"
"…Till the one day when the lady met this fellow And they knew it was much more than a hunch, That this group must somehow form a family. That’s the way we all became the St. Peter’s Bunch…"
Last Sunday (Pentecost 16, Year A, September 28, 2014)
October 4 – 11am-5pm – Charter Day
October 4 – 11am-1pm – Blessing of the Animals and "Treats-to-Go" at Charter Day
October 5 – 10:00am, Godly Play
October 5 – 11:00am, Holy Eucharist, Rite II, Pentecost 17
October 5- 12:00pm, Coffee Hour
This Sunday at St. Peter’s – Servers, Readings
St. Francis Animal Blessings and Treats, Sat. , Oct. 4, Charter Day
Unfortunately, due to calendar conflits, we will not be having the Blessing of the Animals service. Catherine will be blessing pets and handing out animal treats and information on St. Francis during Charter Day from 11am-1pm at the St. Peter’s table.
Our pets are important to us – they are just like family, our constant companions. We celebrate their adventures and we mourn their sicknesses.
Here are some past St. Francis services, pictures plus our pet directories, 2012 and 2013. Almost all of the animals above are in either one or both of the pet directories plus some of our exotic parrots which are only in 2012 . You can chooose the type of animal and even sort them. Enjoy!
Event Links:
The 2013 event
The 2012 event
The 2011 event
The 2010 event
The service in 2013
The prayer of St. Francis
Pictures:
2013 Gallery
2012 Gallery
2011 Gallery
2010 Gallery
Charter Day, Oct. 4 – Get your ECW Christmas gifts
The ECW will be selling their gifts from 2011-2013 during Charter Day.
The Cookbooks are $10, the mug $8 and the ornament for your tree, $15. Each ornament has a gold cord for hanging and individual 3.5" X 3.5" X 1" white cotton filled "Treasured Scenes" box.
Here’s a lookback at Charter Day, 2013, the first one.
The Pet Blessing at Charter Day
"Our pets have already blessed us. On St Francis Day, we get to bless our pets. St Francis of Assisi, who lived long ago from 1182 to 1226, had a great love for animals and the environment. He understood the earth and everything in it as God’s good creation and believed that we are brothers and sisters with everything in creation. So on this day, we remember St Francis and thank God for the gift of our pets.
"When you have a moment with your pet, offer this blessing written by Bishop Mark S. Sisk:
Live without fear. Your Creator loves you, made you holy, and has always protected you. May we follow the good road together, and may God’s blessing be with you always. Amen.
"St Peter’s Episcopal Church, 823 Water Street, Port Royal, VA, occupies a lovely place in creation, right on the banks of the Rappahannock River. Every Sunday we are blessed to worship in a beautiful space with large windows that connect us to creation and let us witness the beauty of God’s handiwork as we worship together. We gather every Sunday at 10AM for Godly Play for children and at 11AM for worship and to share bread and wine together at the Eucharist. All are welcome! The Blessing of the Pets takes place every year sometime during the first week of October.
"If you would like for a priest to come to your home to bless your pet or offer a prayer for your pet, please contact The Rev. Catherine D. Hicks /And check out our website "
"Who was St. Francis? " – a link collection
St. Francis on the "Episcopal Saints" page
"Brother Sun, Sister Moon"- trailer
Director Franco Zeffirelli’s "Brother Sun, Sister Moon" focuses on the early years of Francis of Assisi in this 1972 film.
Poem by Jan Richardson from the "Painted Prayerbook"
John Rutter’s music for "Brother Sun, Sister Moon"
Rhonda Mawhood Lee: "Go a little crazy on St. Francis Day", a sermon preached at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, Durham, N.C
"It’s appropriate to go a little crazy on St. Francis Day, because during his own lifetime, many people thought Francesco Bernardone was insane."
