sermon news

Sermon for Remembrance Sunday – 8 November 2020: Wisdom 6, 12-16; Matthew 25, 1-13.

Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens, on Zoom

 

On Armistice Day, November 11th, in the year 1920, a body was solemnly laid in the ground in the nave of Westminster Abbey. It is now known as the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior. The body buried is in fact comprised of the bodies of four soldiers discovered in the battlefields of Aisne, Arras, the Somme, and Ypres. The stone slab is made of black Belgian marble quarried from near Namur in Wallonia. Among the words engraved on the monument are ‘Greater love hath no man than this.’ For 100 years it has been a place of many pilgrimages, an iconic monument, a memorial. It is part of our remembering of those sombre days of the Great War and the sacrifice.

Monuments help us to remember. In Greek a monument would be a mnimeio (μνημείο). Remembrance lies at the very heart of the Christian experience. At the Last Supper Jesus tells his disciples, and thus us also, to ‘Do this in memory of me’. In the New Testament the word for this is ‘anamnesis’. The opposite to this is a well – known word in English, amnesia.

 

When we speak of ‘remembering Jesus’ it is not like the exercise of thinking back to a great beach we went to on holiday last year, wishing we were there now. It is completely different, for in our ‘remembering Jesus’ we are bringing an event from the past into our present day. This is a divine mystery in action. So remembrance is a highly significant religious activity, ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’

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Bible STudies

Pastoral Letter 4 From Fr Leonard

Dear Friends,

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

In his letter to the church community in Rome St. Paul says, ‘For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ (Romans 8, 38-39).

I would add to this list Covid-19, the pandemic that has the world in its vice-like grip in increasing numbers yet again. This virus will not separate us from the love of God, nor in our life in the Holy Spirit will it separate us from each other. Our strength together is more than just our meeting together, though being together gathered around the holy table, side by side, is our royal calling as the baptized holy people of God. We pray for that day when this is possible again.

In response to the current developments of the virus the Government has issued new restrictions for places of worship. These restrictions are in place first and foremost to keep us safe. This is how it affects our own situation.

St. Paul’s will be closed for public worship during this period of lockdown. Sunday services will continue on Zoom either from my apartment or occasionally from St. Paul’s Church.

You can access Zoom by going to the St. Paul’s Anglican Church Athens website where you will find the link. It will be the same link each week. In addition Deacon Christine and I will offer additional worship and spiritual resources for you. Chris will offer something weekly on Facebook. Please contact her directly about this. I will make arrangements for a mid-week evening service on Zoom. It will be 4 Wednesdays in November beginning at 19.00 and I will build in time for a chat afterwards. The link for this will be on our website also. The order of service for this will also be on the website.

We will work on ways to keep the monthly raffle draw going.

As we approach the time when the legendary Christmas Bazaar, a great social occasion as well as fund-raiser, would normally be taking place we are all once again reminded of the need to address the loss of income to St. Paul’s. Please use internet banking for your donation, if you possibly can. The details are on our website. Contact me if you have any questions about financial giving to St. Paul’s. If you cannot use the bank, please put aside your normal weekly offering and bring it with you when you next come to St. Paul’s, whenever that might be.

Stay safe and well, and remain thankful to God for his blessing of love, from which nothing can separate us.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all. Amen.

Father Leonard

Skipton-remembrance poppies

A Service for Remembrance Sunday – 8 November 2020

Welcome to our Zoom service, especially on this Remembrance Sunday. A particular welcome to Her Excellency Kate Smith CMG, British Ambassador, and Captain Tim Ferns, Defence Attache. This Worship is led by The Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan, Senior Chaplain, who is also the preacher. The Noon ceremony at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery at Alimos is cancelled.

 

Please make sure you unmute if you are to speak during the service.

Christina will play some music before we begin

Priest:      Grace, mercy and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you

All:            and also with you.

Priest:      O Lord, open our lips

All:            and our mouth shall proclaim your praise.

Priest:      Give us the joy of your saving help

All:            and sustain us with your life-giving Spirit.

 

Fr. Leonard then welcomes people informally and then prays:

Ever living God, we remember those whom you have gathered from the storm of war into the peace of your presence; may that same peace calm our fears, bring justice to all peoples, and establish harmony among the nations, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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Live Zoom Service for Sunday Worship

New Covid 19 restrictions recently announced means that unfortunately St Paul’s has to close its doors once more to public worship.

This Sunday’s Remembrance Day services both at the Church and at Alimos Cemetery are cancelled, but there will be a Zoom Service broadcast live from the Vicarage.

