Audio sermon for the 6th Sunday after Trinity – 11th July 2021: Ephesians 1, 3-14

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Audio Sermon for the 5th Sunday after Trinity – 4 July 2021

Fr Leonard Doolan -St Paul’s Athens

Sermon preached at St Paul’s Athens on the 5th Sunday after Trinity – 4th July 2021: : Ezek 2, 1-5; 2 Cor 12, 2-10; Mark 6, 1-13.

Fr Leonard Doolan

What happened to the persecutor of the new sect that would soon be known as Christians? I am referring of course to Saul, or Paul, who would later be known as ‘the Apostle’ and who along with St. Peter had his annual feast day earlier this week.

Breathing fire against these wacky new ‘Way’ followers of a crucified man called Jesus, Paul was travelling to Damascus. We all know that something happened to him as he travelled. We are not so clear about ‘what it was’ in any detail, though we know Paul experiences in some way an extraordinary ‘repentance’ or conversion.

When he writes to the church in Corinth, there are moments in the correspondence when the Apostle is surprisingly personal, humble, and quite intimate, in the way he shares details about himself.  This is not always the Paul we have in our minds.

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Sermon preached at St Paul’s Athens for the 4th Sunday after Trinity – 27th June 2021: 2 Cor 8, 7-15

Fr Leonard Doolan

Today we are resuming our alignment with the rest of the Anglican Church calendar, having been out of step with it since the beginning of Lent. The decision, with episcopal support, to follow the Orthodox date for Easter, in this year alone, was a bit of a gamble, but one that paid off. The relaxation of COVID regulations in Greece favoured only the Orthodox Easter date. Had we celebrated Easter according to the Latin (western) date, we would have had almost no liturgy in our church. That four-week difference in dates was significant, and in fact there was a freshness to our Sundays this year because we were in Lent, Holy Week, Easter through to Pentecost with the majority of Greek people.

But from today we ‘catch up’ and already it is the 4^th Sunday after Trinity.

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Audio Sermon for Pentecost Sunday – 20th June 2021

Fr Leonard Doolan

Sermon preached at St Paul’s Athens and on Zoom for Pentecost Sunday – 20th June 2021: Acts 2, 1-21; John 15, 26-27; 16, 4-15.:

Fr Leonard  Doolan

The Jewish feast of Shavuot is the day when the first fruits of the land were offered in the Temple. On this day the Book of Ruth is read in synagogues, telling how the Moabite widow called Ruth, and her mother-in law, Naomi, meet the owner of the land, Boaz while they were out gleaning in the fields. Ruth later married Boaz.

Shavuot is also the day when, just seven weeks after the Hebrew people departed from Egypt on their 40 year long journey in the wilderness, recorded in the Book of Exodus, Moses receives the Ten Commandments from God on Mount Sinai. Sinai was observed to be covered in smoke, because God had descended upon it like fire. Thunder and lightning filled the air

It was on this day, according to St. Luke’s account in the Acts of the Apostles, that the followers of Jesus, all Jewish, gathered in one place. The experience that follows is replete with graphic details. Sound, like a violent storm wind, tongues of fire leaping about. The wind-like sound fills the room, and the flames perch on each of them. This describes the Holy Spirit – this is the first experience for followers of Jesus of the Holy Spirit. This is the Christian Shavuot – not the law being given, but grace; this is the Christian Shavuot – not the first fruits from the harvest being presented, but the first fruits of the Holy Spirit.

Rooted in tradition, rich with bright images, resonant with the scriptures of the old dispensation, this is Christian Pentecost.

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Sermon preached at St Paul’s Athens and on Zoom on the Sunday after Ascension – 13th June 2021: Acts 1, 15-26; John 17, 6-19.

Fr Leonard Doolan

Sometimes in our Church calendar we have a season within a season. Today is the 7^th Sunday of the Easter season, but also the Sunday after Ascension, referring backwards to Thursday of last week, the Feast of the Ascension.

Thanks to the chronology of St. Luke, the ascension of our Lord into heaven is recorded on the 40^th day after the resurrection, anticipating the descent of the Holy Spirit on the 50^th day, the feast we know as Pentecost. We should remember that Pentecost was an already existing Jewish Festival. Originally an agricultural festival, by the time of Jesus most Jews celebrated this feast as the annual celebration of the giving of the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai.

I am reminded of a church that had two stained glass windows side by side – on the left Moses holding the Ten Commandments, and on the right the descent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples – thus emphasizing the connection between the covenants, Old and New, yet also marking the departure of the believers of Jesus from the Old Dispensation into the Spirit-filled life of Grace in the Holy Spirit, the new Covenant or Promise.

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Audio Sermon for the Sunday after Ascension – 13th June 2021

Fr Leonard Doolan

Audio Sermon for the 6th Sunday of Easter – 6 June 2021 at St Paul’s Athens and on Zoom

Fr Leonard Doolan

Sermon preached at St Paul’s Athens and on Zoom for the 6th Sunday of Easter: : Acts 10, 44-end; John 15

Fr Leonard Doolan

In a previous sermon we reflected on Jesus the True Vine, and we ‘rested’ a little on the meaning of the word ‘abide’ and what it means to make our ‘home’ in Christ the True Vine.

The gospel this morning continues on from this image and we hear of ‘abiding together in love.’ This love between us as dwellers in the life of the True Vine, is likened to the love that Jesus abides in with the Father who sent him, and, by extension, we live in that shared love.

The message couldn’t be clearer from our Lord. ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you’. These words are reminiscent of what Jesus says to his disciples when they gather for the meal before his arrest and crucifixion.

Love is centre-stage in the message of Jesus. He conjoins his message about love with keeping his commandments. This is worth a few moments of reflection. What might those commandments be?

Our minds will automatically be led to the 10 Commandments given to Moses on the mountain of Sinai, those commandments that are at the heart of Jewish and Christian ethical practice, and indeed lie at the heart of the ethics of most developed countries throughout the world.

Elsewhere in the gospels Jesus refers to these well-known commandments, but when asked by a Scribe which is the first commandment, it is not a recitation of the 10 Commandments, the Decalogue, that Jesus offers him. ‘Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You will love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these’. (Mark 12, 29ff)

This is known as the Shema from the Hebrew word for ‘hear’ or ‘listen to’.  In Mark’s version of these words the Scribe immediately says, ‘you’re right’, but in St. Luke’s version the Scribe goes on to ask ‘Who is my neighbour?’ setting up the occasion for one of the best known of all the parables of Jesus, the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

By telling of the response of the Samaritan, Jesus is offering an exegesis – and interpretation from the Old Testament text of the Shema. It is a parable of ‘love in action’.

It is to this nuanced character of love that Our Lord encourages us to inhabit – to abide in his love. It is love of God and love of neighbour that lie at the core of the Christian life.

As a scriptural theme, perhaps the best song about love is to be found in the correspondence between St. Paul and the squabbling early Christian community in Corinth. Taken from the first of his letters to them, his paean of praise for love is used in so many church contexts.

‘If I speak in the tongues of mortals and angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clashing cymbal’ (1 Cor 13, 1). I’m sure the rest of this well known text immediately comes to mind. ‘Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude…’ 1 Cor 13 4)  – words from a text that has decorated so many marriage ceremonies for countless decades. ‘And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love’. (1 Cor 13, 13)

We could so easily set as parallel texts, side by side reading, the Ten Commandments, and the praise of love by St. Paul; the set of rules with divine love breathed into them; the divine love to be discovered in love-filled keeping of the Commandments. Jesus bids us to abide in his love and to abide in his commandments – the highest of which is that we love God and one another.

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