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.

Sermons

Epiphany Sermon, Trinity Episcopal, NY, Jan. 5, 2025

Sermon Trinity NY. Jan. 5, 2025 Sunday Sermon, The Rev. Kristin Kaulbach Miles

The three themes for today’s scriptures are arise shine,  redemption as relationship,  and another road home.

Epiphany, one of our seven principal church feasts, means manifestation, the manifestation of the divine, specifically the coming of God into the world through the birth of Jesus. It’s about seeing stars and people and discerning what is true. It reminds us that paying attention is a very important practice

The writer Sylvia Boorstein says that liberating understanding comes more from seeing how things are than from seeing how we are. She says we ruminate and regret and reflect and rehearse endlessly. We pass by now only briefly on the way from ruminating to rehearsing, hardly pausing to relax.  In her book about meditation, Don’t just do something, sit there. Sylvia shares how she has covered her habit of transforming neutral fact into painful opinion many years ago.

Many years ago when she phoned a monastery to arrange for a private retreat, the person she spoke with said you need to speak with Robert. the retreat master. She left a message for Robert and was assured he would call back. The following day she had a message on her answering machine from Robert saying he had returned her call. The day after that she phoned and was told once again that Robert wasn’t there. She explained that she had called Robert and Robert had called her and here she was now calling Robert again. She added, maybe this is a sign that I’m not supposed to do my retreat there. The response she got was  “I think it’s just a sign that Robert isn’t here.”

Epiphany is a day to receive God’s gift of God’s self for us by being present to where we are to see more clearly what is,  not more than it is and not less .

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Sermon on Ephesians – Respecting all

Introduction- In 2012 St. Peter’s began participating in a Bible Study at Peumansend Jail near Bowling Green, VA.

The facility opened in September 1999 as the Peumansend Creek Regional Jail and features a campus style layout, designed to operate as a fourth-generation direct supervision facility. Low custody inmates from six jurisdictions and the Virginia Department of Corrections were housed at the facility until March 2017 when it closed .

Catherine’s sermon for this Sunday in 2012 used the ministry as a main focus to consider Ephesians 4:25-5:2:

“This past Thursday night at our monthly jail Bible Study, a prisoner started off our discussion with this question.

“So if you were challenged by someone who was going to take your life depending on whether or not you were a Christian, and you said you were, and then they killed you because you’d said you were Christian, would you go straight to heaven?”

“The ten men there pretty much agreed that yes, the person would go to heaven because he had died professing his belief in Jesus.

“But then another prisoner pointed out that it’s not just what we say we believe, but it’s how we live out those beliefs, because how we live reflects what we truly believe.

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Sermon, Pentecost 6, June 30, 2024 – “This day of ending is also a day of resurrection, a day of new beginnings for all of us.”

Sermon, Proper 8, Year B 2024

We are an alleluia congregation. 

Throughout the year, except during the season of Lent,  the last word we share as we head out the door each week is “Alleluia!”  Despite the directions of the prayer book and our bishops, who all remind us that alleluia is only to be added to the dismissal during the Season of Easter, our last word every Sunday is “Alleluia!” When Bishop Shannon visited us several years ago, I warned him ahead of time that we would be following our custom and that alleluia would be our last word.  He looked taken aback, but then he laughed and gave our out of season alleluia his blessing.   Because think about it!  What bishop wouldn’t want every church in his or her diocese to be an alleluia congregation?

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Sermon, 5th Sunday after Pentecost, June 23, 2024, “Storms in our Lives”

Sermon, Proper 7, Year B, 2024

“Christ Asleep in His Boat”, Jules Joseph Meynier (1826-1903)

Do you ever wonder “Why?”  and get frustrated with God when life is a struggle and you find yourself in a metaphorical storm tossed boat, wondering if you’ll survive?   

In today’s Old Testament reading, Job, a good man, has had his world fall apart and has lost everything, even though he has lived a good and righteous life.  Job bitterly complains to God and accuses God of not hearing his cries.

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Sermon, June 16, 2024, Pentecost 4, “Seeds”

Mark 4:26-34, 2 Corinthians 5:6-10, 14-17

When Jesus appears in Galilee at the beginning of Mark’s gospel, proclaiming the Good News of God, the first thing Jesus says is this. “The time if fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near.”  In his ministry Jesus talked a lot about the kingdom of God, trying to help those who would listen understand that God’s kingdom was like no earthly kingdom that they had ever known.  Instead, it was something much more astounding and wonderful.  Many of the parables of Jesus are about the kingdom of God, including the two that we just heard read from today’s gospel. 

In today’s gospel from Mark, Chapter 4, Jesus is teaching beside the sea, and there’s such a big crowd around him that he gets into a boat to teach.  During this teaching, Jesus tells parables.  

Everyone gets to hear the parables, but Jesus doesn’t explain the meanings of his parables to the crowd.  He saves the explanations for the insiders, his disciples and followers.  

Mark doesn’t record the explanation that Jesus must have shared about these two parables about the kingdom of God.  As Jesus’ followers, we get to prayerfully draw our own conclusions about what these parables might mean.   So let’s dive in and hope that God will help us out.    

