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18/08/2022 In Sermons & Services

Sermon for the 10th Sundy after Terinity – 21st August 2022:Is 58, 9-end; Hebrews 12, 18-end; Luke 13, 10-17

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

One of the responsibilities set before a preacher is that of enlightening the hearers: this may be done in a number of ways, and sometimes in more than one way within the same sermon. There is the expository sermon – one in which the preacher looks carefully at the text of one of the scripture readings. There is the exhortatory sermon – one in which the texts or the common theme is crafted to encourage people in their faith and daily life; the sermon might be entirely or partly didactic – that is a focus on straightforward teaching, about the church’s history or dogmatics.

Other styles of preaching exist, of course, and all sermons can use illustrations from literature, humour, or human examples of goodness or indeed of sadness. Preaching is a rich environment for enabling the flourishing of themes, subjects, and styles. Normally though the preacher will feel the need to leave some questions answered, and a congregation will so often want to be more certain after hearing a sermon preached.

Well that’s all very fine and dandy. However, I ask the question, is there some room in the preacher’s annual schedule simply to place before a congregation some dilemmas, antitheses, opposites – simply naming them but without the contortions of supplying a solution?

If this is one of the legitimate purposes of a preacher, then we can approach today’s scripture readings, observing the dilemmas they provide us with – and not seek to give an answer.

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12/08/2022 In Sermons & Services

Sermon for the Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary – 14th August 2022

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

The 15th August (tomorrow) is the universal date on which the church celebrates the Blessed Virgin Mary. This celebration is kept by the Orthodox, Catholic and Anglican traditions.

On this date the Orthodox speak of the Eternal Sleep of the Mother of God, and Blessed Mary is referred to in Orthodoxy as Panaghia – (All holy). The Roman Church celebrates what they now call the Assumption, a dogma that is barely 200 years old as currently understood, and a dogma which does not rest at all comfortably with Anglican theology, and may be a major cause for Anglicans to be ‘cautious’ about absorbing Mary into a theological system. In Greece the 15th August is always a public holiday.

The Anglican tradition is more akin to the East than to Rome, and for centuries since the Reformation we have commemorated the Dormition, the ‘falling asleep’ of the BVM on this date.

Blessed Mary is the human mother of the incarnate Jesus, the fully human Jesus. We must remember however that in Christian theology this same Jesus is also fully divine, so Mary is indeed the mother of Jesus as the bible witnesses, but at the same time, the Church accords her the exalted title of Mother of God, since Jesus of Nazareth is both fully human and fully divine. Her title is agreed in the ancient Councils of the church as Theotokos – God-Bearer, a title that emerges from the seriously dangerous debates in the 4th and 5th centuries concerning the humanity and divinity of Christ. Her title makes Blessed Mary a ‘protectress’ of the of the human-divine Jesus.

It is on account of this that Blessed Mary is worthy of the titles ascribed to her by the Church. So she is indeed Panaghia (All Holy One) in all three traditions, even if only the Orthodox use this distinctive Greek word.

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02/08/2022 In Sermons & Services

Sermon for the 7th Sunday after Trinity, St Ignatius – 31st July 2022: ECCLESTIASTES 1:2-12,2:18-2, LUKE 12:13-21

Deacon Christine Saccali – St Paul’s Athens

It is the height of summer here now – August tomorrow and I hope you have had or will have a break or a staycation as the fashionable phrase goes. But the real question is, I feel, is whether we have been able to take time out of our hectic schedules to spend time with the King, as the hype for the Elvis film goes but we are talking about the king of our hearts and souls – Jesus.

But carving out time, even on holiday or on leave to be with God isn’t always as simple as that, I find. I don’t know about you but it takes me two or three days to unwind and leave all the day to day stuff behind that nags away at one. Then I have to still my soul and listen out above the tumult and clamour of life for that small voice. By the time, I am in the position to listen then it can be time to come home again.

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15/07/2022 In Sermons & Services

Sermon for the 5th Sunday after Trinity – 17th July 2022: Genesis 18, 1-10a; Col 1, 15-28; Lk 10, 38-end.

