Last Sunday (Easter 2, Year B, April 12, 2015)
April 19 – 10:00am, Godly Play (preschool through 2nd grade)
April 19 – 11:00am, Holy Eucharist, Rite II
April 21 – 10:00am-5pm, Garden Week in Port Royal
April 22 – 10:00am, Ecumenical Bible Study
April 22 – 5:00pm, Youth Group
This Sunday at St. Peter’s – Servers, Readings
Continuing – Easter Tide, UTO Spring Ingathering
A Tax Day, Village Harvest, April 15, 2015
Tax day didn’t put a damper on the Village Harvest, our fifth month in operation. Here is a gallery of the pictures we took.
Some stats.
1. We had 77 people to serve , one more than last month.
2. Pounds of produce 500 (sweet potatoes, baking potatoes, and kale), less than last month but we added crackers, peanut butter, ham and eggs for each family.
Comments from those who received
1. "This is a real blessing. Thank you for doing this, it really helps us out."
2. "Having this food means that I can buy something else I really need."
Comments from those working to make this distribution possible
1. "Doing this work is a privilege"
2. "I see this food distribution as a way to bring our community closer together."
Thanks to all involved, who served and received.
Hand-in-Hand Listening Session -Sat, April 18: Trinity, Fredericksburg, 10-11:30 a.m
In his pastoral address to Annual Council, the Rt. Rev. Shannon S. Johnston announced a new racial reconciliation initiative for 2015:
“Surely, as communities of faith we as a diocese are especially suited, and divinely charged, to be facilitators of reconciliation, both within our own walls and in the broader community. Therefore, I am now announcing a major initiative for this year of 2015 that will focus on gaining a better understanding of rising racial tensions. We will begin this effort by holding a series of listening sessions in the mid-year around our diocese. These sessions will be the same Indaba style gatherings that were so successfully used here a few years ago to address tensions and divisions regarding the Church’s ministry in the quickly evolving matter of human sexuality. Indaba listening sessions involve no debate, no cross-talk, but rather give every person present the opportunity to speak their hearts and minds in a safe, non-reactive environment.”
The one closest to St. Peter’s will be Sat, April 18: Trinity, Fredericksburg, 10-11:30 a.m.
Registration is not required but is encouraged so they can prepare.
NEW! Here are some online resources to prepare for this meeting and/or understand the issues involved (even if you are not attending.)
Garden Week Tour in Port Royal, Tuesday, April 21
Garden Week in Port Royal and Caroline features two homes in the village, open from 10am to 5pm:
1. Riverview, 923 Water Street.
2. Town Field. 207 Frederick Street This property will also have a horticulture exhibit from 11am to noon.
St. Peter’s is also providing box lunches at Fall Hall and there will be tours of the church. Come out, buy a lunch and talk to our guests about St. Peter’s. A great evangelistic and money making opportunity! Lunches must be preordered and paid for at St. Peter’s. Email Liz King to place your order.
In addition the tour features three other wonderful Caroline properties on the tour:
3. Moss Neck Manor 18253 Moss Neck Manor Road
4. Prospect Hill – 2426 Prospect Hill Lane
5. Rose Hill 23348 Tidewater Trail, Port Royal
Here is the complete tour description. For more information visit the Virginia Garden Week site
Booth had dealings with our parishioners – the Peytons – in looking for a place to stay. Sarah Jane Peyton turned him away, a wise decision. 150 years later, April 25, 10am-4pm St. Peter’s will be greeting visitors and not turning them away on the "Booth weekend" in Caroline County.
This is an excellent opportunity to tell both our 19th century story and our current outreach in the community. You can also take a walk in the village and catch up on some history:
1. The Port Royal Museum of American History on Rt. 301 will feature a special exhibit with an original self-portrait painted by Booth, a hinge from the Garrett barn found by artist Sydney King when he researched the area for the Park Service and many other items of interest.
2. The Old Port Royal School next door to the Museum will also be open. Living history re-enactors will float between the buildings. Period music will be provided by “Evergreen Shade”, “Doc" Paul Duval will be share stories of early field doctors, and the following Civil War Re-enactors will camp in the yard and mingle with the crowd
3. The Portrait Gallery in the Town Hall Building at 419 King St. will also be open and Herbert Collins will be available to sign books and tell of the 25 people represented.
4. The Port Royal Museum of Medicine next door to Town Hall will be open also. It features a “Port Royal” room with portraits from the Robb/Bernard family of Gay Mont, and a “Doctor’s Office” with an 8 sided glass medicine cabinet and many tools of the trade.
