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, who are still here, and we honor with gratitude the land itself and the life of the Rappahannock Tribe. Our mission statement is to do God’s Will in all that we do.

Commentary

Luke, Oct. 18

Luke was a Greek and a Gentile. He is the only Gentile to author any of the Books of the New Testament. Hence, he translates Hebrew words into Greek or gives their Greek equivalent.

Luke is the author of the Gospel of Luke and the presumed author of the Book of Acts. He was also witness to the growth of the first century church and carried the Good News to the Gentiles. He wrote in the 80’s and wrote approximately 24% of the New Testament more than any other writer including Paul.

He was a Syrian from Antioch and more reflective of Middle Eastern Culture than the Jewish writers in the rest of the Gospels. He was  a passionate story teller, emotional, similar to today’s Arab culture.

He records virtually nothing about himself, but his fellow apostles do reveal some information about him. We may also discern some things about him based on the manner in which he presents information, his background and the times.

Legend has it that Luke was an artist and painted as well as wrote. He was said to have interviewed eyewitnesses to the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. In this sense, he was a journalist. Some traditions say that Luke not only met and interviewed Jesus’ mother Mary, but he also painted her portrait. This portrait is known as “The Black Madonna,” and it is Poland’s most treasured sacred relic.

Paul records in Colossians 4:14 that Luke is a physician – “Luke, the beloved physician” (Colossians 4:14). . This would make him an educated man. Luke’s inspiration and information for his Gospel and Acts came from his close association with Paul and his companions as he explains in his introduction to the Gospel.

Luke uses the most sophisticated Greek found in the New Testament. He was clearly the most learned among the New Testament writers. On several occasions he uses precise and unusual medical terms, offering evidence of his training in medicine.

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Teaching Touchstones for All Saints Adult Formation

By Jodi Belcher

  1. God with Actual Human People

One of the most beautiful messages that All Saints’ Day brings to light is that God is truly with us in our actual humanity. By inviting Christians to perceive ourselves as saints, this feast calls us to understand that our embodied human lives are completely intertwined with God’s sacred presence because God has chosen to be in relationship with us. God’s presence with us doesn’t suppress or subtract our humanity; instead, God embraces all our humanity—limits, graces, imperfections, and all.

Taking our actual embodied humanity seriously in how we talk about saints on All Saints’ Day can open up powerful formation conversations. An image that I find generative for envisioning God with actual human people appears in the book Where God Happens by former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. In a discussion about loving a neighbor, he says, “You become a place where God happens.” While he uses this metaphor to describe how an act of love enables a neighbor to encounter God in and through their fellow human being, it also points to the phenomenon of being and becoming saints, actual human beings in relationship with God. Our lives become sacramental places where God shows up for us and with us. If we situate this language in our bodies and humanity, it can liberate us from believing that our bodies, humanity, or identities are hindrances to God and show us how to let God embrace all that we are, “with God’s help,” as we say.

  1. Holy Together

The Feast of All Saints also points Christians toward the words that we recite in the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in . . . the communion of saints.” This creedal confession reminds us that our faith is not individual-centered but communal. While the communion of saints often gets described as a mystical body of Christ that unites Christians past, present, and future, this image also suggests that being saints entails being in communion with one another and with God. In this way, All Saints’ Day invites us to recognize that Christians, as members of the communion of saints, are holy together, saints together. God’s Spirit draws us with our differences and diverse experiences into relationships with one another in God, and this togetherness is integral to the sacredness that defines saints’ lives.

  1. Unknowing

Mystery is another theme of All Saints’ Day—a theme that Jennifer McNally and Anna V. Ostenso Moore note in “What Does This Day Mean? Handout for The Feast of All Saints & All Souls at Home.” When lives of faith take on a sacramental quality and become knit to a communion of saints throughout past, present, and future, we inhabit the mysterious unknowns of God’s ways. We become part of something much bigger than ourselves, and what God may be doing in and through us can surprise and elude us. All Saints’ Day points us toward the mystery that we may be to ourselves and to one another through the incomprehensibility of God’s redemptive and life-giving work among us. It invites us into a simultaneously empowering and humbling posture of welcoming unknowing with God and one another.

One way that we can approach this theme of unknowing is to reflect on our place within the communion of saints. Just as people who came before us have inspired and enriched our lives of faith in ways neither they nor we may fully realize, we don’t know what God will do in future generations through our presence in this communion. This long view of our participation in the movement of God, for whom nothing is lost or beyond redemption, enables unknowing to be a space of hope, solidarity, and courageous, faithful action rather than a source of fear or inaction.