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Last Sunday we had a lovely party in the church garden to welcome back some special visitors. It was a most pleasant event, and comes on top of a series of social gatherings such as the Jubilee Bazaar, and the brunch we all enjoyed after the liturgy in June when we celebrated St. Peter and Paul, since Paul is our patron by dedication of the church.

We are all grateful to the team that so smoothly and graciously ensure that these events go without any problems. We are richly blessed by them – as we are by the generous giving of time, and finances, and energy in every aspect of our congregational life together. Where would we be if we were not willing to work for things that matter, and it is intrinsic in our baptism that we assume the responsibility of being co-workers with Christ, in his mission to transform God’s world. The two words that perhaps sum up what we do are ‘worship and work’. One of the key characteristics that conjoins the two is ‘hospitality’.

Many years ago the bishop in a diocese where I worked said, ‘God doesn’t need a building to live in – he needs somewhere to show his hospitality.’ Church life is an expression of and an attempt to share with others, the hospitality of God.

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.

 

Jesus the host washes your feet

makes you his guest and lays on a feast.

This is the table of Christ,

come if you’re rich, come if you’re poor,

come if the church stops you at the door,

come and eat bread, come and drink wine.

This is the table of Christ.

 

Eat and remember Jesus the one

Who gave up his life so you could belong,

This is the table of Christ.

Come if you’re thirsty, come and be filled

Come and be clean, come and be healed

Come and be held in the presence of God.

This is the table of Christ.

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

Hospitality is the characteristic of the Old Testament reading this morning. The episode in the life of Abraham is the inspiration for the very famous icon of the Russian iconogropher Rublev. In this encounter between Abraham and the angels, and influenced by Rublev’s interpretation many see a foreshadowing of the Holy Trinity, positioned in such a way, gathered around a table with food, that seems to invite us to join the life this Trinity, and to share in the real and spiritual food of life with the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit. Many pages of words have been spent on the interpretations of the icon – and you will either find the hermeneutics of the icon by different people compelling and persuasive, or tenuous, speculative and over emphasized. I have to say, I have never liked the icon, (there are many Byzantine examples that are better) and I am indifferent to some of the interpretations of it, as it rather obscures the beauty of the scripture.

Let’s concentrate on that. Abraham, encounters three angels or divine beings as he sits at the entrance of his tent by the oaks of Mamre. His first reaction is one of worship. He recognizes an epiphany of the divine, so what else can a human being do? He bows down in the divine presence, and greets the manifestation with the title ‘Lord’. In the scriptural tradition all such manifestations, such as the Archangel Gabriel’s appearance to Blessed Mary are considered to be as if God was present.

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11/07/2022 In Sermons & Services

Sermon for the 4th Sunday after Trinity – 10th July 2022: : Deut 30, 9-14; Col1, 1-14; Luke 10, 25-37

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

One of the most challenging aspects for the preacher is to preach on a text that is really well known. The problem is that with a very familiar passage of scripture, such as the Good Samaritan, people already have their own very worthwhile interpretation and understanding. So what I say today about this well- known parable of Jesus should be set alongside what opinion you have already formed. Maybe my words will supplement what you already think about this story.

Unlike most of you who know the story well, I have actually visited the Inn of the Good Samaritan. That gives me an upper hand. Well, at least it calls itself the Inn of the Good Samaritan, and it is located high up in the ragged rocks of the wilderness of Judea on the road between Jericho and Jerusalem. At the Inn of the Good Samaritan your luxury air-conditioned coach can stop for a short time while people pile out to have their latte or cappuccino. To add to that, for a few dollars or shekels more, you can get on a camel and have your photograph taken with the Inn of the Good Samaritan sign in the background.

There is a sort of saying that a camel is such a strange animal it could only have been created by a committee; and its not only how it looks – try staying on the saddle when the camel stands up, or even more challenging when it sits down, lurching first backwards and then forwards.

It is one of the legal experts who asks Jesus about inheriting eternal life. Jesus first deflects the question back on the questioner. He does this often. If it is a legal expert who asks, then the best response is to pass the question back to the area of expertees of the questioner. Jesus asks the legal expert what the law says.

