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, 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.

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, 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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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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Sermon 21st Sunday after Pentecost, Oct. 22, 2023

Sermon, Proper 24, Year A 2023

Psalm 95, I Thessalonians 1:1-10, Matthew 22:15-22

Sing to the Lord a new song!  Sing to the Lord, all the whole earth! 

The times we live in certainly do call for a new song, and today’s scriptures help us to figure out how to sing the song that God wants the world to hear about the good news of God’s salvation. 

During the readings today, we got to hear from the earliest book in the New Testament.  Even before the gospels were completed, Paul wrote a letter to the church in Thessalonica which he had started. 

The Thessalonians had it together—because they had become imitators of Jesus.  They served the living and true God.  News of their works of faith and labors of love and steadfastness of hope in Jesus spread far and wide.  As Paul tells them, “The word of the Lord has sounded forth from you in every place your faith in God has become known.”

Through the way they were living their lives, the Thessalonians were showing the world who Jesus was by the way they were following him—by doing their best to be like him—to be people of faith, hope, and love in all that they did.

They were singing a new song of praise and joy, blessing the Lord and declaring the good news of God’s salvation, available to all who chose to listen. 

And now, over two thousand years later, we also try to follow Jesus by serving God and doing works of faith and labors of love.  We try to be steadfast in our hope that God’s kingdom will come on this earth. 

It’s our turn to sing to the Lord a new song, to sing out to God and to bless God’s name and proclaim the good news of his salvation from day to day. 

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Sermon, Oct. 15, 2023, Pentecost 20

“Parable of the Great Banquet” (between 1525 and 1545) – Brunswick Monogrammist

After his death and resurrection,  Jesus returns to the shore of the Sea of Galilee at dawn one morning, sees the disciples, who have gone back to fishing but have caught nothing, provides a catch for them, and then prepares breakfast for this unworthy bunch, invites them to bring some of the fish they have just caught and to come and have breakfast.  Jesus is still choosing them, this time to gather around another meal with their Lord and Savior.    

And this part—Peter, when he realizes that it is the Lord on the shore calling to them, he throws on some clothes, for he is naked.  Now fully clothed, he jumps into the sea, and swims to shore, to join Jesus for breakfast.    

When Peter hurries to put on clothes to swim to Jesus, he is putting on the new life that he suddenly realizes is waiting for him. He is putting on his wedding garment to wear to the banquet.  

And so Jesus still invites us today to put on new life and to come to his table.  He invites all of us. 

As the invitation to the Eucharist says in the Celtic Eucharistic prayer that we will pray again on All Saint’s Day,

“For this is the table where God intends us to be nourished; this is the time when Christ can make us new.  So come, you who hunger and thirst for a deeper faith, for a better life, for a fairer world.  Jesus Christ, who has sat at our tables, now invites us to be guests at his.”

Imagine the times in  your life when you’ve felt like you’ve been fishing all night and you haven’t caught a thing.   Remember how Jesus has filled up your boat over and over with blessings, too many to count. 

And now, at his invitation, bring what he has so graciously blessed you with, and  even if you feel like you don’t have much to bring, even if all you can bring is weariness, bring what you’ve got.   

Put on your wedding garment of new life, and come to the table, rejoicing in the Lord.    

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Sermon, Oct. 1, 2023, Pentecost 18, Season of Creation V

Who can tell me what this is?  Yes, a map.  These days we mostly use GPS to map our trips, but these paper maps can come in handy as well. But when we travel, we have to have the right map to get us where we want to go.  If I’m traveling in Virginia, is this map going to help me?  Which one do I need?

We all know stories about maps that lead us to hidden treasure.  If we follow the map we will find the treasure! 

Now here’s the most important map we can have—a map that gives us the directions we need to get through our lives  without getting lost and also leads us to the treasure, which is the kingdom of God.     

This is the Bible. 

For instance, in today’s Old Testament reading, God says, “Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me, (That is, stop going the wrong way!) and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord God, Turn then, and live.”  (That is, turn and go the right way!) 

Head  toward safety and life rather than toward danger and death. 

Today I want to tell you the story of a person who was headed in one direction, and then he heard God ask him to turn and go in a different, better direction.  

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Forgiveness over two Sundays, two ministers

The Gospel passages from Sept 10 and 17, 2023 work well together as demonstrated by Tom’s (Sept 10) and Catherine’s (Sept 17) sermons.   Both were about forgiveness and mostly the failure to practice it. And both used the same symbol – an inflated beachball that had to be held underwater which symbolized the lack of forgiveness.

Video Links – 1 The Rev. Tom Hughes (Sept 10)
2.The Rev. Catherine Hicks (Sept 17)

Tom preached that forgiveness is one of the critical issues of life. Without it, you limit yourself and are constantly frustrated. It derails your life in God. It keeps you in the past and keeps you from flourishing in the present and future. It keeps a hold on you – chaos is the only winner in that situation. It keeps you from loving God.

Forgiveness is an important place to start creating a new life and living in a different way.  New life is part of  the Season of Creation which we are celebrating.

Tom brought up a metaphor of a beachball that you are being forced to hold underwater.  You can’t do anything else -your hands are occupied. That’s the case of not forgiving.

If we expect God to forgive us we have to be open to forgive others.  In many cases, we are not prepared to receive it. We cannot understand it If  we hold out on our unforgiveness to others who have hurt us.

