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.

Lent

Palm Sunday, March 24, 2013

An overcast, cool Palm Sunday. We have pictures of the Lenten Quiet Day plus the music, Liturgy of the Palms and Passion narrative.

Ash Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2013

Ash Wednesday came with a cold steady rain that seemed to fit the mood of the day. “Almighty God, you have created us out of the dust of the earth: Grant that these ashes may be to us a sign of our mortality and penitence, that we may remember that it is only by your gracious gift that we are given everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Savior.” The bulletin for the service is here.|For such as night we had a good crowd at 21. People appreciated being there. Certainly one highlight was Nancy’s solo on “The Glory of These Forty Days. ” The words are attributed to Pope Gregory in the 6th century. “The glory of these forty days We celebrate with songs of praise; For Christ, by Whom all things were made, Himself has fasted and has prayed.” While we remember our sins and misdoings, the mood is not dwelling on the past but on improving the future

Shrove Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2013

We had a small crowd at 16 for Shrove Tuesday with several families traveling. But Dave’s pancakes and Nancy’s sausage were yummy. The intimacy actually helped the conversation in being able to gather in one room. We all ate more than we should but we did what we should in remembering the medieval custom of using up all of the eggs, cream and fat in the house before the Lenten fast began the following day. The day was lovely in the afternoon which was captured on film.

Palm Sunday, April 17, 2011

It’s all here – Adult Education, Liturgy of the Palms, Passion readings, the choir, birthdays, the congregation all in the burgeoning spring at St. Peter’s

Palm Sunday, 2012

50 photos of April 1, 2012 a service of several parts – Liturgy of the Palms, Procession, Passion Readings and Holy Communion. This year there was a combination of the Passion Readings from nine parishioners with complementary music by the choir. Being the first Sunday of the month, there was also coffee hour.

First Lent, Feb. 26, 2012

First Lent 2012 featured a new adult education on God and human suffering as well as the chanting of the Great Litany that goes back to the beginning of the Church of England.Thanks to Paige Martindale and Brad Volland for their help in getting the Great Litany together. We had a number of guests in both Adult Ed and 11am

Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday, 2012

We had about 30 at the annual Shrove Tuesday Pancake supper (Feb. 21, 2012) and 23 at Ash Wednesday the next night in 2012. Thanks to Dave Fannon, Johnny Davis, Bill Wick, Nancy Long, Barbara Segar, Cookie Davis and many others for their help on Tuesday. Also, thanks to Helmut for his Red Lenten Cross that we have enjoyed for the second year in a row beginning on Ash Wed. Weather cooperated for some interesting photography.

Luke’s Passion Narrative

Overall Themes

1. The passion narrative is part of the Journey
These are aspects of Luke’s Passion Narrative that are special or exclusive to him. Together with Jesus’ predictions of his own death, the death of a prophet – 9:31, 51; 12:50; 13:32-33; 17:25, it forms the climax of a journey to the cross upon which Luke has taken us. It must end in Jerusalem, for as Jesus says, where else could a prophet be killed than in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is, for Luke the centre of God’s purposes still. Jesus was proclaimed Messiah and Saviour in Jerusalem first when he was a baby. At his Bar Mitzvah held in Jerusalem, he took upon himself the adult task of ‘being in His Father’s House, he has been greeted at a king by the crowds in Jerusalem a week earlier. He will die, rise and appear in Jerusalem. His disciples will say goodbye to Him in Jerusalem, before settling down to wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit, which they will receive in Jerusalem. The church will start in Jerusalem. The gospel will then go out from Jerusalem to all the ends of the earth.

2 Jesus dies an innocent man, a victim of injustice. Pilate states three times that Jesus is innocent, or has done nothing wrong. The thief on the cross declares that Jesus has done nothing wrong. Finally, in one of Luke’s most interesting redactions, the centurion at the foot of the cross declares that Jesus is innocent (as opposed to being the Son of God, as in Mark and Matthew).

The Jesus who is accused before Pilate by the chief priests and scribes of ‘perverting our nation’ (Luke 23:2) is one whose infancy and upbringing was totally in fidelity to the Law of Moses (2:22, 27, 39, 42). Similarly, the Jesus who is accused of ‘forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar’ is a Jesus who has only recently (20:25) declared concerning the tribute: ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s’. All of this casts light on the affirmation made by various dramatis personae in the passion that Jesus is innocent (23:4, 14, 22, 41, & 47).

3. Jesus is in control of his fate , accepting it and triumphing in it as opportunities for forgiveness and renewal of those He came to save arise. However healso says his death fulfils scripture

The Jesus who calmly faces death is one who had already set his face deliberately to go to Jerusalem (9:51), affirming that no prophet should perish away from Jerusalem (13:33). In the Lucan account of the ministry, Jesus showed tenderness to the stranger (the widow of Nain) and praised the mercy shown to the Prodigal Son and to the man beset by thieves on the road to Jericho; it is not surprising then that in his passion Jesus shows forgiveness to those who crucified him.

