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.

2023 Sun June 4

Trinity is all about Relationships

1 From Ruth Frey at Trinity Episcopal, NY

What matters about the Trinity is that God is a relationship. God is a relationship within Godself: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (or Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer). Just as God is relational within Godself, we are called to be in loving relationship with God and one another.

However, what matters about the Trinity is that God is a relationship. God is a relationship within Godself: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (or Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer). Just as God is relational within Godself, we are called to be in loving relationship with God and one another.

2 From the SALT Project

Accordingly, the idea of the Trinity casts a vision of God as deeply, irreducibly relational: the one God is constituted by three ongoing relationships. And if we take Genesis 1 seriously, and human beings are created in the imago Dei, then in our own way, we must be fundamentally relational, too, constituted by our relationships with God and one another. This is an important message to proclaim in an era too often dominated by individualism, loneliness, racism, and other forms of division. First, the doctrine of the Trinity insists that God is “up there, down here, and everywhere,” even in the shadows of grief and violence, calling all of us toward justice and love. And second, the doctrine of the Trinity reminds us all that relationships — even and especially relationships across differences — aren’t just something we “do.” Relationships are who we are. If our relationships — person-to-person, and also neighborhood-to-neighborhood, group-to-group — are healthy, then we’re healthy. If they’re not, then we’re sick, and require healing and restoration.

3. Here’s one more practical vision of the Trinity, this one from C.S. Lewis. Imagine “an ordinary simple Christian” at prayer, Lewis says — his voice crackling over the airwaves in one of his famous radio addresses (the same reflections he eventually collected into the book, Mere Christianity). Her prayer is directed toward God — but it is also prompted by God within her in the first place. And at the same time, as she prays she stands with and within the Body of Christ (recall how Christians typically pray “in Jesus’ name”).

In short, as this “ordinary simple Christian” prays, God is three things for her: the goal she is trying to reach, the impetus within her, and a beloved companion along the way — indeed “the Way” itself. Thus for Lewis, “the whole threefold life” of the triune God “is actually going on” around and within her — and as she prays, she “is being caught up into the higher kinds of life,” which is to say, into God’s own life, three and one, one and three (Lewis, Mere Christianity, 4.2).

Lectionary Trinity Sunday, year A

I.Theme –   Creation and Trinity meet in Worship

 "The Trinity" – Hermano Leon

The lectionary readings are here  or individually: 

Old Testament – Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Psalm – Psalm 8 Page 592, BCP
Epistle –2 Corinthians 13:11-13
Gospel – Matthew 28:16-20 

The week is seemingly about beginnings and end – creation in the Old Testament and the Trinity in the New Testament. The Epistle and Gospel are the concluding verses in the 2nd Corinthians and Matthew.

The key concept that bring creation and Trinity is worship. The Gospel emphasis is on the disciples worshipping the risen Lord and spreading His teachings. The creation stories describe God worthy of worship.

Furthermore this is for us a time of transition as we move into Ordinary Time. Our liturgical calendar is top-heavy in that all of the major seasons and holy days of the church happen in the first half of the church year which begins on the first Sunday of Advent. The second half of the year is rather quiet. It is a time to go deeper into the life of Jesus and the great stories of the Old Testament

Both of the Old Testament readings for this day look at the work of the Creator, in the first account of Creation found in Genesis, and more specifically at the creation of humankind in Psalm 8, our purpose and our role. Both Psalm 8 and Genesis 1 explain the role of humanity to have dominion over the creatures of the earth, and both suggest that this dominion is given by the same God who has dominion over us. The understanding of stewardship and care is explicit in this understanding of having dominion.

Both of these passages also suggest that God is in relationship in a divine sense. In Genesis, God says, “Let us make humankind in our image.” In Psalm 8:5, the psalmist sings, “Yet you have made them [human beings] a little lower than God.”

As God is in relationship with us, we are created in the image of God: in the image of relationship. We were created to be in relationship with one another because this is the image of the Divine: God is in relationship. Jesus made this clear, especially in John’s Gospel, in referring to God as “Abba, Father.”

We know that breath, wind and spirit are the same words in Hebrew as in the Greek–we have experienced the wind from God that swept over the waters in the second verse of the Bible as the Holy Spirit, moving through the house on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2 like the rush of a violent wind, breathing on the disciples from Jesus the night after his resurrection in John 20.

The concept of the Trinity is hard to find in the Bible. The two New Testament passages this week are among the very few that mention all three: God the Creator (Father/Mother of us all), Christ the Son (Savior, Redeemer and Messiah), and the Holy Spirit (or Holy Ghost). The Trinity as a doctrine came later in the life of the church, as did most of our doctrines and core theological beliefs.

For Trinity Sunday, we recognize and celebrate the mystery of God’s relationship with God’s self, and the mystery of our own relationship with God, created a little lower than God/Angels/Divine Beings and recognize our relationship with God, all of humanity, and creation as shared in Genesis 1 and Psalm 8. And we recognize our own calling by this Triune God through the person of Jesus Christ in our commission to the world in Matthew 28.

Some of us have our doubts, even about the mystery of the Trinity, but we all are called by the same Jesus to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” This is our call–to make disciples in the names of all Three in One. Holy, holy, holy. God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity. We are comforted by Jesus last remark “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

On this Father’s Day, we celebrate the Trinity, and we also can celebrate the relationship Jesus had with God, one in which Jesus called God Abba, Father. 

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Visual Commentary on Scripture –  In the Beginning, Genesis 1

Genesis 1:1–2
Revised Standard Version
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.

This exhibition contains works of art by Giovanni di Paolo, Unknown artist [Paris], and Michelangelo Buonarroti.

Go to The Gallery

Back to Jamaica in 2023

In 2021, St. Peter’s fundraising contributed $3,000 for the school project. Here is the presentation from that trip.

A mission trip was organized to setup the school distribution. The supplies were sent ahead of the distribution.

In 2023 we are refreshing the supplies as well as moving to supply additional items, like computers. This year only Andrea, Ken and Laura will be going to deliver the supplies.

Background

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Victoria Primary School, formerly Victoria All-Age is located in North West St. Catherine about two (2) miles from the major town of Linstead in the farming community of Victoria. Victoria, along with the adjoining community of Banbury, where most of the children are from, has a populace of over 20,000.

Approximately 10 % of the adult population is dependent on farming for a living, some of the produce from this activity is sold at the Linstead Market and the remainder kept for domestic use. Another 30% depends on vending as their main means of livelihood, 40% is employed while the remaining 20% is unemployed.

The current parent population is very young with the average age being about 25 years. Most of them have attained secondary level of education but have not moved on to tertiary learning but instead have acquired a skill in order to become employable.

The school was originally a shift school, an elementary. It was built to house about 200 children. At the time of the 2021 mission trip school population it was 330

At the beginning of each school year, some parents often have financial challenges in purchasing items to send their children back to school. Some of these include the purchasing of school bags, writing books, pencils and uniforms etc. There are times when past students will assist in purchasing some of these items.