LOGOS LANGUAGE OF LOVE SECOND SUNDAY OF CHRISTMAS 2/01/22: READINGS: Ephesians 1:3-14, John 1 1-18.

Deacon Chris Saccali – St Paul’s. Athens

May I speak in the name of the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit  AMEN

HAPPY NEW YEAR kali chronia IN A SECULAR SENSE for we celebrated the church’s new year with the start of Advent back in November. Today’s gospel reading takes us back to the reading set for Carol services and Christmas – for we are still in the liturgical Christmas season before we move into Epiphany this week.

So today we are thinking about beginnings and endings and the advent book by Maggi Dawn I followed this year has just this as its title. I probably do not have to repeat the beginning of St John’s gospel, ‘In the beginning was the Word and how that very first verse takes us back to Genesis 1. If you were to begin your story how would you start? Where does a storyteller begin?

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Sermon for the feast of St Stephen – 26th December 2021:ACTS 7: 51-60, MATTHEW 23:34-39,Galatians 2 16b- 20

Deacon Chris Saccali – St Paul’s Athens

STICKS AND STONES

Today is Boxing Day right?  When just to confuse things we don’t do any boxing but traditionally things were boxed up to be distributed to the poor. Today we celebrate Emmanuel in the Orthodox calendar and St Stephanos is celebrated tomorrow. For us, this the first Sunday of Christmas falls on St Stephen’s day this year. The famous carol Good King Wenceslas, that we sang at the beginning of this service, is sometimes only thing people know or remember on this festival. I have been fortunate enough to visit Prague and Wenceslas Square .And no I won’t start singing.

As a deacon this feast is close to my heart. Stephen is a role model for all deacons – a protipo. Let us remind ourselves on St Stephen’s day of his story and how he became the first Christian martyr- μαρτυρας –literally witness, we still use it in Modern Greek legal language.  We remember Stephen’s death as a witness to Christ, the Way, Truth and Life not on a cross but under a storm of stones and rocks( ελιθοβολουν).As we remember and relearn from Stephen’s story for our times, let us also consider it in light of the Christ child, whose birth we celebrated yesterday and the crucified Μessiah and in the context of the early church. Stephen Cottrell, Archbishop of York comments on the juxtaposition of these two great days and how they look forward to the cross.

In the early life of the Christian church all the followers of Jesus, not yet called Christians, attend the Temple. They are taught by the twelve Apostles, break bread and pray together. Those who own property and possessions sell what they have and everything is held for the good of all people according to their need. But it isn’t long before a dispute arises over the distribution of food. There were two groups of Jews in Jerusalem at the time those who had been born and raised there and spoke Aramaic and those who were known as Hellenists who spoke Greek as their first or second language and who were immigrants from neighbouring countries.

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Audio Sermon preached at St Paul’s Athens on Christmas Day 2021

Fr Leonard Doolan

Sermon preached at St Paul’s Athens on Christmas Day 2021: Isaiah 9, 2-7; Luke 2, 1-14

Fr Leonard Doolan

‘He is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace’. (Is 9, 2-6).  ‘To you is born this day in the city of David, a Saviour, who is the messiah, the Lord’. (Luke 2, 11)

Both the prophet Isiah and St. Luke the Evangelist present to us what we might expect. The language, the vision, the expectation fits with the sort of power and authority that religious people want to see in and from God.

Then unexpectedly, ‘You will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’ (Luke 2, 11). The contrast is stark and should take us by complete surprise were it not all so familiar in the annual Christmas story.

The paradox at the heart of our faith is that God becomes flesh and face in a baby – Jesus, born in Bethlehem. ‘Holy God, holy and strong, holy and immortal, have mercy upon us’ we say in the prayer called the Trisagion.

It is one enormous risk that God takes – perhaps even greater than the risk of creating man and woman. God’s glory has the setting of straw and smell; God’s eternity has time and place and person; God’s mightiness cries in the night and needs the love and care of a mum and dad. God’s immortality is moving immediately, relentlessly towards the mystery of the cross.

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Sermon for the fourth Sunday in Advent – 19th December 2021:Micah 5, 2-5; Heb 10, 5-10; Luke 1, 39-45.

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Christmas Eve 18.00 – only on Zoom (see login details on website)

Christmas Morning: 10.00 in St. Paul’s Church

Last Sunday I quoted from Rowan Williams new book Looking East in Winter, (Bloomsbury 2021 p145) He says, paraphrasing someone else,  ‘the prophetic vision is… specifically the vision of all human flesh and every human face with the amazed attention that arises from the fact of God having become flesh and face.’ God in Christ, our Christmas narrative, is about God becoming flesh and face.

These previous two weeks in the Advent season we have had the luxury to dwell on the person of John the Baptizer. We have seen in the scriptures for these two Sundays the challenge and the dis-comfort of the voice that cries in the wilderness – the message of the one who prepares the way for the Lord’s coming. It is not easy reading, and it is a challenge to the preacher to bring into high relief, especially when we are all thinking about Christmas celebrations, the message of repentance and indeed of judgement.

John is the person, the voice, and the face of prophecy, being rooted in the tradition of the old promise, but who invites us to greet the arrival of the new promise in Jesus. John’s is the hard face of the Advent season.

If John is the hard face of this season, it is Mary’s that is the soft face of Advent, and we look to the expressions of her face on this Sunday nearest to Christmas.

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