  1. Love as an Icon of the Holy

All Saints’ Day is certainly about the holy. Holiness, though, can conjure unhelpful images of a punitive God demanding unattainable requirements of absolute submission and sinlessness. What can guide us toward a more life-giving understanding of holiness on All Saints’ Day is love. While John Wesley’s writings first introduced me to this idea, a chorus of scriptures and theologians throughout Christian faith, including I Corinthians 13, Augustine of Hippo, and Julian of Norwich (to name a few), shows us ways of placing love at the center of what holiness means and looks like.

When love becomes our icon of the holy, it expands and transforms our way of being in the world with God and with one another. Being saints becomes first and foremost about letting God love us. Acts of love that may seem small nevertheless forge powerful moments that join people to one another, heal wounds, and endure. Compassion, repair, reconciliation, nonviolence, and spaces held for vulnerability become precious places to seek and find the sacred.

  1. “Sealed . . . and Marked as Christ’s Own for Ever”

A final theme that All Saints’ Day features is baptism. Because this feast is one of the recommended occasions for baptism, it provides a meaningful opportunity to grapple with the significance of this rite of initiation into the body of Christ. The communal emphasis of All Saints’ Day enables us to pay particular attention to the community we join in baptism. The “not yet” dimension of the communion of saints for us on this side of eternity also helps us tune into the promise of being “sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own for ever” in baptism (The Book of Common Prayer, 308).

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Lectionary, Pentecost 20, Proper 23 Year A

I.Theme –   Preparing for the banquet to come.

 "Parable of the Great Banquet"– Brunswick Monogrammist, 1525, Netherlands

The lectionary readings are here  or individually:

Old Testament – Isaiah 25:1-9
Psalm – Psalm 23 Page 612, BCP
Epistle –Philippians 4:1-9
Gospel – Matthew 22:1-14

The texts today speak of a universal banquet. Only those who exclude themselves are left out. The people of ancient Israel were on their way out of the banquet through their fashioning of idols.

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Gospel Reflection – Matthew 22:1-14

Edward Gomez

 “What are you going to do with this?”

—Matthew 22:1-14

Many years ago, when I was studying for the priesthood, we were called to help on Sundays at some of the local parishes. That semester I was called to serve at St. Thomas More Church. New to the area, I was unaware that this church was one of the most affluent churches in the diocese. I entered the sacristy that Sunday and met the rector. He turned to me impeccably dressed in a black suit and with an extended hand and a broad welcoming smile, introduced himself saying, “Hi! Welcome to our church!” Then, almost immediately, from behind came another priest who did not fit the dress code of this marble-laden English castle, who gave me a surprising I’ve known you all my life embrace! I smiled — actually laughed — and said, Hi! He was a missionary in Africa and the guest preacher that day.

His sermon was moving as he shared his experience with the poor. I felt like I got hit in the chest with God asking me, “So what are you going to do with this?” The collection that day was for the missions. After the service I was invited to lunch with the rector, the missionary preacher and other guests of the ector. During lunch, a man entered handed a small envelope to the rector saying, “What shall I do with this?” The envelope contained a set of earrings and a note saying, “Take these and have them appraised, and whatever that amount is, I will sell them and give the money to the missions.” We were all taken aback by this act of giving. But it was not until almost a month later that we learned the earrings were valued at $175,000!

When you encounter God’s call, the almost immediate reaction is to let go of everything you thought important so that you can be free to love. Giving generously becomes easy because at some level you realize that what you have is not yours — but God’s. And if wealth or privilege has been entrusted to you, then you know — with certainty — that you must share it.

I don’t know who this woman was, or her life circumstances. I just know that when she ripped off those earrings, she responded to God’s question, “So now what are you going to do with this?” She acted and gave far more than expensive earrings; she gave of herself honestly, freely and out of pure love.

Edward Gomez is Vicar of St. Paul’s/San Pablo Episcopal Church in Houston. His ministry has led him from the Lancandonan jungle of Mexico to the Peruvian province of Madre de Dios as a missionary, to the nonprofit world, where he has served in various leadership roles, including as the Executive Director of El Buen Samaritano Episcopal Mission in Austin. He is married to Denise Trevino-Gomez; they have three children and one adorable granddaughter.

