Audio Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter – 1 May 2022

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter – 1May 2022: Acts 9, 1-6; Rev 5, 11-14; John 21, 1-19.

Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

[The next circulated sermon from me will be for Sunday 22^nd May]

Today is May 1^st – Χρονιά Πολλά και Καλή Προτομαγιά – many years and happy 1^st May. Traditionally of course May Day is the day when we welcome the Spring; in the Orthodox calendar it is the Feast of St. Thomas, and icons show Our Lord displaying to Thomas the wounds on his hands and side; in the Catholic Church since 1955 the 1^st May is associated with St. Joseph, earthly father of Jesus, but whose profession was to work as a carpenter in Nazareth. It is appropriate that the 1^st of May is marked internationally to celebrate workers. There is a lot going on today, and a lot going on in our gospel reading for today. The reading is one of the Resurrection Narratives, a phrase we introduced to you last week.

So what is all the activity that we hear about? First of all, seven of the disciples – all named, including Thomas who was invited to put his fingers into the crucifixion wounds – go fishing. It was the occupation of a number of the disciples. They can go fishing because they are no longer in Jerusalem, which is land-locked, so not much opportunity there for fishermen. Instead they have re-located to familiar territory, Galilee. The gospel writer tells us they are by the Sea of Tiberias. It is also called the Sea of Galilee.

READ MORE

Sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter – 24th April 2022: John 20, 19-31

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Our prayers of shared Easter joy are with the Orthodox Church today, for whom this is Easter Sunday. Καλό Πάσχα. Our prayers of shared compassion on this Day of Resurrection are with all Ukrainians for whom the joy of their faith is profoundly challenged by their plight. Our prayers of shared pleading that the words of the Risen Jesus, ‘Peace be with you, repeated so often in the Easter Narratives, will inhabit the souls and inform the behaviour of Russian state and church leadership.

‘Easter Narratives’ is the corporate name we give to that collection of scriptural material that informs us of the various appearances of Jesus after his crucifixion, death, and his three days in the tomb during which he is redeeming even the depths of hell with his graceful redemption.

This is what we refer to when we say in the Creed, ‘He descended into hell’. I’m sure the inclusion of this line must have generated much thought and speculation. It makes sense though. If God’s redeeming action in his Christ is a universal, and indeed cosmic action of God, then it is essential that those who had passed form this life before this action have to be redeemed also, for ‘that which is not touched by God in Christ is not redeemed’. So the new life of the risen Christ about to emerge into a cosmic action of salvation must be shared by those who ‘knew not Christ’.

So these Easter Narratives are placed in the last chapter or chapters of the four gospels. St, Mark is as succinct at the end of his gospel as he is at the beginning of his gospel – the only one of the four not to give any mention of the Birth Narratives. St. Mark records the appearance to Mary of Magdala and the other women, but this is where it stops, with the rather dramatic ending: ‘they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.’ (Mark 16, 8). Perhaps this reaction in the women is understandable.

READ MORE

Audio Sermon for the 2nd Sunday of Easter – 24th April 2022

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Sermon preached on Easter Sunday 2022: Luke 24, 1-12

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

A favourite Easter hymn of mine is ‘Now the green blade riseth from the buried grain’. It doesn’t have some of the gravity of the grand and assertive, triumphalist Easter songs, but the image is good; the metaphor is descriptive, and it surely proclaims that Christ rose after three days in the sepulchre – and that makes it a good Easter hymn.

Verse 4 of the hymn runs like this:

When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain,

Thy touch can call us back to life again,

Fields of our hearts, that dead and bare have been:

Love is come again,

Like wheat that springeth green.

READ MORE