New Food Initiative – "Village Harvest"
In an effort to make fresh food more available to those in our area in need of food, the ECW is going to head up a new project, titled "Village Harvest." This month beginning Oct. 1 we began gathering the names of those who would like to receive a bag of food, including fresh seasonal produce and a recipe providing information about how to cook the food. We solicited clients on Oct 1 when the Food Trucks visited Port Royal. 44 signed up, including 13 children.
People can sign up by form, phone or online for a food distribution. The first pick-up would be on Wednesday, November 19, 2014 between 4:30 PM-5:30 PM and continuing the third Wednesday of each month thereafter.
Credo Conference for Recently Ordained Clergy Oct 7-13
Catherine will be going to Lake Logan Episcopal Center just west of Ashville, NC from Oct 7-13 to participate in a conference for recently ordained clergy (4 years and under). (The Rev. Amy Turner will be supply clergy on Oct. 12). Here is a video and other information about it:
"The CREDO ROC (Recently Ordained Clergy) Conference series is a new experience offered by CREDO specifically designed to support clergy of all ages who are still within the first four years of their ordained ministry. Like other CREDO Conferences, the ROC Conference series provides an opportunity for participants to imagine and realize possible ways of partnering with the movement of God’s grace in key areas of their life and vocation.
"The ROC Conference series requires a two-conference commitment of seven days each, with a year between the first and second conference."
"Both ROC Conferences include:
- Time for listening, prayer, discernment, recreation, and rest.
- Supportive faculty companions who will help you fine tune your thinking about who you are and where you believe God may be calling you to go.
- New friendships that transcend theological and other differences.
- The creation of a personal plan that has the potential to help you keep your life and ministry grounded and directed where you feel it needs to be."
Lyra Concert article – Caroline Progress
Background for the Gospel Reading
The context for this lesson is important. Jesus has entered Jerusalem in triumph, riding on a donkey, as great crowds of people hail him as the messianic Son of David. They spread cloaks and branches on the road as they shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David….” Then, of course, Jesus enters the temple, the ultimate symbol of the religious leaders, and overturns the tables of the money changers. It’s important to know that the money changers were not bad people; they performed a simple but important function of changing unclean money for acceptable coinage – this was a commonly accepted requirement, something that made one’s offering acceptable. (Kind of like the manager of the fancy restaurant who keeps a supply of blazers in a back closet for gentlemen who are not properly dressed but who wish to dine there?) What Jesus is doing is removing barriers to God and to participation in the religious institutions of the day.
Jesus then cures the blind and the lame who are brought to him, and it becomes clear that Jesus’ conflict is not with the Jewish people generally but with the religious leaders. We see that the crowds welcome and cheer him on, and Jesus continues to care for the sick and the suffering among the people. But the religious leaders are the ones who confront Jesus and challenge his authority. Jesus is breaking down barriers in the religious institutions of his day, and the present guardians of the institution are offended. Jesus is undaunted, as he tells the leaders in the verses which precede this lesson that the tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of them.
After Jesus’ initial outburst in the temple, he spends the night outside the temple precincts and returns the next day. On his way back to the temple, he curses the fruitless fig tree, which symbolizes the present religious leaders who have not produced the fruit expected of them. And when Jesus returns to the temple, he tells three parables, this one being the second.
Lectionary, October 5, Pentecost 17
I.Theme – Look carefully at the vineyard you are cultivating!
"Vineyards with view of Auvers" – Van Gogh (1890). Van Gogh spent the last 3 months of his life in this little town northwest of Paris and would paint some of his most well known works in Auvers. Here is a description of the above painting
The lectionary readings are here or individually:
Old Testament – Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm – Psalm 80:7-14 Page 703, BCP
Epistle –Philippians 3:4b-14
Gospel – Matthew 21:33-46
The main motif in 3 of the 4 readings is about the vineyard which beginning in the Old Testament refers to Israel and by the Gospel to those tending it. Corruption is evident in Israel in the 8th Century BC and in 30AD with Christ. In Christ time the vineyard represents all places where we have been called by God to produce the fruits of the kingdom. The real villains move from Israel as a country to specific groups cited by Matthew.
