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.

Sermons

Sermon, First Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B – Rev. Tom Hughes

“Good morning to you all and welcome. I am sitting here with the Sun shining in and sitting in warmth and in comfort and peace and safety together here in the Lord’s house. What a blessing that is! So many people in places in the world do not have this service this morning and we take it for granted.

“The whole idea, however, of the way the world works was captured by me during this Christmas season in “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear”.  Verse four captured for me what I want to share it with you because it really was a kind of a high moment for me.

“For lo the days are hastening on, by prophets seen of old
When with the ever circling years shall come the time foretold”

“The ever circling years” phrase carries real power for me because if you think about the way time moves there’s a real sense in way things move on from day to day and there seems like there’s some kind of repetition in the way things occur from generation to generation but most ways it seems like time moves in a straight line but in fact that’s not entirely true. It also moves in a circular way so God’s timing seems to move like this. It’s moving in a in circle as well as moving forward and so God’s purposes for us always are moving forward and that’s really what the basis of our time together this morning is as far as the scriptures are concerned because we read from the  Old Testament.

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Sermon, Christmas Eve, 2023 – “Peace on earth, good will to all people”

Peace on earth, good will to all people. 

Yet another war is raging in the Holy Land, a war that in a few short months has caused unimaginable terror, a war in which over 20,000 people have been killed.  The Christians in the Israeli occupied West Bank town of Bethlehem, the traditional birthplace of Jesus, have cancelled the usual Christmas celebrations, for celebrations seem out of place with so many people dying such a short distance away in Gaza. 

I’m willing to bet that every year since the birth of Jesus, violence and war have been going on somewhere on this earth, and that God’s peace seems like nothing more than a dream. 

So more than ever, we need this story of the birth of Jesus,  the story that I’m convinced is the most important story in the entire Bible.  This story reminds us that God likes to start small.   God uses the small things that we make available to do great things. 

This story  also gives us hope that in spite of all of human history, we can, along with Edmund H. Sears, who wrote  “It came upon the midnight clear” firmly believe that “when with the ever circling years shall come the time foretold, when peace shall over all the earth its ancient splendors fling, and all the world give back the song, which now the angels sing.” 

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The Story Corps Christmas sermon from 2017 –

Flashback to a gem from Christmas, 2017. …”This story is the good news of Christmas– the story of open doors and open hearts, forgiveness, and unexpected generosity.”

Dr. William Lynn Weaver with his younger brother, Wayne, in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1963. Courtesy of the Weaver family.

“I recently heard this story on Story Corps.

On a cold Christmas Eve in 1967, just before dark, William Weaver, age 18, home from college, was walking down the street in his small neighborhood in Knoxville, TN,  when a young boy rode by on a bike.

“Hey,” William thought to himself.  “That looks like my brother’s bike.”

So when he got home, he asked his little brother Wayne where his bike was.  And his brother said it was outside against the steps.

“No, it’s not,” said William.  “It’s gone.”

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Sermon, Advent 3, Year B – “Music, a thin place “

In the Living Compass publication, Living Well through Advent, Scott Stoner talks about the music of Christmas.  He says that “music is a thin place for many, where the distance between themselves and God is narrowed.  It has long been said that music is the language of the soul and that those who sing, pray twice.” 

Every Sunday, at the Great Thanksgiving, our Eucharistic Prayer, we sing, “Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of power and might.”  We join our voices with angels, archangels, and with all the company of heaven, who forever sing this hymn to proclaim the glory of God’s name.” 

That music brings us directly into the presence of God and all the company of heaven as we prepare to come to God’s table and share the bread and wine together.  Those who have gone before us surround us in this thin place at the table every Sunday.  Music helps us to know that they are there with us, the company of heaven, and once more, the circle of love is unbroken, even by death. 

