In the name of the God of all Creation, The God alive in each of us as God was alive in Jesus, And the power of God known in the Spirit. Amen.

In the early chapters of the Gospel of Matthew, right after the birth of Jesus and the visit of the Wise Men, Joseph takes the Holy Family to Egypt to escape the Slaughter of the Innocents ... the killing of all the children two years old or younger around Bethlehem ordered by Herod. The mention of Egypt, and the slaughter of children because a leader was threatened, echoes the story of Moses when the Pharaoh ordered all the infants of the Israelites to be put to death and the baby Moses is put in a basket in the bulrushes. Any Jew reading Matthew’s gospel, or hearing it read, would immediately pick up on this and know that, at least to Matthew, Jesus was the “new” Moses.

In the name of the God of all Creation, The God alive in each of us as God was alive in Jesus, And the power of God known in the Spirit. Amen.

About a year and a half ago a young woman visited St. Cyprian’s for the first time. If you look around at the people with whom you are sharing the pews you will see why it was so obvious that I was aware that a YOUNG woman visited us. A couple of weeks later she returned and as she was leaving I asked if she was new to the area. She replied that she and her husband were staying on their sailboat in one of the marinas just south of here while it was in dry dock being repaired. A month or so later John Miller led a bicycle tour of Lincolnville for people of St. Cyprian’s and others and this young woman and her husband joined us. By now it was obvious that she was pregnant.

In the name of the God of all Creation, The God alive in each of us as God was alive in Jesus, And the power of God known in the Spirit. Amen.

Just last week at the Annual Convention of the Diocese of Florida, I, along with the endorsement of the Mission Board, presented a resolution “Commemorating the Rev. Peter Williams Cassey,” the first Vicar of St. Cyprian’s. The full resolution can be found on the table by the door and tells of Rev. Cassey’s profound ministry to the underserved in California before moving to North Carolina, then Florida. He was the first person of color to be ordained in the Episcopal Church west of the Mississippi, and the first African American called to be a rector of a parish in the Diocese of North Carolina. When he came to the Diocese of Florida he served the Church of the Good Shepherd in Fernandina, and St. Phillip’s in Jacksonville. As early as 1895 Rev. Cassey would travel from Jacksonville to St. Augustine to officiate at service for a budding congregation that would become St. Cyprian’s.