The Isaiah reading is one of the oldest parables in the Bible. This song of the vineyard is a parable and a prophetic attack on corrupt Israel. It begins as a love song, singing of a deep love that is giving and caring, moves on to convey disillusionment, and then to express anger and a withdrawal of love and care. The coming destruction (verses 5-6) results from the people’s failure to do what God "expected," and more literally and poignantly, what God "hoped for" (verses 2, 4, 7). God doesn’t destroy the vineyard directly. Instead, what he described was simply the removal of his care and protection of the vineyard, the careful work done earlier.
The Psalm is a carryover from the Old Testament reading. The same imagery of Israel as the vine in God’s vineyard is used here. This is the exile’s lament over the vineyard now in ruins. It is an expression of abandonment and a lament psalm pleading for restoration. But while Isaiah wanted to spur the people repent, the psalmist sought to spur God to repent.
The Phillippians reading is Paul’s personal testimony beginning with his Jewish credentials and his achievements in the Jewish faith – a Pharisee, a keeper of the Law, a persecutor of the church. Yet what he discovered was that a right relationship with God was based not on Law but on a right relationship with Jesus Christ.
Greater than any of these qualifications and attributes is to know Christ. This is no head knowledge (as, he implies, is the knowledge of the law) but means taking on a way of life, one that includes suffering. Here is the famous metaphor of the race, when the runner knows that to dwell on a mistake in the last lap is to distract her from focusing mind and energy on the last few yards. Behind this is Paul’s anxiety about another view strongly at work in the young church, that the only approach to the new faith is through the old. To receive the grace of God in Christ you do not need to be ‘primed’ with the Law and all its observances.
The Gospel reading is the famous Parable of the Wicked Tenants which continues the vineyard setting. The story is of an absent landowner who sends two sets of servants to collect rents.
For the first set, they beat one, killed another and stone. The second set of servants met the same fate. He next sent his son. Believing the son to be the sole surviving heir, they kill him in hope of gaining the vineyard for themselves. If a landowner died without an heir, the land passed to the first claimant, so by killing the son (presumably the only one), the tenants become landowners and they become free.
The vineyard is the nation of Israel and the owner is God. The cultivators are the religious leaders of Israel, who, as it were, had charge for God of the welfare of the nation. The messengers who were sent successively are the prophets sent by God and so often rejected and killed. The son who came last is none other than Jesus himself.
What is the parable saying? That Christ knew what lay ahead of him, he knew death on the cross awaited him. Jesus’ point seems to be that his opponents (Pharisees) have mistaken their leadership over Israel for outright ownership of Israel. His main concern is the simple fact that they are responsible for pointing Israel to God, yet they have instead pointed her to themselves.
This was a risqué story and it caused a lot of muttering amongst the Pharisees. They were not bad people (except for the fanatical few that any religion seems to harbor), indeed the very opposite, but Jesus suggests that their kind of goodness has now been superseded. Others will manage the vineyard including the church.
The ‘moral’ is consistent with Paul’s teaching about the legalism that tended to characterize the religious people of the day. Then Jesus infuriates his hearers by quoting one of their texts as if it was as much his – the stone that the builders rejected (Psalm 118:22) but giving them a new dimension in making it refer to himself.
The parable serves to show how the temple leaders have been entrusted by God and how they have rebelled against God. It also prophesies their violent rejection of the Son. Jesus’ opponents understand all of this. They get the parable, but they reject its truth.
We are expected to live under the authority of the Owner; to produce and give back the proper fruit. Sin is not primarily doing bad things, but an attitude of selfishness that has no need for God. We must constantly be on the guard if we are not producing the fruits that will expand the Kingdom of God. A new owner may be waiting in the wings.
We today often find it profoundly worrying when other people lay claim to religion, whether it is people of another culture living in our midst or people claiming to have found alternatives in other spiritualities. By all means let’s keep our critical faculties, but let us also hold open the possibility that they have found something that deepens and enlivens our own beliefs and practices.