Background of the Wedding Banquet

Pieter Brughel, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, The Wedding Dance in a Barn, c. 1616

From John Pilch’s article on the Sunday website of Saint Louis University 

"Some background knowledge of meals in antiquity sheds light on today’s parable. Meals reproduce in miniature the everyday social relations of a society. Who eats with whom at a given table reflects who can associate with whom in the larger society.

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Dealing with Disunity, Discord? A way forward from the Apostle Paul

By Summerlee Staten, Trinity NY

“Last April (2023), Trinity (NY) pilgrims visited Philippi (shown in the image), where the Apostle Paul founded the church that received his letter to the Philippians. Visiting the site of Lydia’s baptism, we celebrated the ministry of women in the early church. Lydia and her household were the first Christian converts of St. Paul in Europe. Link to Trinity’s trip

“Wherever I go these days, both inside and outside the church, I hear people talk about how disheartened and nervous they are. Our news feeds and social media pages barrage us with stories of displacement, war, racial violence, and families torn apart by political disagreements. We are filled with grief at the losses we see around us, but also afraid for our own security in a world that feels inherently insecure. Divisiveness is everywhere, and with this discord comes a profound lack of trust in community.

“As it turns out, the Apostle Paul was no stranger to the problems of divisiveness and worry. This past summer at Trinity, in an intensive Bible study on his letter to the Philippians, we saw how Paul encouraged the early church to be of one “mind,” or phroneo in Greek, a word that indicates a wise pattern of thought. Paul uses this word repeatedly to indicate that the transformation of our minds — our very ways of thinking — only occurs when we are rooted in our unity with Christ.

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What’s so “Domestic” About Violence? (Philippians 4:1-9)

Editor’s Note – Since 1987, October has been designated Domestic Violence Awareness Month in the United States. This October, domestic violence was already in the public eye due to a series of incidents involving professional football players. According to statistics compiled by the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV), one in three women has experienced physical violence at the hands of an intimate partner. For 3.2 million women, that violence is “severe.” Less frequently, but no less seriously, men are victims: One in ten has been stalked, physically harmed, or raped by an intimate partner. Domestic violence constitutes 15 percent of all violent crimes.

This Odyssey Networks story takes issues of public and private wrangling evident with the Philippians in our Epistle this week and links them to issues of bullying and domestic violence in our time.

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Lectionary, Pentecost 19, Proper 22, Year A

I.Theme –   Look carefully at the vineyard you are cultivating!

 "Vineyards with view of Auvers" – Van Gogh (1890)

The lectionary readings are here or individually:

Old Testament – Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm – Psalm 80:7-14 Page 703, BCP
Epistle –Philippians 3:4b-14
Gospel – Matthew 21:33-46

The main motif in 3 of the 4 readings is about the vineyard which beginning in the Old Testament refers to Israel and by the Gospel to those tending it. Corruption is evident in Israel in the 8th Century BC and in 30AD with Christ. In Christ time the vineyard represents all places where we have been called by God to produce the fruits of the kingdom.  The real villains move from Israel as a country to specific groups cited by Matthew.

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Gospel Reflection – Matthew 21:43

Rev. Winnie Varghese

 “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you.”

— Matthew 21:43

"When I hear these words about tenant farmers, stewards, scheming to get more than their fair, legal share, I can’t help but think of sharecroppers, serfs, peasants, landless laborers, migrants on every continent through the ages, wondering what it might take to create some security and stability in their lives. Surely the first people who heard this story were more likely to be like the tenants than a landowner. 

"Where is the kingdom of God in that? And what is this kingdom of God that we have already that can be taken from us?

"In this reading from Matthew, and in all of the readings, it is clear that there is a law and also a parallel or critique, a law from the tradition, that is the way of the kingdom of God, the world as God intends it.

"What does the Bible tell us are the attributes of a society living within a vision of God’s justice? 

"In your context, does the law support you if you wish to live within that vision?

"The virtues of the reign of God’s justice, the world as God intends it to be, are clear in the Hebrew Scripture: The love and awe of God are illustrated by a just society. A just society has God at the center. A just society is marked by law that enshrine fairness toward one another; compassion and generosity to those who cannot fend for themselves; and right stewardship of the earth.

"These are clearly difficult values to apply in real living. In 2017, as in the time of the Hebrew prophets, we can feel like wackos at the gates of the palace as we try to proclaim these values. 

"As Christians, living as though the law of God is the law of our hearts is the work of our lives. We listen and bring the breadth of our experience to these texts, and we are convicted by them. "