The lawyer turns immediately to the foundation of the relationship between the faithful Jew and God. He quotes back at Jesus the words of the ‘Shema’ – the word for ‘hear’. He is quoting Deuteronomy ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord’ and in the actual quote he continues the Shema ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength, and your neighbour as yourself.’ had reason to use this text just a week ago. I had been asked to officiate at a Blessing of a Marriage at a location on the Athens Riviera. The couple were of mixed traditions – she an Anglican and he a Jew. They had requested that the ceremony might include some of the Jewish traditions and words as well as the basis of the Anglican Wedding Blessing ceremony. A good number of the congregation had flown over from Israel.

I had to think carefully about how to weave not only the traditions of the ceremony together, but also what to say in the sermon. I focussed on the word ‘love’, and began with the foundational sentence that we hear on the lips of the lawyer, ‘You shall love the Lord your God…..etc. I then moved towards Corinth and brought in the beautiful hymn of praise to divine love that we know so well from 1 Corinthians 13, and then I referred to the Wedding Feast at Cana, where Jesus, who is God’s love made flesh, transforms water into wine, just as he transforms our lives – he has come that we might have life, and have it with full abundance. (John 10,10).

I am told by the bride’s mother that she was looking around at the Jewish members of the congregation and she could see them nodding with assent. So I managed not to cause a new religious war!

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30/06/2022 In Sermons & Services

Sermon for the 3rd Sunday of Trinity – 3 July 2022: Habakkuk 2, 1-4; Ephesians 2, 19-end; John 20, 24-29

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Last Sunday we pre-empted the Feast of St. Peter and Paul by a few days, and in that sermon I spoke of SS Peter and Paul as ‘twin apostles’ of the Church of Jesus Christ. Today we have the feast of someone who was an actual twin – St. Thomas the Apostle. In our gospel reading from St. John’s gospel, we hear of the encounter between the risen Jesus and Thomas who had doubted the word of his fellow disciples when they told him that Jesus had risen and had appeared among them. Thomas wasn’t present for that first appearance of the risen Christ. Maybe he was out somewhere with his twin brother.

St. John tells us that Thomas was ‘Didymos’ the twin. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know if his twin was identical, if his twin was maybe a female, and did that twin respond to the call of Jesus as had his twin brother.

This gospel reading has its usual place in one of the Sundays of the Easter season as it contributes to the scriptural evidence of the risen Christ appearing. In many ways it is the high point of St. John’s gospel, as he begins by setting out his table by proclaiming that in Jesus the ‘Word had become flesh’ (John 1, 14). His whole gospel is a series of ‘evidences’ for the defence in his theological case; and he brings forward witnesses all the way through his gospel who become convinced of the defence’s case, and find it justified. This culminates in the defence statement made by St. Thomas ‘My Lord and my God.’ The Evangelist St. John has been leading us up to that great statement of faith.

If I may make a detour for a moment, I would like to refer to another saint – and Oxfordshire saint.

Birinus was born in the mid sixth century, probably of northern European origin, but he became a priest in Rome. Feeling called by God to serve as a missionary, he was consecrated bishop, and sent to Britain by the pope. He intended to evangelize inland where no Christian had been before but, arriving in Wessex in 634, he found such prevalent idolatry that he looked no further to begin work. One of his early converts was King Cynegils and thereafter he gained much support in his mission. He became the first Bishop of Dorchester. He died in about the year 650 having earned the title ‘Apostle of the West Saxons’.

In the lovely Oxfordshire town of Dorchester there is a very fine abbey church which is now the parish church for the small town – quite disproportionate in size to the town. In the abbey there is a shrine of St. Birinus to which pilgrims still go.

Why am I telling you this? On the 3rd July, the Feast of St. Thomas the Apostle, in the abbey church of St. Birinus, I was ordained a deacon by the then Bishop of Dorchester. That was 39 years ago.

So the Feast of St. Thomas is very significant for me, and for many others who would have been ordained on this date.

