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

Sermon, Easter 6, Year B- “Abide in His Love”

Last week I said that in the sermons I get to share with you before I leave, I want to consider what the scriptures appointed for each Sunday have to say to this parish in this time of transition. 

Today’s gospel passage completes the gospel from last Sunday, in which Jesus tells the disciples that God is the gardener, Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches.  Jesus reminds the disciples that God the gardener must prune the branches to make them bear more fruit, and that we, here at St Peter’s, are going through a pruning with all the changes ahead.  But the promise is that since Jesus the vine to which we branches are attached, we can count on bearing more fruit because God the gardener has pruned us.   

As Jesus continues this conversation with the disciples, he moves from a focus on pruning the branches to a focus on the disciples abiding in his love.  This focus on abiding in his love is where we begin today’s considerations about the parish transition ahead of us. 

Read more

Sermon – Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B- Rev. Catherine Hicks

Video

John 15:1-8

Our time is drawing short.  At the end of June, I will be leaving St Peter’s, a huge change for me, and for this parish as well.  But God does not leave us to muddle through the challenges, changes, and chances in this life without God’s help! 

One of the many gifts we have as we go through changes is the wisdom of scripture, for scripture consists of living words that never fail to apply to the situations that we face in this life.   

So in the sermon today I will be focusing on the changes happening in our parish as we consider the appointed scriptures.  The more directly we all consider these changes by seeing what scripture has to say to us during this transition, the better off we will all be once the calendar pages turn to July and we are no longer sharing this space together. 

Let’s begin by reviewing the seven I AM statements of Jesus.  Today’s gospel centers around one of those statements.

Read more

Sermon, April 21, 2024 – “The Gate and the Good Shepherd”

What a joy to be here on this day together with these incredible lessons. Honestly there’s so much here you could preach all day but I promise I’ll keep it under an hour.

The right first thing I want to say is when Jesus says there are sheep not of the fold he’s talking about us because we’re not Jews and so the people outside of Judaism are the ones to whom he’s referring there and that of course would be all of us.

We’ve talked about the whole idea of symbols for a couple of weeks now and how important symbols are when you’re referring to things that you can’t explain clearly in a common language and that’s hard to understand and really hard to talk about. That’s why we have symbols. The cross is probably the greatest symbol in all of history. Last week we talk about the road of life and the road being the symbol for the way that that we move through this world.

There are two more beautiful symbols today that I’d like to unpack what Jesus revealed to us as the gate and as the Good Shepherd . The idea of the gate and the shepherd are symbols of Jesus how he explains himself to us, how he relates himself to us.

Read more

Sermon, Rev. Tom Hughes, April 14, 2024 – “In the final chapter of life.. we shall be like Christ”

1 John 3:1-7 “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.”


Sermon

Nice to be together. This beautiful Sunday feels like spring this Sunday. Last Sunday if you recall it, we weren’t sure, but here we are gathered again today in  the Lord’s House to read and reflect on the words that have been given to us

One of the things that we spent a couple of minutes on last week was talking about symbols and I want to go back to that.

I could begin there because symbols are so important not just in the Christian life for which they are central. In life in general if you’re dealing about faith and issues about eternal life, knowing God when we’re talking about things like that, it’s hard to think about and practically impossible to talk about them because they’re just not adequate words. We’re not able to think in ways that will enable us to speak the truest things, the things that are the hardest ones, to give voice to that. Being the case then, we have to represent those things in symbols.

The greatest symbol of all time in all of human history is the cross. Even if you’re an enemy of Christ, if you’re an enemy of the cross, the cross is still the most significant thing as a symbol that there’s ever been and I’m sure ever will be because it captures everything about life now. If you’re familiar with philosophy and writings of the past and poetry certainly scripture, another very powerful image and a symbol is the idea of the road being on the road. We live life out on the road – that’s where things happen.  I’m probably the only one here that can remember the  Bing Crosby and Bob Hope movies on the road shows – you know the  Road to Singapore and the Road toward Mandalay. They were so funny I laughed till my stomach hurt but they’re all about being on the road and things happened on the road. That was the point Willie Nelson sings about being on the road. It’s a theme that runs through all of literature, music, and history being on the road.

Read more

Sermon, April 7, 2024 – Rev. Tom Hughes – “the breath of God”

What a joy to be together this morning and to have these wonderful lessons to go over there are a lot of things we need to touch on and there’s just a couple of things before I come to the subject thatI’ve been led to talk about.

The first one is in in the lesson; that we heard of just a few minutes ago, there was a great deal of emphasis placed on ;sinfulness. What I want you to understand about that in all the Johannine tradition that sin is not a particular kind of moral failure like I told the lie or something like that – it’s being separated from God. That’s what living in sin is – being separated from God. Of course the mission of Jesus above all other things as we just read was that we would be close to God not separated from God to live in glory and the peace of God.

Read more

Rev. Tom Hughes’ sermon, Sunrise service, March 31, 2024

“Happiness comes from in here. We live from the inside out not from the outside in”.

Video

Transcribed

I’m Tom, I’m from over here at St Peters and what a joy to be doing this and to hear that beautiful reading of that scripture again. You never get tired of that do you, that story over and over again.

What a wonderful gift that is, and on top of that, the perfect setting for being here together for the sunrise the Lord has provided for us so beautifully. And if you appreciate it, the symbolism here is everywhere. You’ve got spring, new beginning, new life coming up, you got the river of God flowing by out here and it just goes on and on, new life, new light into the world, the light of Christ – we’re celebrating it right now so it’s just everywhere. If you’re not already half dead you can see it around you, the presence and power and the love of God.

Read more

Sermon, Easter, March 31, 2024

“Noli me tangere” Antonio Correggio (CA. 1525)

In the beginning, the Lord God formed a man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into that man’s nostrils the breath of life, and so the man became a human being.  And then, the Lord God planted a garden in Eden. And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, a river to water the garden, and God put the man there to till the garden and to care for it.  The Garden of Eden was so inviting that God would walk there in the cool of the evening breeze, reveling in the beauty of the garden.    

Since the beginning of time, gardens have provided sustenance, beauty and inspiration. 

Those blessed enough to have a garden witness the ways in which the garden changes through the seasons. 

They’ve tilled the ground, watched with an amazement the new growth springing up from the seeds they have planted.   Gardeners harvest,  and then when the plants are spent and dead, they put the garden to bed to rest for the winter.  And then the gardener waits, the seasons change, and it’s time to till and to plant again. 

Gardens have always been places of death and resurrection. 

That first man, blessed to live in the Garden of Eden, could not simply live there, reveling in its blessings and beauty, but ended up putting himself above God, and sin came into the garden.  God sent the man and the woman out of the Garden so that they would not eat from the Tree of Life and live forever. 

And so death came into the world. 

Read more

Sermon, Good Friday, March 29, 2024

Before his crucifixion and death, Jesus shared a last supper with the disciples. 

“After supper he took the cup of wine; and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and said, “Drink this, all of you; This is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me.” 

Blood is essential to life.  Blood carries oxygen and  nutrients throughout our bodies and helps to regulate our body temperatures.   Blood carries waste materials to the organs that rid the body of that waste.  Blood also fights off infections.  Without blood, we cannot live. 

Read more