sermon news
04/11/2021 In Sermons & Services

Sermon for the Third Sunday before Advent – 7th November 2021: Jonah 3, 1-5, 10; Hebrews 9, 24-end; Mark 1, 14-20

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

 

Sunday 14th Nov: Remembrance Sunday.

 Sunday 5th Dec: Christmas Bazaar – 11.00-16.30

 at the foyer of the War Museum Amphitheatre)

 

Few bible stories are more vivid than that of Jonah. Much loved by Sunday School teachers, and their children, the graphic details of Jonah and his encounter with the whale enables many drawing, cutting and sticking, and story – telling activities. There are elements of mythological story telling in the details of Jonah’s encounter with a huge sea-beast.

All well and good – but what is the story of Jonah actually about. There is more to it than just the memorable episode much loved of children – and equally loved by adults.

The story is really an exercise in refusing to respond to God’s call. Each of us is made in the image of God – hence God is a God of unity in diversity – and each of us is called by God to become who we truly are, by God’s grace. In baptism we are each commissioned into ministry as members of the Body of Christ, and some will go on to respond positively to that call, and others will obtusely stand against it, dispassionately ignorant of who God calls them to become, or even being defiant.

The lesson from Jonah is about defiance, conversion, and obedience. Initially Jonah is called to witness to divine truth in the great city of Nineveh. The remains of this ancient city are on the borders of Mosul in the modern state of Iraq. Jonah is having none of this. He turns his back on God and runs away. While sailing to Tarshish, one of the ancient trade sea routes to Spain, a great storm blows up and when the sailors realize why Jonah is a travelling companion they throw him overboard.

It is at this point that the Sunday School teachers chuckle with delight. Jonah is swallowed by a large fish. Get out your scissors, coloured pencils, and felt tips, and get creative!

The episode allows for rich allegory – especially for those of us who know the Christian narrative. Indeed some four hundred years after the writing of the Book of Jonah, when the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth ask for signs, Jesus himself cross-references them to the story of Jonah in the sea creatures belly – an allegorical reference to the three days that Christ would himself spend in the tomb after his death, and ‘out of the belly of Sheol [or hell] I cried, and you heard my voice.’ (Jonah 2, 1)

Jonah’s predicament was caused by him not responding to God’s calling; he was disobedient. Mercifully the sea creature was more obedient, for the Lord speaks to the fish and he is spewed out on to dry land. This whole alarming incident was the crucible in which Jonah’s faithlessness is turned into faithful obedience.  His witness to the population of the huge city is successful – the people repent of their ways, and God spares their city.

The ending of this strange story, whose central activity prefigures so easily the days between cross and empty tomb, ends rather abruptly and obliquely. Is the story complete? Is a real ending missing? Who knows, but read the whole of this short book and you will see what I mean.

Jesus has rather more success on his mission of calling people into his service. The gospel tells us in just a matter of a couple of sentences how four key players respond to his call. Jesus is fishing among fishermen for ‘fishers of men’. From their nets he invites Simon (better known to us as Peter), and Andrew, and James, and John. In just one fishing trip Jesus hooks a third of his apostolic catch – 4 out of the twelve we call the apostles.

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sermon news
02/11/2021 In Sermons & Services

Sermon preached for All Saints Sunday – 31st October 2021

Deacon Chris Saccali – St Paul’s Athens

 

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

In one of his daily reflections Pope Francis said recently: ‘ Allow me to say we are all saints then we become sinners but fundamentally we are all saints.’ Now how hard is that to take on board not only for ourselves but for others. Let me repeat it:

Recently, there was a meeting of nowadays saints at Archdeaconry Synod in Corfu. We had failed to gather last year and some clergy and lay representatives were or felt unable to attend earlier in the month, but about 35 of us met face to face, albeit keeping health and safety precautions. And what a joy it was to be together again. That joyous feeling was palpable. It was our Archdeacon Leslie’s first Synod of the East but he had come almost directly from the Nordic and Baltic Synod. Bishop Robert and his wife Helen had come from the Northern countries’ Synod previously held in Belgium. A cluster of synods and saints whose members lay and clergy keep the Diocese in Europe churches going especially in these strange times we are living in.