So – back to what matters. We do not often have Sunday readings from the prophet Habakkuk. In the short passage we heard this morning the prophet pledges to stand at his watchpost – he is like a scout, always alert, always looking, always ‘scoping’ the scene for works of God.

He is urged to write down what he sees, and especially he is asked to note the spirit of those who are proud – usually the proud are those who are not well aligned with the characteristics of God. See how out of sorts they are with themselves – there is something not right in them and they know it. They protect themselves but in so doing things are going wrong, things in their heads, their hearts, their spirit, their relationships, and their lives. Something is missing. God’s answer to the prophet is to say ‘the righteous live by their faith.’ (Habakkuk 2, 4). The antithesis of the proud is the righteous. The righteous is not one who is ‘holier than thou’ – but one who is truly aligned with the characteristics of God.

How do we know what such characteristics are? We know them, because we see them in Jesus. ‘To have seen me, is to have seen the Father’ Jesus says in John’s gospel. As I have said before, Jesus is God’s ‘selfie’ – to look at Jesus is to look at God. To have faith in Jesus as Lord is to have faith in God. To attempt to lead a Christ-like life, is to attempt to lead a Godly life – what in scripture is described rather more difficultly as a ‘righteous’ life.

St. Paul, whom we honoured last week along with his ‘twin apostle’ Peter, didn’t have a mobile phone, so he wouldn’t be asking Jesus for a ‘selfie’ on the Damascus Road, but St. Paul understands exactly and in language understood in his day, and in our own day, he declares that Jesus is the ‘mirror image’ of God (Colossians 1, 4).

In the short passage we heard this morning from St. Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus we are reminded of the difference it makes to have seen God’s face in the face of Christ (a human face, a compassionate face, a face that expresses humility). We are no longer proud, no longer out of sorts with ourselves, our neighbours, and out of step with Godly characteristics. ‘You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.’ (Ephesians 2, 19).

It is to this reality that St. Thomas assents when he says those extraordinary words of a man he had travelled with, eaten with, conversed with; extraordinary words about a man who had been tortured and hung on a cross right until death. What an extraordinary thing to have realized that everything this man is is divine – his humanity transformed in divinity, his divinity fully revealed in Jesus the man.

‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side’ (John 20,27). He is speaking to you and me – go on, do it. Don’t doubt, simply believe.

My Lord and my God.

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26/06/2022 In Sermons & Services

Sermon for the Feast of SS Peter & Paul, Patronal Sunday, 26th June 2022

(While in Brussels I was robbed of my iPad, so there will be no recorded sermon until I have a replacement).

We have taken the liberty of moving the Feast of St. Peter and Paul from their calendar date of June 29th, to today, so that we could honour these two great ‘apostles of Christ’ on the nearest Sunday.

The normal date for our Patronal Festival would be January 25th when we celebrate the Conversion of St. Paul, but January is not such an attractive option for a garden lunch, compared to June. So we can also use this summer month to honour our patronal saint.

In the ‘old’ Prayer Book St. Peter is celebrated alone on June 29th, and it is only in more recent decades that the holy apostles of Peter and Paul have been placed side by side. Both were martyred in the city of Rome.

They belong together in so many ways but chiefly as foundations for the building up of the Christian Church.

Two little dickie birds sitting on a wall; one named Peter, one named Paul. Fly away Peter, fly away Paul, come back Peter come back Paul.

I have often pondered whether this little rhyme has any connection with the Peter and Paul that we honour today. These two saints are very different, and yet have much in common.

One was a fisherman living a simple married life beside the Sea of Galilee; the other was a tent maker but also a well educated Pharisee, having studied under the great Gamaliel. The lives of both were transformed with a call to follow Christ.

Peter’s call was from Jesus directly. Peter was one of the close group of disciples that Jesus gathered around him. So Peter is an eye witness to the things Jesus did, and the things that he said. As we see from this morning’s gospel reading, Peter acknowledges this Jesus as Messiah.

Paul never met Jesus in this same direct way, yet there was some type of powerful encounter with the risen Christ that we learn about in the book called the Acts of the Apostles that turned Paul’s heart and mind towards being the greatest apologist for Jesus as his Lord.

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