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.

2024 Sun Oct 20

Fall, 2013

October

BY ROBERT FROST
O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

  (full size gallery)

Luke, Oct. 18

Luke was a Greek and a Gentile. He is the only Gentile to author any of the Books of the New Testament. Hence, he translates Hebrew words into Greek or gives their Greek equivalent.

Luke is the author of the Gospel of Luke and the presumed author of the Book of Acts. He was also witness to the growth of the first century church and carried the Good News to the Gentiles. He wrote in the 80’s and wrote approximately 24% of the New Testament more than any other writer including Paul.

He was a Syrian from Antioch and more reflective of Middle Eastern Culture than the Jewish writers in the rest of the Gospels. He was  a passionate story teller, emotional, similar to today’s Arab culture.

He records virtually nothing about himself, but his fellow apostles do reveal some information about him. We may also discern some things about him based on the manner in which he presents information, his background and the times.

Legend has it that Luke was an artist and painted as well as wrote. He was said to have interviewed eyewitnesses to the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. In this sense, he was a journalist. Some traditions say that Luke not only met and interviewed Jesus’ mother Mary, but he also painted her portrait. This portrait is known as “The Black Madonna,” and it is Poland’s most treasured sacred relic.

Paul records in Colossians 4:14 that Luke is a physician – “Luke, the beloved physician” (Colossians 4:14). . This would make him an educated man. Luke’s inspiration and information for his Gospel and Acts came from his close association with Paul and his companions as he explains in his introduction to the Gospel.

Luke uses the most sophisticated Greek found in the New Testament. He was clearly the most learned among the New Testament writers. On several occasions he uses precise and unusual medical terms, offering evidence of his training in medicine.

Read more

40 Old Testament Stories that every Christian Should know – #2 The Fall

Pastor Vicki Zust was the rector of St. Paul’s, Clarence, NY. Having completed a 2 year cycle of reading the entire Bible she decided to try something different. As she writes, “So I went through the Old Testament and wrote down the stories that a lot of our theology and history depends on. It turns out there are 40 of them.”

Here is #2 The Fall. Read it here.

"Most of us know about the snake and the apple and the fig leaf. Some of us know about the angel with the burning sword and God walking in the cool of the day. Most of us don’t remember that the clothes that God gave Adam and Eve were leather – which raises all kinds of questions.  

"In brief, God has placed Adam and Eve in the garden. They have been given all the trees except one. The tree that they are not supposed to touch is called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, you have to think that staying away from something called "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" would be a good idea without the commandment from God, but there we are. 

"There are a few things about this story that make me either smile or think. 

"The first is that the incarnation of evil is a snake. I can think of no better animal to be the personification of evil then a snake. 

"I love that God takes a walk in the garden in the cool of the day, it feels like God was just out for his evening constitutional. 

"But my favorite part of the whole thing is the conversation between Adam, Eve and God. God wants to know what happens and Adam blames Eve and Eve blames the snake. It’s like listening to five year olds say "not me". 

"The reason that this story is one of the ones we should know, is that for most of Christian history this is the story that was told about how sin entered the world. It was cited as the reason that women have pain in childbirth (and thus why pain killers shouldn’t be used). It was cited as the cause for many other things that today we find to be ridiculous or wrong.  

"So the question for us about this story is: What does it teach us about evil, the nature of evil and our part in evil? 

The Episcopal Lingo, Part 9, Death, 1 of 2

Parish Church

We have covered rites of passage marked by colonial churches—birth, initiation and marriage. The last one is death and there is more written on it so we will cover half of it this week.

Colonial Virginians encountered death regularly. For people who survived to age 20, life expectancy in Virginia and Maryland was between 23 and 29 additional years, so average age at death was mid-to late 40s which is half our own. Women died at a more frequent rate than men (due to malaria) between the ages of 15-40, which are consequently the typical childbearing years. People died at home and were often buried there in contrast with today.

Epidemic diseases often ran rampant among the settlers. Yellow fever, small pox, measles and even the bubonic plague were diseases feared by the settlers. Infant mortality was high among the colonists and there were few trained doctors for those needing medical attention. All too often, a young wife would die when complications occurred during childbirth.

Due to this trend, the laws allowed people to get an earlier start in creating wills. Any male aged 14 or more, or unmarried females aged 12 or more, could make a will to bequeath personal property. However, only persons over 21 could devise land in a will. Married women could not make wills.

Wills tell us about attitudes toward death in this period. Death was constantly described in theological language. They characteristically opened with a statement like that penned by William Byrd I: "First I bequeath my soul to God that gave it hopeing thro the merits & mediation of my ever blessed saviour & redeemer Jesus Christ to obtain pardon and remission of all my sins and to inherit life everlasting. I bequeath my body to the ground to be decently buryed."

The Anglicans in Va. consciously distinguished her or his "spiritual goods or inward estate" from "the material goods or outward estate," thus enabling "the dutiful to cross the boundary between the everyday material world and the transcendental spiritual world of the Christian afterlife." Death was the great demarcation between the material and spiritual worlds, returning the soul to God. Sermons were preached that preparation for death was a lifelong process.

In statements of death, there was the key notion of divine providence and confident hope about the resurrection which provided solace. The death of her husband Mary Bland Lee told her brother, "is so great an affliction to me, that I han’t words to express it." Nevertheless, she did find words: "I know it is my duty as a christian, to bear patiently whatever happens to me, by the alotment of divine providence, and I humbly beseech Almighty God, to grant me his grace, that I may be enabled to submit patiently, to whatever trialls it may please him to lay on me…but that I may bear them as a good christian, with courage and resolution, with calmness and resignation, and that I may resign this life with joy and comfort, when it pleaseth God to remove me, and may have a well-grounded hope in his mercy through the merits and interseshun of our dear Saviour and merciful Redeemer”

Statements dealing with spouses were also based on a relationship with God. In her account of Mr. Fletcher’s death Mary Fletcher spends almost the entire time speaking about their relationship with each other in respect to God. She shows how great of an impact the church has on life in general (Fletcher). She demonstrated this by writing the following: “For some time before this last illness, his precious Soul (always alive to God) was particularly penetrated with the nearness of eternity; there was scarce an hour in which he was not calling upon me to drop every thought and every care, that we might attend nothing but drinking deeper into God”