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.

Season of Creation

Sunday Links, Sept 10, 2023, Pentecost 15, Season of Creation II

  • Web site
  • YouTube St. Peter’s Page for viewing services
  • Facebook St. Peter’s Page
  • Location – 823 Water Street, P. O. Box 399, Port Royal, Virginia 22535

    • The Season of Creation returns

  • Sun. Sept 10, 2023, 11am Church service – Eucharist
  • Serving:

    Lector: Andrea Pogue
    Chalice Bearer: Alice Hughes
    Altar Cleanup: Andrea Pogue

    • Lectionary link
  • Sun. Sept. 10, 2023 Pool Party at the Davis’, 2PM-4PM.

  • Tues, Sept 12, Sacred Ground Group meeting. 7PM on Zoom.

    Zoom Link Meeting ID: 854 8811 5724 Passcode: 539098

  • Ecumenical Bible Study, Wed., Sept 13. 10am-12pm, Parish House Reading Lectionary for Sept 17, Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

  • Thurs, Sept. 14, Vestry meeting, 2PM in the Parish House.

  • Thurs, Sept. 14, Holy Cross Day, Sept 14, 2023

    Coming Up – Sept. 17

  • God’s Garden —A gathering of children ages 5-9. Sunday School activities and fun, led by Elizabeth Heimbach in the Parish House, 10:30AM.
  • All articles for Sunday, Sept 10, 2023

    • About the Season of Creation – Since the 1980’s, the Eastern Orthodox Church has designated this time each year to delve more deeply into our relationships with God and with one another in the context of the magnificent creation in which we live. The Catholic Church and Church of England also recognize this season. Various churches across the United States also celebrate the Season of Creation.

    The central focus of the month is on God – God as Creator. In his letter to the Romans, right up front, Paul makes this statement. “Ever since the creation of the world, God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things that God has made.” We know a lot about God simply by paying attention to God’s creation. And Jesus, who came that we might have life, and might have it more abundantly, used his own attention to and love of the natural world in his teachings and parables, to help the people around him find the abundant life that can become ours through him. To be with Jesus through scripture and through the bread and wine is also to see and to know God the Creator of heaven and earth.

    The goal in worship then is to deepen our understanding of God as Creator, to celebrate God’s role as Creator, and to examine and deepen and widen our own relationships with God, creation, and with one another. In particular we need to work to recover the original splendor of the earth.

    An example – Look around your neighborhood where the human influence has been positive and negative on nature. Celebrate the former and do something about the latter.

    “Jesus was intimately involved with the natural world. When he spoke of God and God’s Kingdom, he almost always pointed to the natural world: seeds, the harvest, the clouds, vines, weeds, sheep, fire, water, lilies, bread, wine. Walk out into God’s wonderful creation – and be touched by the very hand of God.”

    –Br. Geoffrey Tristram, SSJE

    A Spiritual Look at Climate Change

    The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.” –Dietrich Bonhoeffer

    1. Creation is a reflection of the glory of God to be good stewards of God’s creation, which includes all of us who live within it

    2. Climate change is a spiritual challenge.  Handling climate change is part of how we live our faith.

    3. We have a responsibility to care for the least of us. The poorest amongst us bear the greatest burden and risk of climate change.

    4. We are called to respond to what we see around us. We are moral messengers for the common good, translate  compassion into action.

    Preserving Water – 6 things you can do

    1 Installing an ENERGY STAR-certified washer,

    2 Using low-flow faucets

    3 Plugging up leaks,

    4 Irrigating the lawn in the morning or evening when the cooler air causes less evaporation,

    5 Taking shorter showers and not running sink water when brushing your teeth.

    6 Consider using non-toxic cleaning products and eco-friendly pesticides and herbicides that won’t contaminate groundwater.

    A spiritual look at climate change:

    The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.” –Dietrich Bonhoeffer

    1. Creation is a reflection of the glory of God to be good stewards of God’s creation, which includes all of us who live within it

    2. Climate change is a spiritual challenge.  Handling climate change is part of how we live our faith.

    3. We have a responsibility to care for the least of us. The poorest amongst us bear the greatest burden and risk of climate change.

    4. We are called to respond to what we see around us. We are moral messengers for the common good, translate  compassion into action.

    Sermon, Season of Creation I, Proper 17, Sept 3, 2023

    Sermon, Season of Creation I, Proper 17, Year A 2023


    The forests of Ethiopia. Page with links to both of the stories and videos.

    “Lord, I love the house in which you dwell and the place where your glory abides,” states the psalmist. 

    Jesus, who came and pitched his tent among us, lived among us, and died as one of us, dwelt on this earth. And when our hearts are open to God, we know that God has always lived among us.  Back in the Garden of Eden, in the very first book in our Bible, Genesis, God had a habit of walking in the garden in the cool of the evening. 

    And in the closing book of the New Testament, Revelation, God once more comes and dwells among us, after ridding the earth of the evil that has held it in thrall for so long. 

    “See,” the writer of Revelation proclaims, “See, the home of God is among mortals.  God will dwell with us and we will be God’s peoples, and God will be with us, and will wipe every tear from our eyes.  Death will be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”  

    So we live in the time of God with us now and not yet quite fully, knowing that truly, the earth itself is the house of the Lord, for God is not only transcendent and heavenly, but also immanent,  as near to us as the air we breathe, as refreshing and as life giving  to us as the water we drink, as restoring as the rain after a long drought, and as solid as the rocky mantle that supports the soil and all of life on this earth. 

    Jesus came and dwelt among us so that we could see, with our own eyes, that God has always dwelt in our midst, on this earth, which is not only God’s footstool, but the very body of God, as theologian Sallie McFague would say.   We earth dwellers live and move and have our being within the body of God during our lives on this earth. 

    And so, when we truly open our eyes, we can see for ourselves God’s glory abiding all around us. 

    “Lord, I love the house in which you dwell and the place where your glory abides—” God’s glory, so intricately woven into the fabric of this earth and  the entire universe.    

    So we rejoice in hope, even as we look around us and see God’s glory diminished by the ways in which we abuse and mistreat one another. 

    Even when we look around and truly begin to see the ways in which we have been both intentionally and unintentionally oblivious and negligent, greedy,  and selfish in the ways in which we relate to God’s earth, still, we can rejoice in hope.

    When Jesus told the disciples that they must take up their crosses and follow him, he was hopeful.  Jesus told the disciples that the next part of his journey would be difficult, and would include suffering and death—but that beyond the suffering and death was resurrection.   Jesus  was hopeful that the disciples could see beyond the  grim predictions of the “now” into the  hope of the resurrection life of the “not yet.”  This resurrection life included the time that they were spending with him, because in being with him they were learning about what resurrection life is in the here and now.  So when Jesus told the disciples that they must take up their crosses and follow him, he was hopeful that they would do so, despite the costs.

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