Sermon for Epiphany Sunday Zoom Worship – 3rd January 2021: Matthew 2, 1-12

Fr Leonard W Doolan – Athens

In this first sermon of 2021 we begin with a question. I will offer four responses to the question, but these are personal responses, so others may offer different responses. However before we do this, we have to know the question.

Why is it that only St. Matthew tells the story of the arrival of the Magi, the wise men, to worship at the Christ manger?

The first response is a pragmatic one, but we need to say it, even if we don’t expand too much on it. From the academic discoveries of biblical criticism we know that the 3 gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, are similar. This is why we call them the ‘syn-optic gospels’. The 4^th gospel, that of St. John, is excluded for these purposes.

The material included in St. Mark’s gospel constitutes the ‘core’ material for all three synoptics. However, St. Luke has additional material distinctive to himself, as does St. Matthew. This choice of material stresses their own ‘take’ on divine events. For our purposes it is enough to say that both Matthew and Luke add their own tradition of stories, especially around the infancy of Jesus, and again after the resurrection. So this is a purely pragmatic first response.

The second is that Matthew introduces us early in his gospel to the ruling family of Judea, who will persistently be seen as opponents of Jesus and the kingdom he came to preach and fulfil. The story of the Sages’ journey gives an account of a stopping place chez Herod. This is Herod the Great, the murderous Herod. We are told of his shocking reaction to the news that a ‘king’ had been born in Bethlehem of Judea – namely the slaughter of the holy Innocents, whom we commemorate a couple of days after Christmas Day. The Orthodox give the specific number as 14,000. It is one of Herod’s sons, King Herod Antipas who will later be the adulterous king, denounced by John the Baptizer, and who will have John beheaded. At the time of the trial of Jesus before his death, St. Luke and only St. Luke, tells of Jesus being put before this Herod (but that is outside St. Matthew’s account so we must move swiftly on). This royal household of Herods is not a family to be messed with, and represent a kingliness entirely of this earth.

The 3^rd response I offer to the question about Matthew’s unique inclusion of this story lies at the very end of his gospel. The beginning is in the end, so to speak. 27 chapters after the story of the Journey of the Magi, Matthew completes his gospel with a scene of a gathering on a mountain in Galilee. Despite the doubt of a few, his disciples worshipped the risen Jesus. This is the same word in Greek to describe what those Magi did when they presented their gifts – they worshipped him. Jesus with his disciples gathered around him on the Galilean mountain gives what we call ‘The Great Commission’. He instructs his followers saying ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.’ (Matt. 28, 19)

This commission to go out to the nations – an inclusive and embracing apostolic mission – is a universality that is already shown by Matthew at the beginning of his gospel, with the journey of the Wise Men. These are not of the house of Israel; they are not of the faith of Abraham, Jakob and Isaac, but gentiles, foreigners, and even worse than that, they were astrologers because they interpret events through the movements of the firmament.

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Sermon for the first Sunday after Christmas – St John the Evangelist: 27th December 2020

Deacon Christine Saccali

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

Today we celebrate and give thanks to God for the life, witness and works of St John the Apostle and Evangelist on this his feast day, just two days after Christmas. I cannot actually recall this falling on a Sunday in recent years or my preaching on it. John often gets pushed out of the birthday boy celebrations but the beginning of his gospel is often used as a text on Christmas day.

Scholars have often debated John’s identity and authorship as regards references to him in the New Testament writings, raising questions of the books attributed to him – the Gospel of John, the three epistles and the book of Revelation. Whatever the answers to these debates may be, we can be confident that there really was a close follower of Jesus called John and that he witnessed to the truth of God in the flesh – ‘the Word became flesh’ – in the famous and eloquent prologue to the gospel. And haven’t we just celebrated that incarnation? I hope you have.

This same John, we believe whose prose is inspirational,  was a Gallilean fisherman one of the sons of Zebedee called from his nets along with his brother James. And as I was writing this I realised that this  background was amazing in itself that John is also called the theologian – not as a highfalutin description – but as someone who deals in the word of God – Logos and who is the Word but Christ himself?

