27/06/2020
In
Sermons & Services
Sermon preached for the Third Sunday after Trinity – 28th June 2020: SS Peter & Paul (Anticipated!)
Revd Canon Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens
June is a month of what we might call ‘big hitters’. St. Barnabas, St. John the Baptist, St. Peter and St. Paul. All of these apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ – sent out to preach, share and live the new life as followers of the risen Jesus Christ – inspiring for their courage, their energy, and their faith despite hardship, persecution, imprisonment, and even death itself.
Our Lord tells us, as we heard in last week’s holy gospel, ‘whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.’ (Matthew 10, 37-39).
These are deeply challenging words to us, and unless we study them deeply and understand them in our own context in our own generation, we would be tempted to give up and just stick with the comfort of our own family life. But we are called directly to be more than just this – called to be the family that gathers around the cross, the family that is called to be dispersed and to live the gospel life within our families and communities.
Among the June ‘big hitters’ of those who took up the challenge of living the life of the cross, we celebrate SS. Peter and Paul. Their feast day in our calendar is tomorrow, 29th June, but we are ‘anticipating’ this by one day, so that we can be infected by their outstanding witness to the Church of Christ. These two martyr saints are truly twin foundations of the Church of Christ.
21/06/2020
In
Sermons & Services
Sermon preached for the Second Sunday after Trinity, 21st June 2020: Jeremiah 20, 7-13; Matthew 10, 24-39
Revd Canon Leonard Doolan
‘How shall we sing the Lord’s song: in a strange land?’
Across the world the year 2020 will be remembered for the devastating effect of the pandemic. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost, over a million people affected. Those near to death have had to pass from this life without the nearby comfort of family and loved ones; health services have had to deal with unimaginable numbers of sick people. From global companies to small corner shops businesses have been brought to the very brink of financial viability. For some countries, such as Greece, the reliance on tourism has been shown to be too fragile a dependency for a national economy. Let’s pray that the need to kick start tourism is not done at the expense of human health.
As the pandemic is global, so are its consequences in every aspect of life. St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Athens has not escaped the devastating consequences of the virus.
The income from our core congregation alone is nowhere near enough to maintain our church and ministry year by year, though we are grateful for continued generosity from our membership.
We have a dependency on income from hiring out the church for concerts and cultural events. Our monthly patterns of Coffee Mornings and Quiz Nights provide lovely opportunities for social gathering for church members and friends but are also essential sources of income. Our Spring and Christmas Bazaars are fundamental to our financial health every year. Our dependency on income from all of these has proved to be our highest risk, our greatest liability. Longer term, radical changes will be needed to ensure we survive and thrive.
2020 will be a financial catastrophe for us. 2020 will be a catastrophe for so many millions of people – but also for us. We will remember 2020 as a disaster at so many levels.
19/06/2020
In
Sermons & Services
Audio Sermon preached for the Zoom service on the Second Sunday after Trinity: Jeremiah 20, 7-13, Matthew 10, 24-39
Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan
14/06/2020
In
Sermons & Services
Sermon preached at the Zoom Service for the First Sunday after Trinity – 14th June 2020: Exodus 19, 2-8; Matthew 9, 35-10, 8
Revd Canon Leonard Doolan
Who would have thought we would be making a link between the death of a black African American and the statue of Winston Churchill being clad in protective boarding. Who would have thought we would be making a link between the death of a black African American and the dumping of a statue of an 18th century slave trader into a Bristol river, Edward Colston.
The death of George Floyd at the hands of an America policeman is sickening. ‘I can’t breathe, officer’. How many tens of thousands of times will such a death have happened down through history. How many more? As we look on shocked at this ugly scene, it did not take long for the recorded action of some rogue policemen to ripple into a torrent of consequences.
His death touches on a sense of guilt that we harbour for things that have happened in history; things, events, people that are now being remembered in public art, but for whose actions in life we have formed a convenient forgetfulness. We are making all sorts of connections with the uncomfortable side of our national histories. We can now live in comparative comfort on the prosperity that some of these people created in time past.
George Floyd’s life matters. Black lives matter. All lives matter. Certainly no one formed in the Christian tradition can take any other view than this, because human life is a sacred creation of God, and each life is created to reflect the light and truth of God – no matter whether we each make a good or a bad job of it.
14/06/2020
In
Sermons & Services
Audio Sermon for the First Sunday after Trinity – 14th June 2020
Revd Canon Leonard Doolan
07/06/2020
In
Sermons & Services
Sermon preached for the Trinity Sunday Zoom Service: Matthew 28, 16-20
Revd Canon Leonard Doolan
‘Today week you will have to repeat what you have learnt today. Your godparents are responsible for teaching you…No one need be nervous and so fail to repeat the words. Do not worry, I am your father. I do not carry a strap or a cane like a schoolmaster’. (St. Augustine, De Symbolo, see Awe Inspiring Rites of Initiation, Yarnold, p13).
Well, that’s a relief to all of us. These are the words of the 5th century St. Augustine of Hippo regarding baptism candidates learning the words of the Creed. No caning if we can’t recite it from memory – but I hope most of us can, and if not it is not such a bad exercise to attend to if you don’t know the Creed. The Credo (Latin) or πιστέυω (Greek) lies at the centre of the delivery and transmission of Christianity. However, it has to be more than that, and it is. It is the core summary of our faith, and it is what holds together the life of baptism, the life of faith, life itself.
We will all be aware that when a candidate for baptism reaches the very high point of baptism in the water of the font, that the words to accompany this deep action are: I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the son, and of the Holy Spirit.
The Creed that we are meant to learn without getting a beating, according to St. Augustine, is but the statement of the church, a sacred statement, as to how we understand these words at the administration of baptism.
31/05/2020
In
Sermons & Services
Sermon preached at the Zoom Worship for Pentecost Sunday 31st May 2020
Deacon Christine Saccali
May I speak in the name of the living God Father Son and Holy Spirit Amen
I have not preached on zoom before so here goes. So many things are different from usual at the moment, aren’t they? And we don’t know if or when the world will return to how it was before this COVID pandemic. I don’t want to use the word normal as what is normal anyway and who is normal?
Interestingly enough, one of the novels I have caught up on during lockdown is Normal People by Sally Rooney which was made into a very popular BBC TV series shown recently. It is an extraordinary book for its ordinariness- nothing really happens but it is relational describing the ongoing relationship between Marianne and Connor against the background of their young lives. Now I am just reading the young author’s first book Conversations with Friends. On the fly leaf there is the quote,’ In times of crisis, we must all decide again and again who we love.’ Again there are many references to normal in the dialogue.