Sermon for the 3rd Sunday before lent – 5th February 2023: Isaiah 58, 1-9; 1 Cor 2, 1-12; Matt 5, 13-15).
Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens
Over the years I have had the privilege of leading six or seven pilgrimage groups to the Holy Land. In the modern times and over many decades this land has faced troubles – troubles that have their root basically in religion. Religion so often gets mistaken for, and gets in the way of, faith.
Most pilgrimages are divided between two geographical bases – the Holy city of Jerusalem, which is in East Jerusalem, and the area of the Sea of Galilee. If you speak to most pilgrims they divide neatly into two groups – those who love the Jerusalem based sites, such as the Old City, the Western or Wailing Wall, the Temple Mount, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the wells of Bethsaida, the crusader church of St. Anne with its extraordinary echo, the route of the Via Crucis, the House of Caiaphas, the church of the Nations, The Garden of Gethsemane, Golgotha, the Byzantine site of the Ascension of our Lord, or the Cenacle – where Pentecost took place.
Others prefer the more open air sites around the Sea of Galilee – Capernaum where we see the archaeological remains of the small fishing village where Peter, Andrew, James, John lived and worked, with its nearby synagogue – ironically it is a modern synagogue; by modern I mean Roman! Around the shores of the sea there are holy sites where Christ delivered the Beatitudes; where Peter declared him to be the Messiah, and many more.