Services for the next eight weeks will also be Zoomed either from the Vicarage or the Church.  Keep checking the website and our Facebook Page for further information.

Please keep checking the website and Facebook Pages for further updates.

The login details for the Zoom Service are given below:-

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All Saints

Feast of All Saints – 1st November 2020

 

Welcome to St. Paul’s. If you are visiting, or here  for the first time. Due to Covid restrictions we must wear masks at all times in church and garden.

Check our website for information regarding future weeks.

 

Presiding Priest & Preacher: The Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan  

Deacon: The Revd. Deacon Christine Saccali

 

Entrance Hymn or Organ
Priest:            In the name of the Father, and of the Son,

and of the Holy Spirit.

All:                  Amen.                                                                                                                      

 

Priest:            The Lord be with you

All:                  And also with you

 

Words by Jonny Baker, taken from the book: ‘The Hospitality of God’ by Michael Perham

Deacon:        All are invited, all are included

All are made welcome, none are excluded

This is the table of Christ

Come if you’re young, come if you’re old

Come if you’re broken, come if you’re whole

Come if you’re weary of the trials of life

This is the table of Christ.

 

Introduction The priest welcomes everyone and introduces the service

 

Confession

There will be a short moment of silence as we bring to mind our wrongdoings

 

Deacon:        Lord, you are gracious and compassionate:

Lord, have mercy.

All:                  Lord, have mercy.

Deacon:        You are loving to all and your mercy is over all your creation:

Christ, have mercy.

All:                  Christ, have mercy.

Deacon:        Your faithful servants bless your name and speak of your glory:

Lord, have mercy.

All:                  Lord, have mercy.

 Absolution: Almighty God, who forgives all those who are truly repent, have mercy upon you, pardon and deliver you from all your sins, confirm and strengthen you in all goodness and keep you in life eternal; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

Gloria:  Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on earth. Lord God, heavenly King, almighty God and Father, we worship you, we give you thanks, we praise you for your glory. Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father, Lord God, Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world: have mercy on us; you are seated at the right hand of the Father: receive our prayer. For you alone are the Holy One, you alone are the Lord, you alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God, the glory of God the Father. Amen. AMEN.

 Collect

The Priest then prays the collect for the day

God of holiness, your glory is proclaimed in every age: as we rejoice in the faith of your saints, inspire us to follow their example with boldness and joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

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Cinnamon Sticks C

Christmas Online Bazaar

Due to current Covid restrictions, and our precarious financial situation, we will not be able to hold a Christmas Bazaar this year – the first time in over 60 years.  HOWEVER, our beautiful Christmas Decorations, and Sweets will be on sale online and at the Church after the services.  Browse through our gallery of decorations here.  You can purchase them online through Paypal on our Donations page and collect them in a couple of weeks at the Church.  Don’t forget to indicate which item you are purchasing!

 

Candles cost  €8.00  and come gift wrapped and bagged.  Cinnamon Stick decorations cost €7.00.

 

 

Sermon for Bible Sunday – Last after Trinity, 25th October 2020: : Nehemiah 81-4, 8-12; Matthew 24, 30-35

Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

 

We will wear our historical hats for a few minutes this morning as we think about the reading from Nehemiah.

The Babylonians attacked and sacked the city of Jerusalem in the year 587/586BC. This is a pivotal date and a key moment in understanding the literature of the Old Testament – and even some of the imagery in the later New Testament, especially in the Book of Revelation.

When the city is taken, and the walls destroyed, so too the Temple of Solomon that had stood there for some 500 years is also razed to the ground and the holy objects of Jewish worship taken as plunder.

The families of the city – those who mattered at least- were taken captive and transported to Babylon. This is present day Iraq. Here the Jewish families, the tribes, experienced an identity crisis. They are in isolation, both physical and spiritual. The temple, so much at the heart of their worship and religious practices was no more. Their access to the familiar is now disrupted and denied to them.

Goaded by their captors to sing some hymns from the temple, they reflect, ‘By the rivers of Babylon – there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion…For our captors asked us for mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion”. How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land.’ (Psalm 137).

In exile, separated and distanced from the familiar it would be so easy for them to forget. History has shown us that our societies can just as easily develop a corporate amnesia as perpetuate a corporate remembrance.

Sitting as they were by the rivers of Babylon they remind themselves of what they have lost – ‘If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither! Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.’ (Psalm 137 vss 5-6).

