Sermon preached for Remembrance Sunday – 13th November 2022

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

After preaching for Remembrance Sunday every year for 39 years is there anything new that I can say? Probably not. The Christian preacher, I, can only engage in variations on the same theme.

The theme is this. War is a sin – whatever provokes it is also sinful. War is a sin because it causes a chasm; a chasm between man and God, between one person and another, one nation against another; and a chasm to the integrity within ourselves, for it pulls us apart in our ‘oneness’ with God and fellow human. In this chasm we find that we are able, through intellectual game-playing, to justify that one side has justice and right; and that the other side is unjust and wrong. In a sophisticated world like ours, how naïve is that polarisation?

So war is a sin – and its consequences have a huge outreach in human experience. Every war is a vortex of destruction that drags human beings into it, willing or unwilling, combative or non-combative. Nobility sits side by side with collateral damage; destruction sits side by side with the high moral ground.

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Audio Sermon for Remembrance Sunday, 13th November 2022

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Sermon Preached on 7th August 2022

Angelos Palioudakis

Recorded in Genesis chapter 15, is the promise from God which carries right

through into the New Testament readings that we have before us: Luke’s Gospel

chapter 12 and Hebrews chapter 11. Let’s focus on Luke’s Gospel chapter 12, a

passage where Jesus effectively says to his disciples: “watch where you’re going,

keep my father’s Kingdom central in your heart and your mind and your life in

spite of your own made-up fears of financial matters.”

Jesus comes to reframe our perspective, to enable us to prioritize our lives.

He tells us that we need to tend to our greatest spiritual needs, if we are to

become citizens of heaven. He tells us to sell our possessions and give to the

poor. He gives a warning to us that we are too attached to this world and we

are too attached to our stuff.

Well, I think it is safe to assume that we don’t have to pull an imitation of

St. Francis of Assisi and give away all our possessions and wander around the

streets. What Jesus is saying here is this (and I quote): “where your treasure is,

there your heart will be also.” So if your treasure is safely deposited in heaven

then heaven is going to be the centre of your thoughts and your desires. And

that’s the crux of the matter.

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Sermon for the Feast of All Saints – 30th October 2022

Rev. Canon  L W Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

I have a confession to make. I am absolutely hopeless in understanding how to use new technology. I feel like a dinosaur, which is prehistoric.

I draw my inspiration from Scripture, but even there I discover that Moses was ahead of his time, for he went up into the cloud, and long before I had an iPad, Moses had a tablet, more than one in fact.

Today we celebrate All Saints, on this All Saints Sunday. In the letter to the Hebrews we hear a lovely phrase –a great cloud of witnesses – like an ‘i-cloud’. Have you heard of it? Some of you think I am talking about technology again where the i-cloud is where every message everyone sends to anyone anywhere is stored for ever and a day as evidence, a witness, to what you have ever said in any message to any person, anywhere. The amazing thing is that this contemporary i-cloud doesn’t exist anywhere. You cannot see it, touch it, smell it, taste it, or hear it. It has no existential reality – it is simply there. The cloud of witnesses is simply there.

But you will have guessed that the ‘cloud of witnesses’ is not quite like the iCloud, but it has some similarities. The ‘cloud of witnesses mentioned in Hebrews is a glorious vision by a follower of Christ who described something very beautiful. It is a place but no GPS would ever find it for you. This place is full of the evidence of Christian lives lived well, witnesses to a different kind of communication, the communication of love between God and humanity, humanity and God, and between human beings.

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Audio Sermon for the feast of All Saints – 30th October 2022

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Sermon for the Harvest Festival at Kokotos Winery – 9th October 2022

Fr Leonard Doolan

When the table is prepared, and the bread and wine are set there, and we are ready, we are well accustomed to hearing these words,

“Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation: through your goodness we have this bread to offer; which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life.

Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation; through your goodness we have this wine to offer: fruit of the vine and work of human hands. It will become for us the cup of salvation.”

We are in the wonderful setting of the vineyard of George and Anne Kokotos. What could be a finer setting for our Harvest Festival Liturgy, and we are here in partnership with friends from the Swedish Lutheran congregation.

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Audio Sermon for the Harvest Festival – 9th October 2022

Fr Leonard Doolan – Kokotos Winery

Audio Sermon preached on Trinity 15 (Sept 25th 2022)

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Sermon preached on Trinity 15 (Sept 25th 2022): Amos 6, 1, 4-7; 1Tim 6, 6-19; Luke 16, 19-end

Fr Leonard Dool;an – St Paul’s Athens

The prophet Amos sets out his theme: Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory and lounge on their couches and eat lambs from the flock and calves from the stall.

The writer of the Letter to Timothy provides us with words that are part of the Introduction to the Funeral Service: we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it.

I think already we are beginning to build up a picture of what scripture is going to say to us today – if we have ears to hear.

In many ways both readings prepare us for the parable of Christ Jesus.

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores”. The scriptures are guiding us morally towards asking big questions about how we can reconcile lives that are rich and lives that are poor; How wealth contrasts with poverty; and the ethics of how wealth is distributed with some justice and equity.

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Sermon for the 14th Sunday after Trinity – 18 September 2022: AMOS: 8:4-7,! TIMOTHY 2:1-7, LUKE 16:1-13

Deacon Chris Saccali – St Paul’s Athens

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

As we continue reading the Gospel of Luke and have wended our way with Jesus and the disciples to Jerusalem, in step with the journey and ministry of Jesus, the parables become even more testing and trying, to my mind, but we can’t just skip over the difficult bits of scripture.

All our readings today are challenging, lifted only by the words of the Psalm, but then we are in challenging times and we are also in the season of Creationtide which runs from 1^st September through to the feast of St Francis on 4^th October. As Fr Leonard explained in a previous sermon, this year we are invited to listen out for the Voice of Creation, groaning. The theme text and illustration chosen by an ecumenical group this year is Moses and the Burning Bush from Exodus chapter 3 . Interesting to note how Moses is already on Holy Ground and the fire burns but does not destroy.

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