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Audio Sermon for the 4th Sunday of Advent – 20th December 2020

Canon L W Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Sermon for the 4th Sunday of Advent – 20th December 2020: : Isaiah 7, 10-16; Matthew 1, 18-end

Canon L W Do0lan – St Paul’s Athens

‘Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head, ‘To me be as it pleaseth God’ she said.  ‘My soul shall laud and magnify his holy name’; most highly favoured lady. Gloria

These are the words of one of the verses of the lovely Advent hymn we have just sung, ‘The angel Gabriel from heaven came’.

It takes us back to earlier in the year, to March 25^th, the date on which the church throughout the world celebrates the Annunciation of the Archangel Gabriel to Mary’ and also the date on which Greece celebrates occhi day. There is an irony in this. On the day we celebrate Mary saying ‘yes’ to God’s will, there is also a celebration of the ‘no’ that Greece gave to Mussolini.

We will stick with Mary’s ‘yes’, as this is the word that perhaps is a wiser word for us on the 4^th Sunday of Advent, when we are challenged yet again to allow Christ to be born again within us. Will we say a definite no, or an indifferent no; and indifferent yes or a definite yes? The choice is ours – just as Blessed Mary had a choice. God does not compel us to do anything – he works with our free will, with our consent. Our consent for blessing is as vital as Mary’s consent to the message of the Archangel. ‘To me be as it pleaseth God, she said’.

This same exercise of choice is offered to Joseph, as we heard in our gospel reading this morning. I wonder how many of us have significant and life-changing dreams that come as ‘night messages’ from God. Have you noticed how often in the bible, it is in a dream that God communicates with an individual? Joseph seems to be very prone to such significant dreams. It is through his dream that he is reassured about taking Blessed Mary as his wife. Imagine that – in fact, let’s imagine that!

Look at the circumstances. In those days the culture around pregnancy was very different to our own. Women went into a ‘seclusion’ during the main part of their pregnancy, and in some societies even today, this practice still prevails. However, as we know, this was no normal pregnancy. Despite the beauty of these Christmas stories of the Annunciation, and birth of Christ, it was really rather shocking. Mary was betrothed to Joseph – this means a marriage had been planned.

Joseph would have expected Mary not to have had sexual relationships with anyone else before her marriage to him. It would have been shameful to him that she is with child, and even more shameful to her family, who would have to face the judgement of their neighbours  – bad parents those who can’t even make sure their daughter behaves like she should.

All of this, and more, Mary would have had to endure, but so also would Joseph. He had determined to put her aside because of the circumstances, and he would have had great fears about continuing his association with this young woman whose apparent lack of morals would drag him down too!

In a dream all is calmed and his heart and mind are changed. He knows he has not had intimate relations with Mary, and he probably knew her well enough, and trusted her well enough, to know that what he receives in the dream is sure and reliable. To make the point even clearer, the gospel writer associates Joseph’s present situation with the words foretold by the great prophet Isaiah, words that would have known from his holy scriptures, ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel’ which means ‘God with us’.

It is so easy for us to talk of the humility and obedience of Blessed Mary, but we should not forget the humility and obedience of Jospeh, who will later have another dream telling him to take the new born child away to Egypt for his safety, and not to return until the coast was clear.

Mary and Joseph are indeed obedient – but they are neither of them compelled to conform to the angelic messages they receive, for if angels are messengers of God, God does not compel us to do anything against our will even through the ministry of an angel.

As we approach the great solemnity of the Birth of Christ, hanging as we are in Advent 4 on the very precipice of this cosmic event, we have before us just a couple of days to reflect on how we will allow God to dwell in us – to be our Emmanuel. Emmanuel is not just a name, though it is for some people their name, and Emmanuel is not some out of body concept that church theologians have constructed. Emmanuel IS ‘God with us’, literally God transcends infinity and eternity and lives in the likes of you and me. How radical can this truth get? This is really God, made real, and really in you and me. So long as we give consent of course.

