Audio Sermon for the 5th Sunday after Trinity – 12 July 2020

Trinity 5 – 12 July 2020 : Romans 8, 1-11; Matthew 13, 1-9, 18-23

Sermon preached in St. Paul’s Athens and for the congregation at Thessaloniki. Revd Canon. L Doolan.

The other day we had some water melon – karpouzi. The word it comes from karpos just means fruit generally, and karpoferos means fruitful.

As always with water melon there is the negotiation of all the juicy fruit with the ubiquitous black seeds. A Water melon is indeed fruitful in every sense. Having made on the side of my plate a little collection of the seeds I casually cast them into an unused but soil filled flower pot near me on the balcony of our apartment. I covered them with a bit of the soil and gave them a bit of water. I have to confess I then rather forgot about them, but I didn’t neglect them. Every 2 or 3 days they got a little watering. I am not green-fingered, so I had little or no expectation from my actions.

To my surprise, about a week later, there was suddenly a clump of new seedlings crowded together, with no social distancing, in the centre of the pot. As the seedlings grew and became a bit willowy looking, I gathered up several other pots, all of which had soil in from previous plants that had long since died off. The soil in each of the pots was of varying quality. Some was so dried out it broke into big clumps when I applied the trowel, but more recently filled pots had better quality of soil.

The time came for me to divide up the seedlings before they competed against each other too much for space. I can report that the progress of the seedlings is very variable. Some just didn’t survive the transplant, others look as if they are struggling, a few appear to be doing quite well.

Of course they were different heights and different levels of strength before I planted them out, but the key thing for the growth of all of them was the quality of the soil. The seedlings had an equal amount of sunshine, water and heat, but across the 4 pots the soil was not of consistent quality.

I will tell you if I ever manage to grow a full size karpouzi plant that fruits successfully. Will the karpouzi  plant become karpofero?

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Sermon for the 4th Sunday after Trinity – 5 July 2020: Romans 7, 15-25; Matthew 11, 16-19, 25-end.

Revd Canon Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Over these last few months and seemingly endless weeks, Deacon Christine and I, between us, have provided worship on Facebook, printed and recorded sermons, a Zoom service on Sunday, followed by a Liturgy at Noon since May 17^th, a mid-week Zoom Evening Prayer, a Friday bible study by Zoom,  and phone calls and emails to try and stay connected with our widely spread congregation.

We have done our best! I know that a good number of people have expressed their thanks already. If there have been any failings, we seek your understanding. These have been times that have impacted on everyone, and at all levels, including our emotional and psychological well – being.

There have been surprising successes and achievements during this time, and there have been deep disappointments. The pandemic has brought out the best in some people and the worst in others. It shows the differences in our human characteristics. For some, the strain of the pandemic just reached out to their baser instincts.

We have all tried to negotiate this season to the best of our mixed abilities – and more will be demanded from us, for ‘normal’ is a long way off, and anyway, people speak of a ‘new normal’, realizing that things will not be exactly the same again – indeed some things we must try to ensure are not the same as before., since some human patterns have given the oxygen that this virus needed in order to thrive so dramatically and tragically.

We will all want things to be different, yet we will all want things to be the same. It is a dilemma – a human dilemma. St. Paul approaches this dilemma in his letter to the Romans. Paul is surprisingly perceptive, if not shockingly frank, because in addressing his own ethical decision making processes he touches each one of us. What he experiences and describes is what we all experience, and we can each describe it in our own way, with our own narrative.

Paul frames the human dilemma around the law (that is the law that is inherited around the Ten Commandments), the spirit, flesh and the spirit, our human actions and sin.

To try and put it bluntly – no matter how I try to do good, which would always by my first choice, because I am a sinful human being, I will often do something that turns out to be the opposite. I would love always to do good – but there are times when despite my intentions – I will end up doing the opposite.

Can you and I relate to that? I think we probably can, because basically we are good and well intentioned human beings, but it is because we are human beings that we will often fail ourselves. We can hear that phrase that we dread – ‘he meant well’. This usually means that the person has let himself or herself down quite seriously.

St. Paul hits it on the head – it is the human condition, capable of aspiring to great and kind things, but capable also of terrible atrocities and cruelty. We can’t always control our own will, so we are dependent on the gracious action of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Shortly afterwards Paul extols life in the Holy Spirit of God, and says, ‘When we cry “Abba”, Father! It is the very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ – if, in fact we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.’ (Rom 8, 16-17).

It would be all too easy for us, who perceive the presence and power of sin with us – and who can identify with that very human dilemma as Paul describes it – to feel that we just can’t win, so why try. You could be lying down in the mud, and you would be facing the wrong way for someone.