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Sermon summary, Rev. Tom Hughes, Advent 2, Dec. 10, 2023

Prepare the way of the Lord – What does it mean for us?  These lessons chart a course for us, what is expected of us, understanding how life works. “The wilderness inside takes a whole lifetime to cross.” This is what Isaiah is talking about preparing the way of the Lord in the desert. Where is that desert? Those that live in the Middle East is what comes to your mind – barren land, dryness. It also has to do with our life course – walking across this life span we are given. Sometimes it is not easy –  sometimes things happen along the way we would never have wanted to happen or anticipated. However, if you are on a course with a particular destination, things don’t trip us up as much.

It’s just the idea of a container. Say you have a bucket with paint in it. It’s not the bucket what is important, it’s what’s in the bucket. It is the paint, not the container. That’s the way it is in our lives. We live in these containers. It is what’s inside what God looks at that’s important. We need to be mindful of what’s inside of us.

We have markers of where we are in Kronos time, such as the calendar date and lectionary date. But where do you think you are on the road? That’s a rhetorical question, we all would do well to ponder.  Where are we in our path through the Wilderness because the wilderness is the perfect metaphor for life in that we don’t know exactly where we’re going, we don’t know what the terrain is going to look like and we don’t really have much of an idea about where we’re going to wind up.  But we’re given some help with that in understanding our path and where we’re going to wind up too because that’s what the Gospel our Lord Jesus Christ proclaims unto us.

We need not be afraid of the wilderness even though it’s an unknown.  We need not live in fear of the place of our souls in creation – that’s already taken  care of.  The way that’s taken care of is very interesting too because we have that presented to us in the Gospel where it talks about John’s baptizing in the wilderness. He baptized people and what happened was that in  those days the understanding of baptism was an ancient Jewish custom which wasn’t new The idea was that he bathed in the River Jordan and your sins were washed away. It was a physical thing – your bodies became clean. What Jesus did was take that beautiful Jewish tradition that John embraced and what Jesus did was embellish it , transform it, elevate it to something brand new which is it is the revival of our souls.

At Christmas time we sing songs about the birth of Christ. But I want to tell you that I believe this that every time one of us makes the decision to seek a deeper life, to search more aggressively for that which is internal in our lives, the child is born again in us and we are born again. 

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Sermon Dec. 3, 2023 – Summary

The Gospel on Advent 1, Year B calls us to look to ‘end times”. Mark provides a description – “Sun and moon will not shine” and the “stars will be falling from heaven”

“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.”

Tom’s sermon said “we should give a lot of thought to the End Times.” What does it mean to us? It is the bringing together of all God’s purposes and all God’s plans for the world and for humanity and for the Kingdom of God to all come together into fruition.

“Now we don’t know what it looks like. We pray that God restores Earth and  war will cease. We have clues what end times look like but We just have to remain awake and to watch.”

That is important because we have two things in the conflict going on inside of us:

1 Bios – physical things of this earth. This is the world we live in:
We tend to worry about Bios coming to an end but that is not as important as the next item

2 Zoe – Eternal essence of life. It is what happening inside of us. This is what matters.

Are you aware how that eternal essence of life is moving inside of you? It doesn’t happen automatically you have to seek it. Many people are clueless about this and not understand Zoe.

It is about being on the road and on that road when you are seeking the internal and eternal essense of life, that’s where you encounter Christ because that’s the road Jesus walks.

That life we lead here is preparation for life which is to come, eternal life which comes to us because we have eternal essense what it means to be alive.

To be in this world and be aware of only Bios our physical selves, will not help you in end times. What matters is the degree to which we embrace the presence of Christ in the world in dwelling with God in the holy spirit that makes us more than just bio. It makes us aware of the eternal nature of who we are truly are, children of God, given gift of eternal life. But we must go on the road to receive it.

We must understand the spirit of God which is inside of us. That is where God dwells. That’s the temple to which Christ comes.

How to make a difference in the world? Live inside where god dwells, the Zoe of life the true essence of what it means to be live in this world and the world to come.

Sermon, Christ the King Sunday, Nov. 26, 2023

Rancho Cielo helps kids find and develop meaningful lives and avoid jail.

