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 Sept 1

Focus on 5 areas of the Environment in the Season of Creation, 2024

We have taken the five Sundays readings in the Season of Creation and highlighted a specific environmental area which we will cover weekly. (This week, earth; ) How is this area affecting us ? What can we do to improve our use of them ? We have added related scriptures.

1. Earth – Sept 1

Collect “O God, creator of heaven and earth, you have filled the world with beauty and abundance. Open our eyes to behold your gracious hand in all your works; that rejoicing with your whole creation, we may learn to serve you with gladness; for the sake of him through whom all things were made, your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. ”

2. Water – Sept 8

Isaiah 55:9-10 “8 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. 10 For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater.”

3. Energy – Sept 15

Isaiah 40:28-31 “The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. 29 He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. 30 Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; 31 but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

4. Food – Sept 22

James 5:7-8 “Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. 8 You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near. ”

5. Climate (Deforestation) – Sept 29

Romans 8:18-21 “18 I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. ”

September, 2024 Newsletter

          It has been a busy month with Rev. Tom Hughes preaching on the first and second Sundays.  Rev. Shirley Graham returning on the 3rd Sunday and sharing many of the things she had learned about us on her initial visit in June. Then on the 4th Sunday our Senior Warden led us in Morning Prayer and shared a message. 

August Vestry Report

          Your Vestry met on the 4th Thursday in August with an update from the Senior Warden on the search for a new Treasurer for the church. It seems to be a very demanding job and no one has stepped forward to volunteer. As assistant treasurer, Johnny will continue to deposit the money and write the checks to pay our monthly bills. Accounts, Inc. in King George owned by Jamie Brissey has been hired to do our the record keeping.

          Junior Warden, Larry Saylor reported that he had sprayed and cleaned around the rear doors of the Sacristy. (Cookie, Johnny, BJ and Jim Anderson continue to weed and take care of the yards.  Travis Minter is paid to mow the lawns.)

          Andres Pogue, ECW president, announced that the ladies had met at Bravo Restaurant in Fredericksburg to discuss activities & fundraisers for the coming year.  All were excited about the pre-Thanksgiving dinner the ladies will cook and make available to the community. Also discussed were raffles, silent auctions & Bingo.

          Linda Upshaw agreed to be our representative to CERVE. (She attended her first meeting at Countyline Baptist Church this week.)

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What is the “Season of Creation”?

The Season of Creation is an optional season for the church year. For the most part, the seasons of the church year follow the life of Jesus: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, and Easter. The remainder of the church year encompasses Pentecost season (or Ordinary Time), which celebrates life in the Holy Spirit.

For centuries, our theology our theology has focused on relationship with God and our human relationships with one another. The Season of Creation focuses God’s relationship with all creation and with our relationship with creation (and with God through creation). It highlights our role in understanding and addressing address the ecological problems we face today as a part of God’s creation.

“Fun fact: planet Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Mankind? About 140,000 years old. Let me put that in perspective: If you condense the Earth’s lifespan into 24 hours, that’s one full day, then we have been here on this planet for… …drumroll please… …three seconds. Three seconds, and look what we’ve done….”

Prince Ea’s annotation for the video.

The Season of Creation, 2024

Sept 1 – Oct 4, 2024

For Five Sundays in September we will be in this optional lectionary within Pentecost. The end of the season, Oct. 4, is the Feast of St. Francis.

The 2024 Season of Creation’s symbol is “the first fruits of hope,” which is inspired by Romans 8:19-25. The theme for 2024 is “To Hope and Act With Creation”, and the symbol represents the idea that people can work together with creation to bring about hope. The hope is that creation can be freed from decay and brought into the glory of God’s children. Hope is also seen as a tool that can help people overcome decay and realize freedom.

Sept 1 was proclaimed as a day of prayer for creation (World Day of Prayer for Creation, or Creation Day) by Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I for the Orthodox in 1989, and was embraced by the other major Christian European churches in 2001 and by Pope Francis for the Roman Catholic Church in 2015.

The event is celebrated in many faith traditions and has a centralized website. This year, the theme for the season is “To hope and act with Creation”. Amid the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, many are beginning to despair and suffer from eco-anxiety. As brothers and sisters in Christ, we are on a pilgrimage to better care of creation. As people of faith we are called to lift the hope inspired by our faith, the hope of the resurrection. This is not a hope without action but one embodied in concrete actions of prayer and preaching, service and solidarity.

