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.

Christ the King Sunday, Year A

Last Sunday in Ordinary Time -We celebrate Christ the King Sunday as the last Sunday of Ordinary Time just before we begin Advent. It is the switch in the Liturgy between Years A, B, and C. Year A focuses on Matthew, Year B on Mark and Year C on Luke. The Gospel of John is included in each year in the Easter time frame.

The readings for the last Sunday after Pentecost are full of references to the return of Christ, when evil will be defeated and Jesus will begin his final reign as King of kings. In Advent, the Church year begins with a focus on the final restoration of all creation to its original glory. In preparation, on the last Sunday of the Church year, we proclaim the advent of the Lord of lords and King of kings.

The earliest Christians identified Jesus with the predicted Messiah of the Jews. The Jewish word "messiah," and the Greek word "Christ," both mean "anointed one," and came to refer to the expected king who would deliver Israel from the hands of the Romans. Christians believe that Jesus is this expected Messiah. Unlike the messiah most Jews expected, Jesus came to free all people, Jew and Gentile, and he did not come to free them from the Romans, but from sin and death. Thus the king of the Jews, and of the cosmos, does not rule over a kingdom of this world.

Christians have long celebrated Jesus as Christ, and his reign as King is celebrated to some degree in Advent (when Christians wait for his second coming in glory), Christmas (when "born this day is the King of the Jews"), Holy Week (when Christ is the Crucified King), Easter (when Jesus is resurrected in power and glory), and the Ascension (when Jesus returns to the glory he had with the Father before the world was created).

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Thanksgiving

“Almighty and gracious Father, we give you thanks for the fruits of the earth in their season and for the labors of those who harvest them. Make us, we pray, faithful stewards of your great bounty, for the provision of our necessities and the relief of all who are in need, to the glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.” Amen.

Sunday Links, Last Pentecost, Nov. 26, 2023

Scriptures about End Times.


  • Web site
  • YouTube St. Peter’s Page for viewing services
  • Facebook St. Peter’s Page
  • Location – 823 Water Street, P. O. Box 399, Port Royal, Virginia 22535
  • Ecumenical Bible Study, Wed., Nov. 22, 10am-12pm, Parish House Reading Lectionary for Nov. 26, Last Pentecost, “Christ the King”
  • Art Auction for Mary Peterman’s paintings – Round 2 Nov 19-Nov. 25 (6pm). Bid here.
  • Sun. Nov. 26, 2023, 11am Church service – Eucharist Live or YouTube St. Peter’s Page
  • Lectionary link for Nov. 26, Pentecost 26

  • Serving – Holy Eucharist
    Lector: Ben Hicks
    Chalice Bearer: Andrea Pogue
    Altar Cleanup: Jan Saylor
  • Sun., Nov. 26, 3:30 PM Advent workshop. Families, come make a family Advent wreath. Kids can make nativity scenes, pinecone bird feeders and decorate cookies
  • Mon., Nov. 27, 2:00PM memorial service for Trenton Schnakenberg followed by a reception in the Parish House.
  • Ecumenical Bible Study, Wed., Nov. 29 10am-12pm, Parish House Reading Lectionary for Dec. 3, 1st Sunday in Advent

  • ECM Christmas Donations due Dec. 3
  • Write a check to “ECM Christmas”

  • All articles for Sunday, Nov. 26, 2023
  • Nov., 2023 newsletter
  • Looking ahead…

  • Advent begins, Sunday, Dec. 3
  • Recent Articles, Sun., Nov. 26, 2023

    Last Pentecost, Nov. 26, 2023
    Sermon
    Bulletin
    Christ the King Sunday
    Commentary
    In the Footsteps of Paul, Ephesus
    Visual Lectionary
    Hymns sung at this time of the year
    Christ has no body but yours
    Thanksgiving

    Ministries
    Advent Workshop makes 4 projects
    Art Auction for Mary Peterman’s, Round 2
    Donate to Giving Tues, Nov. 28
    The Village Harvest, Oct. 2023, the end of 9 years
    Importance of the Village Harvest
    ECM Christmas donations due Dec. 3
    Mutual Ministry Review, Nov. 14

    Fall photos
    Flashback to a Thanksgiving Service, 2017
    Autumnal Tints
    Photos Mid-Nov
    Golden Days of early Nov.