The word for today is “gathering,” an appropriate word for this last Sunday of the church year.  This Sunday brings to a close the week of Thanksgiving, when we gather with our families, coming home to those who are near and dear to us.   This is also the season of gathering, of harvest, of preparing the gardens and the fields for their winter rest, before the next season of planting and growing begins once more. 

In today’s opening hymn, the familiar “Come, ye thankful people, come,”   “all is safely gathered in, ere the winter storms begin.” Throughout the year, we have gathered the blessings that God has provided, and so today, we come to raise the song of harvest-home, with great gratitude for God’s goodness.   

Today’s reading from the Old Testament is all about God gathering in God’s lost and scattered people.   The Prophet Ezekiel pronounces an oracle of restoration to the people of Israel, who have been scattered far and wide, separated from one another, taken into exile, and now are like lost sheep without a shepherd. 

“Thus says the Lord God:  I myself will search for my sheep and I will seek them out…I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered…I will bring them into their own land…I will feed them with good pasture…they shall lie down in good grazing land.”   God says, “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep….I will seek the lost and bring back the strayed, I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak.” 

What hopeful words!  No matter how far we are scattered, or how far we have strayed, God is always working to gather us back in, back into God’s love, care, healing, and safety.  God comes looking for us, and for all the lost.  “I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out.”  God’s goodness and mercy follow us all the days of our lives.  God gathers us in, and we dwell in God’s love forever. 

God also says, “I will feed my sheep with justice.”

And so the Apostle Matthew presents the great judgement scene in his gospel, another great scene of gathering, one with which we are probably all familiar.  In the scene, Jesus, Christ the King, has come in his glory, all the nations are gathered before him, and Jesus will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.  The sheep are the ones who have provided love, care, healing and safety to the least of these.  “Truly, I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you have done it to me.”

Those who have done for others what God has already done for us are the ones God invites into eternal life.  For when we care for the least of these, we too become shepherds, searching and seeking, rescuing and providing. 

In his time among us, Jesus, the Good Shepherd,  gathered his followers in from tax collector’s booths, gathered them in from lives of oppression and hopelessness, gathered them out of their old lives into new life, into hope and healing. 

And then he gives to his followers the disciples, and to us, the authority to go out and to seek the lost, and to be God’s love and light in the world through our actions, to enter into God’s very heart, and to become part of the eternal flow of love that God constantly pours out into creation.

Because we have been gathered in by Jesus, in gratitude we go out to gather in the lost, the scattered, the strayed, the injured, and the weak ones of this world, the ones that Jesus calls “the least of these” into God’s healing love.

Maybe some of you have read this article online, an article from USA Today, written by Elizabeth Weise, entitled “Jobs, not jail:  A judge was sick of sending kids to prison, so he found a better way.”    I share it today because it is such a fine illustration of a person seeking out and gathering the least of these, and in doing so, transforming their lives.

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Rancho- Ciello – “God shall come, and take his harvest home”

Catherine’s sermon on “Last Pentecost”, Nov. 26, 2023 took the “gathering” theme in the opening hymn and the Old Testament reading and wove it into the story of a judge (John Phillips) in California who became a shepherd to troubled youth in Salinas Cal in a project known at Rancho Ciello. This was an inspiring story of how one person (Judge Phillips, pictured below) can make a difference and provide an alternative to long sentences in prison for youth.

From the sermon Nov 26, 2023

“The word for today is “gathering,” an appropriate word for this last Sunday of the church year. This Sunday brings to a close the week of Thanksgiving, when we gather with our families, coming home to those who are near and dear to us. This is also the season of gathering, of harvest, of preparing the gardens and the fields for their winter rest, before the next season of planting and growing begins once more.

The sermon was based on an article in USA Today by Elizabeth Weise,

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Sermon, Nov. 19, 2023, Pentecost 25

In last Wednesday’s comics, the comic strip “Pearls before Swine” focused on Judgement Day.  Goat says to Rat, “Do you believe that if you do bad things, you’ll be judged after you die and go to hell?  Rat responds, “I do.”  Goat says, “But everything you do is bad.” Rat says, “I plan on pleading ‘oopsies.’ “ Goat says, “Not sure that’s a defense.”  Rat says, “OK, now I’m worried.” 