In walking together, we follow the role of Jesus, who walked with friends on the roads around Jerusalem. As he traveled the byways of his community, Jesus invited us to encounter God through God’s presence in creation. Whether by considering “the lilies of the field” or the “grain of wheat that falls to the earth,” the spiritual journey of following Jesus is closely tied to the everyday wonders of nature that He experienced in His earthly journey.

Gospel in September, 2024

During September we are back to the Gospel of Mark after our excursion through John Chapter 6.

Jesus is on the move this month from Tyre, to Decapolis, to Caesarea Philippi, back to Galilee, and Capernaum.  (He is in a transition as we are typically in September).  While there are dealings with the public in the form of healings, most of the month concerns conversations with the disciples in the form of teachings.  Some are heated.   While they now see him as the Messiah his fate questioned by them.

September  1- Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

The Gospel according to  Mark and The Epistle of James are paired for the next several weeks in the lectionary, providing help in how to live as faithful followers of Jesus.   The selection from the sayings on defilement (7:1-23) that constitutes today’s gospel raises the question of the relationship between “the commandment of God” and “the tradition of the elders” and of the real meaning of cleanness and defilement, issues of vital interest to the early Church. All three sections concern ritual purity: the first centering on washing (7:1-8), the second and third on food (7:14-15, 21-23). 

Mark 7 begins with Jesus being challenged by the Pharisees and scribes for how his disciples have behaved. They have not all washed their hands. In those days, the washing of hands was for a purification ritual, not for hygiene. The washing of hands was to purify oneself against what was unclean, specifically in this case, food that might have been handled by Gentiles. The leaders were more concerned with people following the literal letter of the law, the traditions that they held, rather than the spirit of the law, which was to honor God in all that they did and said. Their tradition justified the keeping out of the Gentiles as well as the poor and those they would call “sinners”—people who could not afford the rituals of purification in the temple. Jesus tore down the walls that would divide the “pure” from the unclean, the sinners, the Gentiles, the Others—and declared that what comes out of the mouth—what we say that hurts and harms, that divides and separates—this is what is really sinful, unclean, and against God’s ways. 

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Earthrise: Caring in the Season of Creation, 2024

In 1968 US astronaut William Anders took this photo of the earth from space. It is called Earthrise. It was the first color photo of the Earth taken from space and as Anders noted it was the only color in the universe. According to the BBC, the photo is credited with raising the profile of the global environmental movement and led to the creation of Earth Day in 1970.

“Earthrise”‘s philosophical significance sunk in over years, after NASA put it on a stamp, and Time and Life magazine highlighted it as an era-defining image. “It gained this iconic status,” Anders said. “People realized that we lived on this fragile planet and that we needed to take care of it.”

Even Anders, who calls himself “an arch cold war warrior”, felt it held a message for humanity. “This is the only home we have and yet we’re busy shooting at each other, threatening nuclear war, and wearing suicide vests,” he said. “It amazes me.”

How do we treat this blue marble located in a deep cosmos? We know that our earth is fragile, beset by the unthinking actions of humanity. How can our readings this week help us reflect on our relationship with God’s creation and this planet.

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Augustine of Hippo, Aug. 28

Augustine’s writing provides his greatest legacy to the Church and the world. After his conversion, the quick, insatiable intellect he had applied to rhetoric and philosophy turned to theology and ethics. Augustine answered God’s call to “love the Lord your God with all your mind,” and fulfilled it well. Yet Augustine’s writing and thought were not dry and detached but passionate and evocative, engaging the heart as well as the mind.

Augustine’s Confessions is one of the earliest and most well-known examples of spiritual autobiography. In Confessions, Augustine tells the story of his life and faith: the good, the bad, and the ugly. 350 sermons and 100 works also survive Augustine did not hide his past sins and early debauchery but confessed them freely. In Confessions, he admitted that, as a young man he prayed, “Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.” And in a letter to some bishops, he once wrote, “I too have sworn heedlessly and all the time, I have had this most repulsive and death-dealing habit. I’m telling your graces; from the moment I began to serve God, and saw what evil there is in forswearing oneself, I grew very afraid indeed, and out of fear I applied the brakes to this old, old, habit.”

Augustine of Hippo is commemorated in The Episcopal Church’s calendar on August 28.

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