’s Vestry met on Tues Nov. 14 for a Mutual Ministry Review.

The Diocese of Michigan provides a good understanging of it – “Mutual Ministry Review is a discernment process in which the leaders of the congregation ask who God is calling this congregation to be, how this congregation is presently responding to God’s call, and how this congregation is going to respond to God’s call. The MMR is an effort to discern God’s will for the church and call for all ministers (lay and clergy) to be accountable for it.” St. Peter’s had not scheduled one for several years.

There is a facilitator who is trained for the process. In our case it was Salli Hartman, deacon for St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Colonial Beach who also served at St. Peter’s.

This type of exercise makes one think of the old saying, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. ” This phrase firt occurred in a proverbs book in 1659, just 3 years before the 1662 Book of Common Prayer was printed and had an enormous influence on our Episcopal church and many other churches.

Anyway the Vestry adhered to it, by making assorted foods to get through the process. Linda Upshaw make crepes with a wonderful strawberry topping. She was given a crepes kit by her sister in law a generation ago and has been making them ever since.

There were two different muffins on by Elizabeth Heimbach and one by Catherine, the latter a pumpkin muffin with cream cheese. Included in the snack were blueberries and oranges. Jan Saylor made a wonderful vegetable soup.

While it may be considered a diversion, it made the review more easy going and productive with these delights.