Audio Sermon for the 13th Sunday after Trinity – 11th September 2022

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Sermon for the 13th Sunday after Trinity – 11th September 2022:Exodus 32, 1-17; 1 Timothy 1, 12-17; Luke 15, 1-10

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

John Newton was born in London, in 1725. His father was a shipping merchant. At the age of eleven, he joined his father on a ship as an apprentice; his seagoing career would be marked by headstrong disobedience.

As a sailor, he denounced his faith after being influenced by a fellow shipmate. His disobedience caused him to be press-ganged into the Royal Navy. He deserted the navy to follow the woman he had fallen in love with. After enduring humiliation for desertion from the navy he was traded as crew to a slave ship, and he began a career in cruel slave trading. While aboard the ship Greyhound, Newton gained notoriety as being one of the most profane men the captain had ever met.

In March 1748, while the Greyhound was in the North Atlantic, a violent storm came upon the ship that was so rough it swept overboard a crew member who was standing where Newton had been only moments before. In the midst of the terrifying ordeal he cried our ‘Lord have mercy’ thus beginning the questioning of himself that led him into faith.

Working as a customs officer from 1756 he began to teach himself Latin, Greek and Theology. He and his new wife engaged with their local parish church and with his new found passion for faith his friends suggested that he should be ordained. In 1746 he was ordained by the then Bishop of Lincoln and he became curate of Olney in 1764.

The reason I am telling you so much about John Newton is that he is the author of the hymn that we have just sung – Amazing grace.

This is perhaps one of the most famous of the Olney Hymns composed by John Newton while he was Curate in that village in Buckinghamshire.

It is personal, and profound; penitential and salvific. He speaks of the sheer grace of God in Jesus Christ redeeming him from a life of profanity and of gross degradation of human beings – yet despite all this he is found by God’s grace and transformed by it.

So often we think of people ‘finding religion’ or ‘finding God’. More often perhaps we have to turn this around and think of ourselves as being found BY God, by his grace and by his love. Salvation is an act of God through the cross, not a human action, though our co-operation is entirely necessary.

So often I tell of a story from my university days at St. Andrews. There was a very sincere Christian woman who would hand out little leaflets with passages of the bible. One day she accosted the Very Revd. Matthew Black, Master of St. Mary’s College where Divinity was taught. As she jumped out in front of him, she asked the question such earnest Christians often ask – ‘Are you saved?’. The Professor’s response was, ‘Aye madam, in the year 33AD’.

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Audio Sermon for the 12th Sunday after Trinity – 4th September 2022

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Sermon for the 12th Sunday after Trinity – 4th September 2022: Deuteronomy 30, 15-end.

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

‘See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity’. (Deut 30, 15). These are stark choices – it is difficult to get more polarity than this.

We do seem to be living in times of great polarity – in Pakistan devastating floods, and in parts of Africa murderous drought. Wild fires seem to be in the news alongside melting glaciers, burgeoning population growth alongside food shortage and issues of sustainability. It looks like an Earth in something of a crisis just as America sends a rocket to the moon so that a station can be set up form which travel will become possible to Mars. Isn’t this just what the planets need? Humans!

Global catastrophes are called ‘apocalyptic’ or ‘of biblical proportions.’

No one nowadays is unaware of the issues facing the world and her populations; no-one is unconscious of environmental challenges, or the effects of global warming – even though some choose to deny it. I don’t and I’m sure you don’t – even though we must exercise some caution about ‘global warming’ being the default position for everything that goes wrong. You know what I mean.

Environmental change is on everyone’s lips but not in the change of most of our lifestyles. There is little real commitment to radical choice change. We expect to switch on our lights; we assume that there will be fuel for our cars; we are disappointed when we can’t get what we want in a supermarket; and all of this as cheaply as possible, no matter what the impact is in our consumption of oil, electricity, food. We are hearing daily, or seeing on the news, things that challenge us, but it seems we don’t quite have the language to express how we want to change, or how we feel sorry for what we are doing to the planet. I would propose that as Christians we can supply some of the powerful language that the world seems to need.

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ELEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY, 28th August 2022: PROVERBS 25:6-7, HEBREWS 13:1-8,15-16, LUKE 14 :1,7-14

Deacon Chris Saccali – St Paul’s Athens

THE INVITATION

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

It was the invitations that were NOT issued that were the issue; it often is if you think about it, people get miffed if they are not invited to an event. I am speaking, in this instance, about the Lambeth Conference which took place in Canterbury from July 24th until 7th August. This gathering of Anglican Bishops from across the Communion , their spouses and observers last took place in 2008 and was postponed in 2018 then interrupted by COVID. 

This time there were over 650 Bishops and many more women than in 2008 made up that number. They were invited – the problem for many lay in the word spouse if the Bishop was in a same sex relationship; this caused quite a brouhaha as I Before the Lambeth Conference when we were asked to pray, I did just that – asked people to pray. A nasty comment was posted about the spouses NOT invited from the LGBTQ + community from a member of it who is a priest in our diocese. I did not react because I do not relish conflict but I do know it is impossible to avoid it especially in church.  Jesus was always right there teaching in the midst of conflict, at the centre and heart of it although I am not sure of his tweets and posts. Last week’s gospel reading and today’s echo his reaction to conflict.

However, social media is not the place to get irate or aerated while hiding behind postings. The Lambeth Conference, despite all the negative hype intended to hijack it, was a real blessing to the attendees and a time filled with the Holy Spirit and the unexpected presence of God. Listen to Bishops Robert and David talking about it on the Diocesan website. There are also other astute clips on most Diocesan websites including Norwich which I have found helpful. 

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Audio Sermon for the 10th Sunday after Trinity – 21st August 2022

Fr Leonard Doolan St Paul’s Athens

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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Audio Sermon preached at St Paul’s Athens on 15th August 2022 – The Dormition of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Fr Leonard Doolan

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

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

The 15^th 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 15^th 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 4^th and 5^th 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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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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