Tom described his method for forgiveness. Go find a quiet place and go over every detail of the “crummy’ incident = what is haunting us, where you have been wronged or have wronged others. Finally, you pray “O Lord take this from me.” I will not think of it again. It is done with. I forgive and let go and accept and give forgiveness.

Tom believes it is important both to forgive and forget to restore your life. Both you and the other person are set free though you may have to repeat this process more than once to be truly effective.

On Sept. 17, Catherine described the Gospel story where a slave fails to practice forgiveness. “In today’s gospel, Jesus tells a story about a king who forgave a slave in tremendous debt to the king. That slave, having been forgiven his debt, went out and refused to forgive one of his fellows who owed him money.  In fact, the forgiven slave had the person in debt to him thrown into jail until the man could pay his debt to the slave the king had so generously forgiven.     

“The others who witnessed all of this went and told the king, who called the forgiven slave in.  The king said, “You wicked slave!  I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.  Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?”

“And the king hands over the slave to be tortured until he pays his original debt.  And then comes this zinger from Jesus.  “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”  That is, we suffer the consequences when we continue to be unforgiving people.  

“So I’m wondering—are there, in the end, limits to God’s limitless mercy?  The answer to that question is yes, there are limits to God’s mercy—the limits to that mercy that we create through the exercise of our own free will. 

“So let’s do a thought experiment.  Go back to Tom’s beach ball image for a moment.  Imagine that you are at the beach in the water, right beyond the breakers, holding down the ball under the water. 

“Jesus comes walking by, sees what is going on, wades out to you and says, “Hey, let me hold that beach ball underwater for you.”  You gratefully agree because you’re tired,  and you hand Jesus the beach ball.  Jesus holds the ball underwater for a minute with you still standing there, amazed that someone would do this for you. 

“And then Jesus laughs and says, “Listen,  there’s something I’d love to do for you.   I’m going to free you from this ball forever so you can go live your life. Is that ok with you?” You reluctantly agree.     Jesus takes the ball and hurls it far out into the ocean, and the currents quickly carry it out to sea.

“For a moment you are relieved, but then you think to yourself, “Wait, I can’t let that ball go! What am I going to do if I can’t hold this ball underwater?”    You ignore Jesus, who continues to stand next to you, hoping that you will go with him back to shore,  and you start swimming out toward the ball.   Jesus stands there in the water weeping, as you swim far, far out into the ocean, swimming after the ball that was already robbing you of life, and ultimately you drown. 

“What ball are you chasing today that Jesus has ALREADY taken away from you?  What is it that you can’t forgive or let go, that you keep taking back, even though you have been forgiven and freed by God and by others for your sins toward them over and over and over? 

“The unforgiveness that you hold onto, the unforgiveness toward others or even toward yourself that you keep holding onto because you think you can’t live without it, because it’s become such a part of you,  is going to kill you in the end.

“Here’s the good news.  No matter how many times we take that ball out into the ocean and try to hold it underwater, Jesus will come out to us and offer to take the ball away.  Seventy times seven, and then on and on, through infinity.  In that way, God’s forgiveness is limitless

“As St Augustine says, “Sins that have been forgiven return when there is no brotherly love.”  And that is the whole point of this story.   Our sins return because WE keep making space for them, and even actively taking them back, even after we’ve been freed of them, when we choose not to forgive and to love one another from our hearts.   

“Paul asks the people of the church in Rome, “Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister?  Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister?  For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.” We all stand before the judgment seat of God all the time.  Jesus is next to us in the water all day long, hoping to take away that ball of unforgiveness that is distracting us and potentially killing us once and for all.

“Last week, Tom reminded us that when are tempted not to forgive someone or when we are tempted to continue carrying a grudge, to go to a quiet place and after thinking about all that has happened, let that thing go.  Yes!  

“Another important thing about these lessons is the reminder that once the ball is gone, we need to replace the ball with something else, or we will start longing for the ball again, because it’s what we know, and we’re comfortable with it, even if we don’t like it. 

 “Replace the thing you’ve released with praise for our almighty Lord, our healer, redeemer, our advocate, the one who loves us through eternity. And the one who frees us, once and for all, to live free, joyful, and loving lives.”

Sermon, Proper 19, Season of Creation 3

Psalm 103; Romans 14:1-12, Matthew 18:21-35

Practicing forgiveness is part of the art of  living fully, joyfully, and peacefully in this world.  Last week, Tom provided us with that unforgettable image of a person standing in the ocean trying to hold a beach ball under the water—and how that effort meant that the person was not free to do anything else.  Not forgiving, he pointed out, is like trying to hold that beach ball under the water. 

In today’s gospel, Jesus tells a story about a king who forgave a slave in tremendous debt to the king. That slave, having been forgiven his debt, went out and refused to forgive one of his fellows who owed him money.  In fact, the forgiven slave had the person in debt to him thrown into jail until the man could pay his debt to the slave the king had so generously forgiven.     

The others who witnessed all of this went and told the king, who called the forgiven slave in.  The king said, “You wicked slave!  I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.  Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?”

And the king hands over the slave to be tortured until he pays his original debt. 

And then comes this zinger from Jesus.

“So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” 

That is, we suffer the consequences when we continue to be unforgiving people.  

So I’m wondering—are there, in the end, limits to God’s limitless mercy? 

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