Links:
1. Historic Port Royal
2. Caroline County pamphlet
3. Selection from Hidden Village by Ralph Fall of Booth in Port Royal
4. Killing Lincoln. This is an impressive multimedia presentation from National Geographic
5. Pictures of Port Conway and Port Royal
St. Peter’s in the Community Give, May 5
The above picture is what our web page looks like on the Community Give site.
The Community Give is a 24-hour day of giving on Tuesday May 5, 2015 from 12:00 a.m. until midnight. It is a day when everyone in our region (Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, Stafford, Caroline, King George) is asked to make a donation and show support for the local nonprofit organizations that positively impact our lives every day. "
St. Peter’s is a beneficiary through our Village Harvest program, our monthly food distribution program. We are asking people in Port Royal and Caroline County to donate and help us buy fresh produce for our clients.
It’s very simple – help us buy produce at $.05 a pound (that’s 5 cents):
- For a donation of $10 you can feed 20 people,10 pounds of food per month
- For a donation of $20 you can feed 40 people, 10 pounds of food per month
- For a donation of $25 you can feed 50 people, 10 pounds of food per month
Please spread the word to your friends and neighbors to donate to the Village Harvest online on May 5.
Three ways to donate to the Village Harvest:
1. Go to the Community Give site –https://www.thecommunitygive.org/and search for "Harvest"
2. We have created a special part on the website, churchsp.org/food to promote the Community Give. Links are on the first and last page for donations. Giving a little money goes a long way!
The page goes into the background of food insecurity and the problem in the county, how we have addressed it in the Village Harvest, information about St. Peter’s, a gallery and finally a pitch to the reader to donate.
3. Checks received by Sunday May 3 at St. Peter’s that we will carry to the Community Foundation on May 5 .
The Village Harvest began in November, 2014. We would provide a harvest of our resources – money to purchase fresh produce, excess food donations from parishioner and our talent – to put together fresh produce, canned foods and recipes – all to benefit the village of Port Royal and surrounding areas . We established a connection with the Northern Neck Food Bank as a source for fresh produce.
Here are the results to date. Originally 44 people signed up in October for the November distribution. We served 60 on the first distribution on Nov 19 and are now up to 77 on the third Wednesday of each month. The pounds of fresh produce was 500 in April, 2015 compared to originally 300:
|
Village Harvest results
|
Outreach is a key ministry of St. Peter’s. Feeding has been a key part of that over the last few years.
There have been benefits with parishioners of all ages coming together to fill the bags and greet our clients. The ECW in particular has played a key role in the distribution. Finally, we thank our wardens, Johnny and Roger for placing their support behind the program, making the connections with the Northern Neck Food Bank, and driving each month to pickup the produce.
Lectionary, April 19, Easter 3
I.Theme – Jesus is risen and present with us
Mosaic at the Church of Heptapegon
“‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself.’.. And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.” – Luke 24:38-43
The lectionary readings are here or individually:
First Reading – Acts 3:12-19
Psalm – Psalm 4 Page 587, BCP
Epistle –1 John 3:1-7
Gospel – Luke 24:36b-48
In today’s gospel, Jesus invites the disciples to touch his risen body and to understand the meaning of the scriptures.
They still don’t get it, even after the stone was rolled away, the cloths folded, the corpse vanished, the angel appeared and various testimonies given. Even then they think he’s a ghost. Their reaction is panic and fright.
And Jesus reaches out to them, exactly where they are. No scolding. No abstract theology. Jesus communicates on the only plane that will work. They might be spooked if he touched them. So he invites them to touch him. Drawing them out further, he asks for something to eat.
Nothing could better confirm Jesus’ identity and cement his bond with his friends than the sharing of fish. That is, after all, how it all began: an interruption when they were casting their nets, an invitation to a totally different kind of fishing. He who had no need of nourishment satisfies their hunger, that unspoken yearning which lurked beneath their fear, the quavering hope that he might be real.
This time, they get it. In Acts, Peter speaks to the people in a tone that echoes Jesus’ voice: no condemnation, only words of peace and forgiveness. He preaches about the power of God in Jesus and calls his listeners to respond with repentance and conversion. He has full confidence that their turning to God will wipe out their sins. Like his master, he does not burden them with heavy dogmas or abstract philosophy. He reaches out to them with the same enthusiasm that Christ once reached toward him. Peter and John have the same tough-minded attitude toward sin that Jesus had. They do not deny it, nor do they allow it to overwhelm them. They place it under God’s mercy.
Peter and John had seen human evil in its worst form. They had witnessed the cruel betrayal and violent murder of God. Yet Peter believed that through the Messiah’s suffering, God’s promise of life would come to fulfillment. And John saw Jesus as an intercessor, an offering for our sins. When we get depressed about evil in the world, or become guilty about our own sin, they inspire us to take the next step, beyond the muck and into new life.
