St. Peter's Episcopal Church, Port Royal, VA
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.
“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.
From Ken Pogue. “Each year the Episcopal Church Men help St Peter’s provide support to those in need during the holidays. The men coordinate with the Caroline County Department of Social Services to provide families in the area with gift cards
“Your donations are greatly appreciated by the ECM and the recipients of the gifts in the Port Royal community, Thank you so very much in advance from a grateful community.”
If you’d like to donate for the Christmas offering, please make a check to St Peter’s with ECM in the memo line by Sunday, Nov. 12
Last year $750 was given at Christmas.
How we are meeting the challenge?
1. Donating online. Click the “Donate button” to donate to Giving Tuesday in honor of the Village Harvest on Giving Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2023.
2. You can also send a check by mail or donate on Sunday in the plate:
St. Peter’s Church P. O. Box 399 Port Royal, Virginia 22535
We thank you for your donation to support our Village Harvest Food Ministry, now beginning its 10th year in November, 2023.!
On Nov. 19, 2014, during the first Village Harvest, we attracted 60 clients and gave out 300 pounds that day. 9 years later we are averaging 887 in 2023 and 4 times as much food. Call it “Give a Little, Gain a Lot.”
Why are we pushing Giving Tuesday, Nov. 28 in support of our Village Harvest food distribution?
A sermon by the Rev. Evan Garner highlighted why Church food ministries are so important in our time:
“Because feeding them is our job. As followers of Jesus, it is our calling to feed these people, indeed to feed all hungry people. The kind of people who left their homes to walk out into the wilderness and hike up a mountain to see Jesus are the kind of people who were desperate to be fed. Some of them may not have needed physical nourishment, but most of them did. For most of them, their spiritual crisis was born out of an economic crisis. We know that because usually the kind of people who had enough on their own weren’t very interested in Jesus. The rich and the powerful ignored him or laughed at him or, sometimes, plotted against him.”
“It is our job as the leaders of the church, as the stewards of the resources entrusted to us by God and by our parish, to count costs and estimate resources. But it is never our job as the people of God to allow an attitude of scarcity to overcome a theology of abundance. “
The Village Harvest addresses the Food Insecurity issue in surrounding counties and is one our key ministries. The definition of Food insecure is “those households who not have access, at all times, to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members.”
Jan Saylor organized an Advent Workshop on Nov. 26 from 3:30pm to 5pm. This was our first such workshop for the entire congregation.
It was a wonderful intergenerational event with 16 people participating. It was a good kickoff for Advent, creating items to be taken home.
Jan had organized the Parish House into 4 stations:
1. Creating a block based nativity scene. The characters were drawn on small blocks of wood.
2. Bird feeder made with pine cones covered with peanut butter and bird seed.
3. Advent wreath intended for tables with candles and greenery.
4. Decorated Christmas trees that started with sugar cones and were covdred with different frostings, white and green, decorated with assorted sprinkles.
People flowed between the stations as they liked. The timing was ideal as they easily worked through four stations.
Here was a sampling of what was created in the above order:
1. Opening Hymn – Come, ye thankful people, come
2. Hymn of Praise – Praise to God, immortal praise
3. Sequence Hymn – Where cross the crowded ways
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.