Mary and Joseph represent the model of obedience – freely and willingly conforming to the freedom and the will of God. This is the challenge for you and me right now. There is precious little time left for any dithering and delay. Mary willingly accedes to God’s will, and immediately her heart is filled with praise. This is the sacred alchemy of humanity and divinity brought together in one, in and through the Christ child.

‘Of her, Emmanuel, the Christ was born, in Bethlehem, all on a Christmas morn, and Christian folk throughout the world will ever say, ‘most highly favoured lady’. Gloria!

Audio Sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent – 13th December 2020: Isaiah 61, 1-4,8-11; John 1, 6-8, 19-28

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent – 13th December 2020: Isaiah 61, 1-4,8-11; John 1, 6-8, 19-28

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Pauls Athens

‘What sayest thou of thyself?’ One of the great Anglican church music composers of the late 16^th century is Orlando Gibbons. His professional life took him via a circuitous route to Westminster Abbey where he was one of the organists. He died young after taking ill on a journey to Canterbury, at the age of 45, and he is buried in Canterbury Cathedral where there is a monument to him.

Gibbons was a fairly prolific composer of both secular madrigals, and of church music. One of the anthems he composed is called ‘This is the Record of John’ and the text is that of the conversation between John the baptizer and the priests and levites in today’s gospel reading.

‘What sayest thou of thyself?’ is one of the questions set to music – rather more poetically phrased in the 16^th century than our version this morning, ‘Who are you?’

We started to think about John the baptizer last week as the gospel directs us to John baptizing Jesus in the river Jordan and John proclaiming, as he does in Matthew, Mark and Luke, that he has come to make the path straight.

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Audio Sermon for 2nd Sunday of Advent – 6th December 2020

Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Sermon for Advent Sunday – 29th November 2020: : Isaiah 64, 1-9; Mark 13, 24-37.

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

I have to begin with an apology – an apology to all those who were not brought up in the UK with the children’s TV programme called Blue Peter. Please allow for a few moments of nostalgia. Every year at this time of year the Blue Peter team would make their own version of an Advent Crown. John Nokes, Peter Purves and Valerie Singleton are among the names I recall from my childhood. This is the 1960s.

Two wire coat hangers, silver tinsel, four candles (no I didn’t say fork handles!) and four Christmas baubles, transformed into their Advent wreath. This activity always forewarned us that Christmas was approaching, and we should be getting ready.

Advent candles on the television, Advent candles in church. The season of Advent is now here. A new church year begins today and a new set of Sunday readings on our three year cycle of readings begins today. As we might say, our countdown to Christmas begins today. Advent appears to be a time of beginnings.

Strangely enough in the old days, for example when I was much younger, the preachers for these four Sundays of Advent used to preach not about four themes of beginnings, but four themes on endings. The themes were what we call eschatological – the Four Last Things – Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell. I suppose these themes would indeed sharpen the expectations of the believers. It is a long way from the coat hangers and tinsel of the Blue Peter Advent Crown.

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Audio Sermon for Advent Sunday – 29th November 2020

Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Sermon for 2nd Sunday of Advent – 6th December 202: Isaiah 40, 1-11; Mark 1, 1-8

Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

A voice says, “Cry out!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever. (Isaiah 40, 6-8)

As a boy chorister in my local church I recall an anthem that was in the choir repertoire. It was partly based on these words from the prophet Isaiah, and composed by Samuel Wesley in 1833. Jokingly the choirboys used to call him ‘steamship Wesley’ because his initials were ‘S.S.’

After a very beautiful and serene homophonic introduction, ‘Blessed be the God and Father, of our Lord Jesus Christ’ the anthem then moved on to a beautiful soprano solo, ‘Love one another with a pure heart fervently’ followed by a slow and sombre section for the grizzly basses to sing which ended, ‘the grass withereth, and the flower thereof, falleth away.’ Then a single thundering chord from the organ, and off we went in full polyphony ‘But the word of the Lord, endureth for ever’ sung a breakneck speed for which each choir member, soprano, altos, tenors and basses each needed a good pair of lungs and their own set of teeth, before the whole piece ended with the great Hebrew ‘so be it’, Amen, Amen.

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