Read more about the Lectionary…
"Authority" in the Gospel, Sept 28-Oct. 12
From Pulpit Fiction for Oct. 5 , a show where two ministers debate the scriptures.
Too often we see the lectionary as a closed book. This account broadens to show the theme of authority over 3 Sundays.
“For three Sundays the Gospel lessons direct us to consecutive parables in Matthew’s narrative that seem pointedly aimed at the Jewish rejection of the Messiah and the movement of the Christian message to a non-Jewish world. And yet, with all three parables, a careful reading of the texts reveals a broader concern and a wider audience than merely the case for a Gentile mission.”
"This passage is a part of the temple controversies that started on Palm Sunday after Jesus enters the temple, turns over tables, and heals the blind and the lame.
"The question was asked “By whose authority do you do these things?” This started on Sunday Sept 28.
"This passage on Oct. 5 is the second part of his answer.
"The parable of the king and the wedding party (Matthew 22:1-14) is the third parable he tells – all in response to “Whose authority?” (Oct 12)
"An easy Reading of the parable = the Jewish leaders were the evil tenants, and the fruit of the harvest must be taken from them, and given to ‘other tenants.’ Namely, the Church
"In this reading, we can comfortably and easily put ourselves in the role of ‘other tenants,’ enjoying the fruit of the harvest.
What If the Earth Was God’s Vineyard? (Matthew 21:33-46)
People of Faith March to Save the Planet
Complete article from Odyssey Networks
"Dare to go there with me, if you will. What if we imagine God’s vineyard as described in Matthew 21 to be this beautiful world we inhabit? What will happen if we reject it – if we continue to treat it with disrespect, fail to listen to its natural woes, dismiss the warning signs it gives us? What if God is keeping score? Oh. Dear. Might I remind us all, that if we do not tend to this earth, we are only inevitably hurting ourselves and the lives of future generations?
"This is why, like never before, over one thousand groups and individuals, including various faith groups, businesses, peace activists, social justice groups, schools, and environmentalists from all over the country united for the largest climate march in history on Sunday, September 21, gaining international attention. The People’s Climate March, held in New York City, was the perfect moment to take a stand, create a buzz, and create the much-needed public influence and pressure as NYC prepared to welcome decision-makers from across the globe to discuss this very topic.
"World leaders gathered for a momentous U.N. summit on climate change on September 23 hosted by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The goal of this summit: to move governments to action – to compel them to seriously consider the importance and consequences of climate change, particularly the need to reduce global warming pollution and discuss substantive solutions. This is a strategic move and a much-needed prelude to the UN Climate Conference to be held in Paris in 2015 where a more concrete global action plan is to be developed.
"U.N. Summit bottom line: We must take care of this world. Jesus’ bottom line: We must take care of God’s kingdom, which to many, is one in the same. While teaching in the temple, and in the presence of the chief priests and the Pharisees, Jesus tells the parable about a landowner who built a vineyard and rented it to some farmers (now his tenants) upon his relocation. Each time he sent his servants to collect his fruit from the tenants, violence ensued. “They beat one, killed another, and stoned a third” (Matt. 21:35)…
"What if this earth is God’s vineyard and we are the tenants? We may not have beaten, killed, or stoned anyone as described in the parable, but what type of violence have we inflicted against the earth – whether through various human technologies leading to water and soil pollution, improper waste management, or our simple disregard of its care? How will we respect its resources, make deposits in its well-being instead of only making withdrawals, respond accordingly to its needs, and ensure that the earth is healthy and sustained for future generations?
"Jesus was talking about the kingdom of God. Some might say that the earth is where God’s kingdom resides. Many might agree that our future (whether in terms of salvation or the earth’s preservation) is on the line, and we would do well to invest in it. As evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of people from many different faiths who participated in the march, the stern theological warning of Jesus might just hold weight with all of us, no matter what our faith. After all, all of us who inhabit this world – its tenants – should want a “just, safe, [and] peaceful world” – an earth that is worthy enough to be called “God’s vineyard.”