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sermon news
09/10/2021 In Sermons & Services

Sermon for the 19th Sunday after Trinity – 10th October 2021: Amos 5, 6-7, 10-15; Hebrews 4, 12-end; Mark 10, 17-31.

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

 

Please note: there is no sermon from me on 17th October because I am at the Archdeaconry Synod in Corfu. On Oct 24th the Harvest service is at Kokotos Vineyard so there is NO service in St. Paul’s!

 

I am often asked by Greek Orthodox faithful if we have saints in the Church of England. I could embark on the long answer about who and what saints are, and how St. Paul uses the word ‘saint’ for all the believers in the Christian communities to which he writes letters.

However, I know that this is not the question I am being asked. I’m being asked if we have saints in a canonical understanding of the word, women and men designated with the title ‘saint.

Gladly I can answer confidently with a ‘yes’ because the Church of England, the worldwide Anglican Church, has a calendar of saints, or a Sanctorale to give it its Latin title. These would be days classified as festa rather than feria – feast days rather than ordinary days.

In the Church of England Calendar of Saints there is a core of names of holy women and men, whose days are celebrated by the whole church, but each diocese is encouraged to have its own additional days to celebrate more local or regional saints, who are not in the national calendar.  Many of these saints, both local and national, ascribe their names to parish churches. This week is a good example.

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sermon news
30/09/2021 In Sermons & Services

Sermon for the 18th Sunday after Trinity – 3rd October: The feast of St Francis

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

(Later on this day there is a ‘Pet Blessing’ service)

 

Francis was born in Assisi in central Italy either in 1181 or the following year. He was baptised Giovanni but given the name Francesco by his father, a cloth merchant who traded in France and had married a French wife. There was an expectation that he would eventually take over his father’s business but Francis had a rebellious youth and a difficult relationship with his father. After suffering the ignominy of imprisonment following capture whilst at war with the local city of Perugia, he returned a changed man. He took to caring for disused churches and for the poor, particularly those suffering from leprosy. Whilst praying in the semi-derelict church of St Damian, he distinctly heard the words: “Go and repair my church, which you see is falling down.” Others joined him and he prepared a simple, gospel-based Rule for them all to live by. As the Order grew, it witnessed to Christ through preaching the gospel of repentance, emphasising the poverty of Christ as an example for his followers. Two years before his death, his life being so closely linked with that of his crucified Saviour, he received the Stigmata, the marks of the wounds of Christ, on his body. At his death, on the evening of 3 October 1226, his Order had spread throughout western Christendom.

 

The life of St. Francis was the subject of a very dramatic film directed by Franco Zefferelli.

One scene is particularly effective. An aristocratic friend of Francis has gained permission for Francis to be received at the papal court at the Lateran Palace. His purpose is to ask the pope’s permission to start a small community of men to live a simple life, close to nature, and committed to sharing in the poverty of the poorest in Italian rural society.

Francis enters the audience chamber with a well written Latin petition – prepared for Francis by his learned friend.

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sermon news
12/09/2021 In Sermons & Services

Sermon for the 15th Sunday after Trinity – 12th September 2021: Is 50, 4-9; James 3, 1-12; Mark 8, 27-end.

Fr Leonard Doolan, St Paul’s Athens

 

Just around the coastline from the town of Capernaum there is a little beach – a bit stony rather than sandy, but lovely. I remember my first visit to that beach back in the 1990s for three reasons.

The first is that in between all the beautifully coloured stones on the wet beach there were little seedlings growing. Seedlings of palm trees; for a Scottish born boy this was a rather exotic thing to find growing wild, as it were. Along with a fellow pilgrim and good friend we carefully uprooted a couple of the seedlings and bagged them in sealed bags. Our friend had a conservatory so she agreed to bring the seedlings on, one would be for her, the other for me.

It didn’t work out because the seedlings grew to such a size that it became impossible to transfer them and they now make a very handsome decoration to their conservatory in the East of England.

I know what you are thinking. It is illegal to smuggle seedlings of plants from one country to another. I can remember how anxious we felt as we successfully got the seedlings through airport controls – especially as another friend had packed some boxes of dates in his suitcase, and the security people thought the stones in the dates were showing up on the X-ray machine as bullets!

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