And, of course, Jesus’ death and the manner of it fulfils Scripture. In his account of the last supper, Luke (alone) has Jesus quote Isa 53, identifying himself with the suffering servant, who is counted as a criminal (numbered among transgressors) although he is innocent, for his sheep. The risen Jesus explains that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer all of these things in order to ‘enter into his glory’. And old Simeon’s prophecy to Mary is fulfilled as she suffers the pain of seeing her child on his cross, pain like a sword entering her heart.

4. Jesus also dies for the thieves on the cross and for those who crucify Him, although only two of them understands this. In one of the most famous sayings of Jesus reported only in Luke, he asks His Father to forgive those who are crucifying Him, on the grounds that they do not understand what they are doing. To the thief who takes pity on Him as He hangs, an innocent man, on the cross, the promise is greater. ‘Today you will be with me in Paradise.’ Jesus’ authority to forgive penitents has been a theme throughout the gospel -see the story of Zaccheus – and reaches it’s climax here.

As Jesus is dying he prays for his executioners (above), promises paradise to the penitent thief calls God ‘Father’. This is exclusive to Luke, and reflects the intimate and trusting relationship that Luke protrays between Jesus and the Father, seen most strongly in the words of Ps 31:5 quoted at 23:46 ‘Father into your hands I commit my spirit’ – a prayer said by Jews (and many Christians) as they settle down to sleep

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Lent 4 is “Mothering Sunday”

The fourth Sunday in Lent is traditionally known as “Mothering Sunday” or Refreshment Sunday. In some parts of Great Britain, the custom was to return to the “mother church” or the cathedral for a special service on this day, and it also became customary to celebrate or pay special respect to one’s own mother on this day, a sort of Anglican “Mother’s Day.”

Another custom is the relaxation of austere Lenten observances on this day, the baking of simnel cakes (light fruit cakes covered in marzipan), and in some places the replacement of purple robes and liturgical hangings with rose-colored ones. Simnel cakes are called such because of the fine flour (Latin "simila") they were made of.  
 

A recipe for Simnel cake is here. 

Children of all ages were expected to pay a formal visit to their mothers and to bring a Simnel cake as a gift. In return, the mothers gave their children a special blessing. This custom was so well-established that masters were required to give servants enough time off to visit out-of-town mothers – provided the trip did not exceed 5 days! This holiday became Mother’s Day in America.

So How’s Your Lent Going?

We are halfway through Lent with Lent 4, 5 and Palm Sunday to go before getting to Holy Week.

So what are you doing for Lent and how it is going? What should you be doing? Lent is a journey – part of it is looking inside, removing things and taking on new things – building up. The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby suggested the following – “At the individual level it draws us to see what we have been saved from, and what we are being saved for.”

“A good Lent makes space for hope by leading us afresh into encounter with the holiness of God.” A good Lent starts with us.

“A good Lent begins with paying attention, with beginning to make straight the way of the Lord by listening… We cannot listen while we fill our ears with our own self-confidence and our own self-worth.

“So, how do we listen? Read Luke’s gospel, taking a small chunk each day, and ask yourself as you read it three simple questions: What does it say? What does it mean? What am I going to do about it? Very simple.

“And what do I do about it? Ask yourself: “How do I make my life more open to Christ because of what this is saying to me?”

“For myself, such reading is part of my own daily discipline of prayer, which includes a lot of other things as well. Time is spent and at the end of jotting down whatever banal or very occasionally less banal thoughts I have, I always put in a couple of lines of what I can do about it.

“Sometimes it is very practical writing to someone or speaking to someone who I may have offended. It may be very simple, merely saying a prayer of sorry, or thank you, or petition for something of which I need reminding.

“A good Lent must overflow in generosity. How do we live a good Lent with those whom we live with? The bumps in the road we need to smooth out for the Lord to come? Relationships that have been neglected and therefore are full of clutter that needs removing?

“They can be very difficult: broken relationships may be easily mendable, little irritations – or it may be that we need, in a good Lent, to take the first step to clearing away a major landslide.

“How do you do it in practice? Openness, transparency, and also go back and use the same approach to scripture as I suggested a few moments ago. One has to treat each person and situation different

“Let me suggest one other. As individuals, even short periods of complete silence during Lent, fasting from noise and conversation and distraction, will be of great value. How little we do of it.

“I’ve had to learn, and I’m still very much learning, that I do not need to do anything in that time. I need only to be willing to listen. It is a time of meditation and reflection, of discovering the God who – all the time – is saying: “Here I am.”

“The discipline of a good Lent is to find again how we welcome the stranger, how we practice hospitality, how we listen.

“A good Lent starts within us. It moves through those most closely around us. It comes into the church and it must be so generously experienced that it overflows into society. We will not really have a Good Lent until that chain is complete, and for that, we pray, may your Kingdom come.”