Stewardship Narrative Series, Part 1, Oct 5
Stewardship season is here! Over the next month there will be posts from the Episcopal Church Stewardship group, "Tens" on the week’s scripture in relationship to stewardship. 
World Communion Sunday, Oct. 5, 2014
World Communion Sunday is celebrated the first Sunday in October every year in many Protestant churches. It originated in the Presbyterian Church USA in 1936. The day has taken on new relevancy and depth of meaning in a world where globalization often has undermined peace and justice – and in a time when fear divides the peoples of God’s earth. On this day we celebrate our oneness in Christ, the Prince of Peace, in the midst of the world we are called to serve – a world ever more in need of peacemaking.
We also celebrate those students serving abroad particularly the Young Adult Service Corp. Here is a list of blogs of these students.
The Anglican Communion is composed of 38 worldwide member churches, or provinces, all of which are in communion with the See of Canterbury. Each province exercises jurisdictional independence but shares a common heritage concerning Anglican identity and commitment to scripture, tradition, and reason as sources of authority, worship and practice.
Unity and cooperation in the Anglican Communion are encouraged by the Lambeth Conference which meets every 10 years. The work and vision of the Lambeth Conferences are continued between meetings by the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), the Communion’s main legislative and only representative body which includes bishops, clergy and laity from Anglican and Episcopal churches throughout the world.
—PROVERBS 21:26 “The righteous give and do not hold back.”
How Faith Can Improve Mental Health and Reduce Stress Levels
Summary of a full article posted in BuildFaith by the author, Fawne Harrison.
"Life today is as stressful as it has ever been, and this is reflected in the fact that anti-depressants are being prescribed at a higher rate than ever before. However, there is one age-old method that can reduce stress levels for free and without a prescription. People around the world rely on faith to see them through hard times. Faith and spirituality are abstract concepts, but they can lead to concrete results in mental health improvement and stress reduction.
Using Faith to Reduce Stress
"Faith is a belief or trust in God, while spirituality is an attachment to religious values. Faith and spirituality provide a sense of purpose, allow people to connect to something greater than themselves, and enable them to release control.
"Once people have discovered their sense of purpose, they often learn that there are others who share these same goals or reasons for existing. This sense of connection can lead to greater interaction with others, and also allows people to release control. Being connected to others and to something greater lets people share responsibility, and the various burdens that they carry. We realize that we don’t control everything and are not responsible for everything, which can be a great relief.
"Faith also leads people to expand their social networks, bringing people together with a common purpose and goal. Interestingly, a cycle is created. Not only does faith enable relationships, but those relationships then serve to reinforce and deepen faith.
The Importance of Prayer
"A relationship with God is no different to other relationships in that it requires frequent, honest and personal communication. Prayer is the spiritual exercise that allows people to communicate directly with God.
"Prayer provides stress relief in a variety of ways. A prayer for help is a great source of comfort and relief because a person does not feel they have to bear their burden alone. The belief that God is listening to their prayers and will help them is a source of hope to many individuals. With hope comes the strength to carry on.
Scientific Evidence That Faith Improves Mental Health
"There have been numerous attempts to establish a scientific link between faith and mental health. In 2012, the American Journal of Psychiatry published the results of a longitudinal study that also sought to establish the relationship between religiousness and the onset and course of major depression. The study found that in the 10 years of follow-up, subjects who both described religion as highly important and also affiliated themselves with either Catholic or Protestant denominations had a 76% less chance of experiencing an episode of major depression. Researchers feel that the findings suggest religion and spirituality should be considered by clinicians during the psychiatric evaluation.
"Conclusion Faith and spirituality are more than just comforting rituals to religious individuals. They have the ability to have a positive impact on mood and mental health. Aspects of faith enable tangible reductions in and protection from stress by generating optimism, enriching interpersonal relationships, creating support systems and improving quality of life."