Sermon preached at St Paul’s Anglican Church Athens on 22nd May 2022: ACTS 16:9-15, JOHN 14:23-29

Deacon Chris Saccali

May I speak in the name of the Risen and Ascended Lord  Amen

I was not a brave or athletic child, or even popular, playground games and physical education lessons and sports days were the bane of my life. I remember the games we played during break though, and one day aged about five or six hovering at the bars with my leg hooked over wondering if I could spin round like the others which required letting go, when some child rushed by and knocked me over, accidentally probably. The result was I broke my arm as I put it out to save myself. I still am not good at letting go physically on bridges or stairs I cling to the rail or banister and figuratively I do try to let go of what is dragging me down or people who have passed away.

I think my granddaughter aged four is probably braver than I was. One of her favourite songs is from the soundtrack of the Disney film Frozen and is entitled Let it Go. The main character, Queen Elsa, has magical powers  to freeze all that is around her through her hands but because of the damage it can cause, her parents taught her to hide her magic, not to feel anything and to keep herself cut off from others. In a moment of  frustration and an ungloved hand, the whole land becomes frozen and she escapes to the mountains where she sings , Let it Go – it is all about letting the past be the past and being free and expressing oneself.  It involves a lot of twirling around  I am not going to demonstrate that here and now but I find I am getting bolder and letting my inhibitions go the older I get.

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Audio Sermon for Easter 6 Preached at St. Thomas Anglican Church on Crete

Fr Leonard Doolan

Sermon for Easter 6 – 22 May 2022: NT – Romans 6, 5-11; Gospel – John 11, 17-27

Sermon for Easter 6 2022 – preached by Fr. Leonard at St. Thomas Anglican Church on Crete. (The Readings are not those for Common Worship as St. Thomas’s is using an alternative lectionary for a season)

It is interesting that you have been sampling an alternative lectionary for your Sunday diet of readings here at St. Thomas’s; a lectionary that favours perhaps less well known readings about women in the scriptures. These may feel like passages of scripture overlooked in the Prayer Book or Common Worship Lectionaries.

Maybe I could begin with a few comments about this. Anyone in public life knows that the technology available to the vast majority of people makes the taking of photographs so simple and immediate. Celebrities, politicians, royal family members will all know what this is like – especially with the cult of the ‘selfie’. (By the way I like to think of Jesus Christ being God’s ‘selfie’ – but that is another sermon altogether).

With all this photography going on there are of course dangers. Technology allows for ‘fake’ photographs to be created as well. You can take one person’s face and put it on the neck of someone else, or you can remove someone from a photograph, or even add them to a photograph to give a false impression. ‘Air brushing’ is what this is called, I think.

Well, air brushing is not new. Perhaps not with photographs but with literature, it is possible to metaphorically ‘airbrush’ someone out of a story, and by doing so give the impression of absence or lack of importance. It is possible to make a case that this is what has happened to women in the stories of the Christian tradition, in particular given the male balance in terms of authors of the books of the bible. Patriarchy exists in many guises, and it could be argued that history written by men gives the impression that women had no influence, power, or presence. This is by no means only historical – the imbalance exists in our own day, and the historic ‘air brushing’ of our Christian tradition underplays and undervalues the importance and the influence of woman.

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Sermon for the. Fourth Sunday of Easter – 8th May 2022: Acts 9:36-43, Psalm 23, John 10:22-3-

Deacon Christine Saccali – St Paul’s Athens

GOOD SHEPHERD TRUST

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

Do you know what day it is today? Well, as I discovered while preparing this sermon, there are many answers. Here in Greece and elsewhere, it is Mother’s Day and in the Calendar of Saints we celebrate the feast day of Julian of Norwich, do come up and have a look at the icon on the altar, a gift, it usually resides on my prayer table.

In the lectionary, I know it is the fourth Sunday of Easter and we have been through the major resurrection appearances but today is Good Shepherd Sunday – our readings give us a clue or two. We are going to explore more deeply John 10 and the: ‘I am saying’ within it of Jesus, ‘ I am the Good Shepherd.’

The tradition of Good Shepherd Sunday is a long one spanning many Christian denominations reminding us we are all one flock under one Shepherd. We could do with this reminder with all the schisms and splits around in churches and society, at a time when we need to be unified as Christians. Our Collect, the prayer for today and this week, talks about trust and unification. They go hand in hand.