Just before the Gospel reading – the Road to Emmaus
"Road to Emmaus" – Tiffany Studios, 1912
Our Gospel from Luke begins at chapter 24:36B. Just before this is the famous Road to Emmaus story which should be read also and explains the high level of emotions of the disciples behind the locked door.
Pastor Dawn Hutchings reflected on Emmaus this week in an experience she had in Clinical Pastoral Education in a hospital, a harrowing 3 day experience with a level of involvement she had never had -"several motor vehicle accidents and three heart attacks, six deaths in all." Here is her summary:
"On the road to Emmaus the disciples did not recognize the Messiah. The blindness of the two disciples did not keep Christ from coming to them. Christ does not limit Christ’s post-resurrection appearances to those with full confidence in Christ. Christ comes to the disappointed, to the doubtful, and to the inconsolable. Christ comes to those who do not know their Bibles, who do not recognize Christ even when they are walking right beside Christ.
"Christ comes to us in the breaking of the bread. The story of what happened on the road to Emmaus is not just a once and for all story that happened long ago. What happened on the road to Emmaus happens to each of us. Sometimes we are the grief stricken disciples wondering why our saviour has left us only to meet Christ and fail to recognize Christ at first glance. Sometimes we are called to join those on the road who are in need of Christ and in, with, through, and beyond us Christ lives!"
Here is Dawn’s complete story of that weekend .
The difference that Resurrection makes (Easter 3B)
By Lawrence Moore
"Jesus Christ and the Apostles" – George Roualt (1938)
The key question is whether this world and these bodies of ours have a future with God. It’s a question, therefore, about the meaning and content of salvation. Resurrection says that salvation is recreation – salvation for this world. God could have done at least two things differently. The first is to have abandoned us and our world because we rejected God. Resurrection tells us that God doesn’t do that – even when we have resisted God’s companionship to the point of murdering God’s Son! The second is to abandon creation but not human beings. In this case, salvation would be escape or rescue from the world. God could say, “You are not your bodies. The ‘real you’ is non-material. And this world isn’t ultimately ‘real’ – ultimate reality is another place altogether, called heaven. So let me rescue you from all this mess of creation (bodies, earth etc)”. God, in other words, could be a dualist.
But resurrection is anti-dualist. God isn’t a Hindu, or Buddhist, or classical Greek deity. The Hebrew and Christian God is a God who is inextricably linked to creation by love and a determination to save what has been created. Matter matters! Bodies matter! God embraces body in Jesus (Incarnation) and enters into our world. God becomes part of our world. And God does so in order to save it by transforming it into all that it was always intended to be.
More than the Eye Can See (Easter 3B, Acts)
"We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.” This Talmudic quote from Rabbi Shemuel ben Nachmani notes that seeing is not always vision. What we see in life is more than what the eye beholds. A person or circumstances right in front of us can be merely the surface of someone or something more profound.
The United States must forever recall the struggles, moves and marching of the women and men across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Fifty years ago, ordinary people walked for the right to stand up and be counted. To the naked eye, those sojourners lacked political clout as much as they did fiscal wherewithal. Those citizens were not persons of means, but their intentions were good. They meant well. They meant to do whatever—to get the right to vote.
No whips, dogs, horses or hoses would stifle their efforts. The Americans who marched from Selma to Montgomery may not have looked like much, but their actions changed this country’s political horizon and racial landscape. Yes, a yearning in their loins propelled them to create social change. They were going to vote at any cost, at any price.
In this week’s lectionary passage, a man crippled from birth wanted “change.” Actually, he wanted coins or any alms that Peter and John could offer (Acts 3:1-11). To this man, the two disciples were in better shape than he was. From his view, he could surely benefit from whatever they had to offer. Yet, Peter exposes their impecunious state: “Look on us. We don’t have a nickel to our names.”
There was nothing spectacular or dazzling about Peter or John. They were common, first century fishermen turned disciples. Their lot was that of trying to communicate the kingdom message of a crucified and resurrected Messiah. No bling. No gold. Nothing platinum about them. Nonetheless, what they gave to a man lame from the womb was beyond value or measure.
The duo could not give dollars or cents. Yet, through an act of mercy, they provided more than money could buy. Peter pulls the man by his right hand, stands him up, and the man’s limbs enable him to walk, even jump. This man who sought a fiscal handout was now the recipient of a physical healing. The desire for one type of “change” led to different degree of transformation.
In their human packaging, Peter and John demonstrated there was more to them than the eye could see. There is a simplicity of presence that cannot shroud depth of ability. The man at the Gate Beautiful witnessed it. Those marching over the waters of the Alabama River in 1965 affirmed it.