Today’s scriptures are worrisome.  The prophet Zephaniah describes the day of judgment in dreadful terms, a day of wrath, distress and anguish for those who have been complacent, and who say in their hearts that “The Lord will not do good, nor will he do harm.”  The complacent people who heard Zephaniah’s oracle, and we who give in to the modern day temptation to dismiss any thoughts of God’s judgement and to focus only on God’s goodness and mercy, or believe deep down inside that God is just looking the other way about most things may feel like Rat—“Now I’m worried ”  or at least shaken up a bit after hearing from Zehaniah.  Or, we can just dismiss the Day of Judgement as the raging of a crazy prophet. 

But let’s take these passages to heart.  The Nicene Creed, which is an outline of our Christian core beliefs, states that that Jesus will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.”  That statement challenges our thoughts like—“Jesus hasn’t come back yet, and it’s been over 2000 years,” or “We believe in Jesus, so we will be judged on faith alone.”  God’s assessment of how we try to carry out God’s will on this earth matters now, and will always matter, for God has entrusted us, the followers of Jesus, to carry out the work of Jesus until he returns.  And when we decide to follow Jesus, we accept that trust, and take on the challenge.

Today’s scriptures make clear that there is a finish line and a day of reckoning, and then gives us ways to reach the finish line as winners.    

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Rev. Tom Hughes Sermon Summary, All Saints, Nov. 5, 2023

We are not yet what we shall be. That’s one of Tom’s favorite Bible phrase

“Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed.”
1 John 3:2

What happens along the way when you are transformed and you become saintly? You are set apart by God. To be transformed in God, you are beyond the law and beyond history. You are unique from any other creature from anyone who has ever been.

That’s what we want to be though we can be side-tracked. We don’t live by the standards of other people but live by what we learn from God.

To be this complete person we have to be honest with ourselves and God, open and without self-deception and that’s why we confess our sins. We need to be free of those things.

We are not controlled by things of this earth. To have our direction of how we live in this world come from God. That’s what sets us apart. What we want to be is genuine, not fake open with ourselves and God.

You are blessed if you adhere to the Beatitudes

We need to open ourselves to God in our lives and let God take the wheel The extent in which we do that is how real or genuine we are. The light of God is shining through them.

Who are these people robed in white? They are robed in the Holy Spirit. We know that is what we should be

The vision is that we are in that parade right now. We know what we shall be, the very creature God meant for us to be. This is the best outcome on the time on this earth and for eternity.

Sermon, 22nd Sunday after Pentecost, Oct. 29, 2023

Today’s passages are about love:  loving God, loving our neighbors, and loving creation as well.  When we love all that God has made, we discover for the first time, or all over again, even more brightly, that  God’s glory shines through all of creation.  When we enter that sacred glory, we can’t help but open our hearts to God’s deep, healing love for each one of us and for all that God has made. 

As we enter God’s shining, whether it’s walking through the woods on a bright autumn afternoon, the air shimmering golden, or seeing a glimmer of silver light reflected in drops of falling rain, we begin to sense that God’s glory dwells not only in the beauty of creation, but in our hearts as well.  We begin to sense that we, ourselves, our souls, our bodies, are all caught up in this glory, that we are part of God, part of the earth and part of one another. 

This same shining glory that we find in creation is the shining glory that we see in one another when we remember that God made us all, loves us all, that all of us are beloved by God.     

Opening our hearts to God’s glory and being willing to enter it is the path to holiness. 

“You shall be holy, for I the Lord God am holy,” God says to the Israelites. 

God intends for each one of us to claim our holiness by coming to know that all that God made is holy and blessed, that all creation holds the shining glory that is God. 

And then God asks us to gratefully respond to this shining glory with compassion, mercy and justice, for the compassion that we have for one another is a holy act that allows God’s shining to break through, even in the places where God seems to be absent. 

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