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Audio Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter – 1 May 2022

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter – 1May 2022: Acts 9, 1-6; Rev 5, 11-14; John 21, 1-19.

Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

[The next circulated sermon from me will be for Sunday 22^nd May]

Today is May 1^st – Χρονιά Πολλά και Καλή Προτομαγιά – many years and happy 1^st May. Traditionally of course May Day is the day when we welcome the Spring; in the Orthodox calendar it is the Feast of St. Thomas, and icons show Our Lord displaying to Thomas the wounds on his hands and side; in the Catholic Church since 1955 the 1^st May is associated with St. Joseph, earthly father of Jesus, but whose profession was to work as a carpenter in Nazareth. It is appropriate that the 1^st of May is marked internationally to celebrate workers. There is a lot going on today, and a lot going on in our gospel reading for today. The reading is one of the Resurrection Narratives, a phrase we introduced to you last week.

So what is all the activity that we hear about? First of all, seven of the disciples – all named, including Thomas who was invited to put his fingers into the crucifixion wounds – go fishing. It was the occupation of a number of the disciples. They can go fishing because they are no longer in Jerusalem, which is land-locked, so not much opportunity there for fishermen. Instead they have re-located to familiar territory, Galilee. The gospel writer tells us they are by the Sea of Tiberias. It is also called the Sea of Galilee.

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Sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter – 24th April 2022: John 20, 19-31

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Our prayers of shared Easter joy are with the Orthodox Church today, for whom this is Easter Sunday. Καλό Πάσχα. Our prayers of shared compassion on this Day of Resurrection are with all Ukrainians for whom the joy of their faith is profoundly challenged by their plight. Our prayers of shared pleading that the words of the Risen Jesus, ‘Peace be with you, repeated so often in the Easter Narratives, will inhabit the souls and inform the behaviour of Russian state and church leadership.

‘Easter Narratives’ is the corporate name we give to that collection of scriptural material that informs us of the various appearances of Jesus after his crucifixion, death, and his three days in the tomb during which he is redeeming even the depths of hell with his graceful redemption.

This is what we refer to when we say in the Creed, ‘He descended into hell’. I’m sure the inclusion of this line must have generated much thought and speculation. It makes sense though. If God’s redeeming action in his Christ is a universal, and indeed cosmic action of God, then it is essential that those who had passed form this life before this action have to be redeemed also, for ‘that which is not touched by God in Christ is not redeemed’. So the new life of the risen Christ about to emerge into a cosmic action of salvation must be shared by those who ‘knew not Christ’.

So these Easter Narratives are placed in the last chapter or chapters of the four gospels. St, Mark is as succinct at the end of his gospel as he is at the beginning of his gospel – the only one of the four not to give any mention of the Birth Narratives. St. Mark records the appearance to Mary of Magdala and the other women, but this is where it stops, with the rather dramatic ending: ‘they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.’ (Mark 16, 8). Perhaps this reaction in the women is understandable.

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Audio Sermon for the 2nd Sunday of Easter – 24th April 2022

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Sermon preached on Easter Sunday 2022: Luke 24, 1-12

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

A favourite Easter hymn of mine is ‘Now the green blade riseth from the buried grain’. It doesn’t have some of the gravity of the grand and assertive, triumphalist Easter songs, but the image is good; the metaphor is descriptive, and it surely proclaims that Christ rose after three days in the sepulchre – and that makes it a good Easter hymn.

Verse 4 of the hymn runs like this:

When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain,

Thy touch can call us back to life again,

Fields of our hearts, that dead and bare have been:

Love is come again,

Like wheat that springeth green.

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Sermon for Palm Sunday – 10th April 2022: Principal Reading Luke 19, 28-40

Rvd. Canon Leonard Doolan –  St Paul’s Athens

This is a week of cries. Hosanna, Crucify, Alleluia!

There is a telling little phrase in St. Luke’s gospel (9,53) where the author says ‘Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem.’

It has a ring of determination to it – a planned or strategic decision. One wonders if there had been any conversations around this decision – had the disciples been given access to the details of the new direction? The little phrase has the resonance of what we would nowadays call ‘intentionality’.

Whether Our Lord had shared this intention with his closest comrades or not, Jerusalem based followers of Jesus seem to get wind of it, and are waiting. As he journeys from the area of Bethany down through the Kidron Valley, past Gethsemane, if he looks up Jesus will see the walled city and to his left the pinnacle of the temple.

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