There is surely a lesson here from the past for us in the present and future. Around the world so many faithful Christians are isolated from gathering together, from being sacramental, and have become virtual members of church instead of physically present members of the Body of Christ. However long this Covid restricts us and distances us from one another and from sharing in the real nature of sacramental Christianity, let’s not forget – let’s not develop a corporate amnesia.

 

But back to the history. In the reign of the Persian King Cyrus a decree was issued that the Hebrew people should be allowed to rebuild their city and temple. This decree was discovered in Ecbatana – a place to become famous later for a battle in the reign of Alexander the Great. Because of the ‘laws of the Medes and Persians’ King Darius is bound to fulfil the command of his predecessor King Cyrus, and so Ezra is despatched to oversee the rebuild and restoration. The book of Ezra and the book of Nehemiah, should really be read as one.

Nehemiah is appointed as Governor of the newly rebuilt city of Jerusalem and the ‘land beyond the river’. The restoration programme had unearthed again the writings of the Law of Moses and it was apparent that in exile the Hebrew people had become detached from their religious heritage, despite their protestations by the rivers of Babylon. They were no longer faithful followers of the Word of Moses. They had lapsed and fallen into a religious apostasy – distance from God.

So Nehemiah relates how Ezra summons the people together. They meet at the Watergate – nothing to do with President Nixon – and with great drama Ezra reminds the people of the historic faith from which they had parted company. They are deeply emotional when they hear this. They stand, and raise their hands upwards, ‘Amen, Amen’ is their cry. They weep when they hear the words of the Lord. Some present were able to interpret for the people what the words truly meant, and the people understood. The people understood.

We are staying with history, but later in the historical religious trajectory. We are in the mid 14th century, and in England. The religion of the nation is Catholic, and the church is all powerful. It is powerful for a number of reasons – property ownership, vast wealth of riches and money. The church controls patronage, it controls penitence, and it controls its dogma of purgatory. But mostly it controls the lives of the people in England, and across Western Europe, by language. The language is Latin, and the only access to worship and the holy books of scripture is through Latin – the scriptures in Latin we call, rather ironically, the Vulgate version. In Latin vulgus means the multitude, the populous, the common mass of people. Latin was hardly the language of the multitude. Latin had caused a distance between the everyday person and God – an apostasy. The Greek scriptures had been translated into this Vulgate version by St. Jerome (Hieronymos in Greek) in Bethlehem. It had been his life’s work. The Vulgate version of the scriptures was the only version in the whole of Western Europe since Jerome in the year 420AD until an Englishman John Wycliffe translated it into the language of the vulgus the people.

Such a movement was happening with scholars and monks all over Western Europe translating the Vulgate into their own language, so that the people could understand – it is the period known as the Reformation.

 

Hearing their holy scriptures in their own native tongue must have brought sheer joy to the ears of the faithful. They were reminded of the basis for their faith, the foundations that had been denied them for so many centuries. They discovered that there had been a corporate amnesia about their personal knowledge of Jesus, and the things written about him. Salvation suddenly became transformed by understanding; it became personal rather than moderated through the power of the church, a church that had been able to exploit and perpetuate ignorance.

In the language of the people, and now also in the hands of the people after Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1495 in Germany, and Caxton just after him in England, faith is transformed.

 

I like to imagine that we can compare these two precious moments; the Books of the Law being read to the people at the Watergate in Jerusalem and hearing the basis of the covenant with God, and these Reformation years of people being able to hear and to read (where they could) the holy scriptures in their own language – ‘understanded of the people’ as older English says.

Today is not only the Last Sunday in the holy season of Trinity, it is designated as Bible Sunday. As we look over the trajectory of history there is so much to be thankful for. We can so readily and easily have or own access to scripture; so easy in fact that in most households that have a bible, it is never opened! That is how easy it is.

I won’t mention any names here – but it is easy to stand outside a church in the city of Washington and hold up a bible for the press cameras. It is another thing to open it, read it, pray with it, struggle with it, let your conduct be guided by it, and your holiness developed by it. If we keep it shut, you and me, we will so easily develop another corporate amnesia. Though bibles are so easy to get, we must never forget how precious these words are – for this reason we still read the scriptures in our worship; we process the gospel book, raising it high to show that we are subject to the yoke of the gospel, and in some churches the page is kissed after the gospel is read, to show that these are such beautiful and precious words. Jesus says, ‘Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. ’ (Matthew 24, 35)

Our collect for today says so much better, and so much more succinctly, what I have been trying to share with you today,

‘Blessed Lord, who caused all holy scriptures to be written for our learning; help us to hear them, to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them that, through patience, and the comfort of your holy word, we may embrace and forever hold fast the hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.