    In the Footsteps of Paul: Ephesus

    The western quarter of Turkey was called Asia Minor during the Roman period, and Ephesus was its largest city and the center for criminal and civil trials. The city’s theater sat facing the sea at the head of the main road from the harbor into the city. Ephesus had a troubled history with Rome. In the first century BCE, Roman tax collectors and businessmen had run roughshod over the province, outraging the locals with their exploitation and extortion. The Ephesians welcomed the challenge to Roman hegemony posed by an invading eastern king, and with his capture of the city in 88 BCE, its citizens joined in the massacre of the city’s Italian residents. Rome responded with a characteristically firm hand, exacting huge penalties and taxes to keep the city without resources. The economy did not recover until the reign of Augustus.

    And, as in Jerusalem, Corinth and Athens, Ephesus attracted a large number of tourists, though smaller than modern standards. Pilgrims came to Ephesus to see the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. This temple had been destroyed and rebuilt many times over the centuries. The temple Paul would have seen was erected in the fourth century BCE; a forest of marble, it had 127 columns measuring 1.2 meters in diameter, standing 18 meters high. It was a refuge for runaway slaves, and was outside the city proper. The form of Artemis worshipped here was unlike anywhere else, perhaps because she had been assimilated with a local Anatolian earth goddess. Unlike the virgin huntress and twin sister of Apollo most familiar in the stories of the Greeks, Artemis at Ephesus was a fertility goddess, and her physical manifestation was a statue of the goddess festooned with oval protuberances — probably representing testicles of sacrificial bulls — and she wore a stole of bees. Acts repeats a story of how Paul’s success threatened the livelihood of those citizens who relied on proceeds from visitors to the Temple of Artemis.

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    Flashback! Hymns sung at this time of year

    Here are selections of three of them from 2020:

    1. Hymn 680 – “O God, our help in ages past” (40 seconds)

    2. Hymn 9 – “Awake Awake” (48 seconds)

    3. Hymn 490 “I want to walk as a child of the light” (55 seconds)

    Poem – “Christ has no body but yours”

    Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world. No hands, no feet on earth but yours, Yours are the eyes with which he looks Compassion on this world, Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good, Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, Yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now but yours, No hands, no feet on earth but yours, Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world. Christ has no body now on earth but yours  “

    Teresa of Avila (1515–1582), mystic, reformer, writer

    Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada (later known as Teresa de Jesus) was born in Avila, Spain, 28 March 1515, one of ten children whose mother died when she was fifteen. Her family was of partly Jewish ancestry. Teresa, having read the letters of Jerome, decided to become a nun, and when she was 20, she entered the Carmelite convent in Avila. There she fell seriously ill, was in a coma for a while, and partially paralyzed for three years. In her early years as a nun, she was, by her account, assiduous in prayer while sick but lax and lukewarm in her prayers and devotions when the sickness had passed. However, her prayer life eventually deepened, she began to have visions and a vivid sense of the presence of God, and was converted to a life of extreme devotion.

    In 1560 she resolved to reform the monastery that had, she thought, departed from the order’s original intention and become insufficiently austere. Her proposed reforms included strict enclosure (the nuns were not to go to parties and social gatherings in town, or to have social visitors at the convent, but to stay in the convent and pray and study most of their waking hours) and discalcing (literally, taking off one’s shoes, a symbol of poverty, humility, and the simple life, uncluttered by luxuries and other distractions). In 1562 she opened a new monastery in Avila, over much opposition in the town and from the older monastery. At length Teresa was given permission to proceed with her reforms, and she traveled throughout Spain establishing seventeen houses of Carmelites of the Strict (or Reformed) Observance (the others are called Carmelites of the Ancient Observance).