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Sermon, Pentecost 3, Year B, June 9, 2024

Mark 3:19-35

If you were a character in Mark’s gospel, who would you be?  In what group would you belong? As you heard today’s gospel, where did you imagine yourself in the story? 

Right before the scene in today’s gospel, Jesus has been on the mountain where he has called his disciples.  Verse 19, which I included in the gospel reading, says that after gathering his disciples Jesus goes home to Capernaum, to the house that he uses as headquarters. 

Outside the house are the crowds, who follow Jesus everywhere, excited by all that he is doing.  In Mark, the people in the crowds are those who are on the fence, the undecided voters, the ones who cheered Jesus when he came to Jerusalem for Passover and then shouted “Crucify him” when Jesus gets hauled before Pilate.  Right now, in this story, the crowds have surrounded the house where Jesus and the disciples are, hoping that Jesus will come out and work some miracles.  The crowds are the “what’s in this for me” group. 

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Sermon, Second Sunday after Pentecost, June 2, 2024 – “Treasure in Clay Jars”

2 Corinthians 4:5-12

We do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake.  For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” 

But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. 

Paul makes our work and our joy as Christians crystal clear! 

Get out there and be the light!  God shines in our hearts, for we have seen Jesus, and we are children of God’s light. 

“Let there be light,” God said at the beginning of creation. 

This is our prayer, new every morning. 

“God, let there be light, your light,  in my life today! And let your glorious light shine through me.”

But then Paul, ever the realist, continues by saying… BUT……

We have this treasure in clay jars.

So let’s do a little experiment.  I need a helper. 

Turn on this flashlight and put it inside this jar.  Now we’ll put the lid on. 

Can you see the light?  Yes, it shines right through the glass. 

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Sermon, Trinity Sunday, May 26, 2024 – “Imagination”

John 3:1-17

“Nicodemus Visiting Jesus” (1899)- Henry Ossawa Tanner

I spent last week in the Outer Banks.  While I was there, I visited the Wright Brothers National Memorial, one of the Outer Banks national parks.  What an inspiring place! 

Back in the early 1900’s, Wilbur and Orville Wright, two brothers from Dayton, Ohio,  were fascinated with the idea of human flight.  Although many had experimented with gliders, and Samuel Langley had created powered model gliders, no one had ever figured out how to fly in a manned, heavier than air machine that could leave the ground under its own power, one that could move forward without losing speed and land on a point as high as that from which it started.

The Wright brothers began to explore all that had already been done regarding human flight.  Wilbur wrote to the Smithsonian.    After studying the information they received from that institution, the brothers realized that they had as good a chance as anyone to be the ones to make human flight possible. 

So they got busy, and for the next four years, they tested current theories about aerodynamics, many of which didn’t work.  They developed their own theories, and devoted themselves to the goal of human flight, determined to be the ones who would turn the dream of human flight into reality.    

The Wrights imagined success at what until then had been an unreachable goal.  They had faith in themselves.  And they worked hard to make what they imagined become reality. 

As they got closer to realizing their dream, the two searched for an isolated spot with unrelenting wind, high dunes and lots of sand for soft landings where they could try out their ideas about flight.

On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur lifted off for the first time in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, in their invention, The Flyer.  That day was the first time that anyone had ever flown in a manned, heavier than air machine that could leave the ground under its own power, move forward without losing speed and land on a point as high from which it had started.     

The Wright brothers’ dreams had become reality.  But even these two dreamers probably could not have imagined that only  sixty-six years later, people would take what the Wright brothers had accomplished, would add their own dreams and hard work, and would fly all the way to the moon.  Incredible!  Only sixty-six years—from the windy, white sandy dunes on the coast of North Carolina, to the charcoal gray dusty surface of the moon, thanks to incredible imagination and the hard work by so many to make the dream of people walking on the moon a reality. 

One thing I really appreciated about the museum exhibit at the Wright Brother’s memorial was the emphasis on imagination, for imagination is the source of all creativity.  God imagined the universe into being, from the farthest galaxies to the tiniest living microscopic life on our planet. “O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder, consider all the things thy hands hath made…..”  Not only the universe, but we ourselves have been brought to life from God’s imagination.

The whole Bible is the story of what God imagines for creation and the reality of what really happens—God’s imagination distorted by our own desires, and we can use the word “sin” as shorthand for that corruption that continually threatens to destroy us and our planet. 

Which brings me to Jesus, the ultimate imaginative act of God.  Nothing else having gotten through to us, God imagines God’s self in human form, and as we Christians believe, Jesus is born as one of us, lives as one of us, and dies as one of us. 

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Sermon, Rt. Rev’d Gayle E. Harris, Pentecost, May 19, 2024

Video

“Good morning! Happy birthday, happy birthday church, happy birthday church!

“This is the birthday of the Christian church. Today, the day of the Pentecost, this day and not before this day could the followers of Jesus be called Christians

“Easter is the holiest day of the year right? I know we think it’s Christmas but it’s not. It is Easter. The second holiest day of the year is today.

“Pentecost is the last day of the great 50 days of Easter, then Christmas is after that. (Maybe it’s third holiest at least that’s what the church has been teaching for more than 2,000 years )

“Today is a day of celebrating the ongoing presence of God in the community who follow Jesus.

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