Clearly when comparing John the Baptist and Christ we experience this human ambivalence. Jesus tells us that John lived an ascetic life, a life of personal disciplines, and he neither ate nor drank. This evoked the response that he was possessed in some way – so that particular model of life didn’t endear itself to the people. Jesus, on the other hand, referred to in the gospel reading as ‘the Son of Man’ engaged in wedding parties, was invited to dine with people, ate with the ‘low-lifes’, joined in with wealthy pharisees’ supper parties. In some ways he was the life and soul of a party, yet the people wanted to brand him as a glutton and a drunkard.

Neither one model nor the other seemed to satisfy the opinions and prejudices of the people. Neither John nor Jesus could win. So what should we do if we feel the constant inner conflicts that are the natural partners of being human. Easily we could feel crushed and despondent. But no – we cry out ‘Abba, Father’ a cry in the Spirit, for the Spirit.

Words of comfort in this human dilemma ‘Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.’ We are not alone; we are never alone; we don’t have to face the dilemmas of frail human life alone, for all our life is lived within the life-giving fellowship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We cry out Abba – we invite the Spirit – we turn our burdens in the direction of the Christ who lived and died for us.

So – take heart. Hold fast to what we know is good about our faith. Live as much as you can in the Spirit and the Spirit will give life. But when we want to do what we would wish to do, but don’t do it because of the sin that is in us – to use St. Paul’s language – walk humbly to Christ and he will receive us as we are, and in his love and grace we will be transformed into the people that God wills us to become.

Sermon preached for the Second Sunday after Trinity, 21st June 2020: Jeremiah 20, 7-13; Matthew 10, 24-39

Revd Canon Leonard Doolan

‘How shall we sing the Lord’s song: in a strange land?’

Across the world the year 2020 will be remembered for the devastating effect of the pandemic. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost, over a million people affected. Those near to death have had to pass from this life without the nearby comfort of family and loved ones; health services have had to deal with unimaginable numbers of sick people. From global companies to small corner shops businesses have been brought to the very brink of financial viability. For some countries, such as Greece, the reliance on tourism has been shown to be too fragile a dependency for a national economy. Let’s pray that the need to kick start tourism is not done at the expense of human health.

As the pandemic is global, so are its consequences in every aspect of life. St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Athens has not escaped the devastating consequences of the virus.

The income from our core congregation alone is nowhere near enough to maintain our church and ministry year by year, though we are grateful for continued generosity from our membership.

We have a dependency on income from hiring out the church for concerts and cultural events. Our monthly patterns of Coffee Mornings and Quiz Nights provide lovely opportunities for social gathering for church members and friends but are also essential sources of income. Our Spring and Christmas Bazaars are fundamental to our financial health every year. Our dependency on income from all of these has proved to be our highest risk, our greatest liability. Longer term, radical changes will be needed to ensure we survive and thrive.

2020 will be a financial catastrophe for us. 2020 will be a catastrophe for so many millions of people – but also for us. We will remember 2020 as a disaster at so many levels.

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Audio Sermon preached for the Zoom service on the Second Sunday after Trinity: Jeremiah 20, 7-13, Matthew 10, 24-39

Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan

Sermon preached at the Zoom Service for the First Sunday after Trinity – 14th June 2020: Exodus 19, 2-8; Matthew 9, 35-10, 8

Revd Canon Leonard Doolan

Who would have thought we would be making a link between the death of a black African American and the statue of Winston Churchill being clad in protective boarding. Who would have thought we would be making a link between the death of a black African American and the dumping of a statue of an 18^th century slave trader into a Bristol river, Edward Colston.

The death of George Floyd at the hands of an America policeman is sickening. ‘I can’t breathe, officer’. How many tens of thousands of times will such a death have happened down through history. How many more? As we look on shocked at this ugly scene, it did not take long for the recorded action of some rogue policemen to ripple into a torrent of consequences.

His death touches on a sense of guilt that we harbour for things that have happened in history; things, events, people that are now being remembered in public art, but for whose actions in life we have formed a convenient forgetfulness. We are making all sorts of connections with the uncomfortable side of our national histories. We can now live in comparative comfort on the prosperity that some of these people created in time past.

George Floyd’s life matters. Black lives matter. All lives matter. Certainly no one formed in the Christian tradition can take any other view than this, because human life is a sacred creation of God, and each life is created to reflect the light and truth of God – no matter whether we each make a good or a bad job of it.

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Audio Sermon for the First Sunday after Trinity – 14th June 2020

Revd Canon Leonard Doolan