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

Audio Sermon for Trinity Sunday 7th June 2020

Sermon preached for the Trinity Sunday Zoom Service: Matthew 28, 16-20

Revd Canon Leonard Doolan

‘Today week you will have to repeat what you have learnt today. Your godparents are responsible for teaching you…No one need be nervous and so fail to repeat the words. Do not worry, I am your father. I do not carry a strap or a cane like a schoolmaster’.  (St. Augustine, De Symbolo, see Awe Inspiring Rites of Initiation, Yarnold, p13).

Well, that’s a relief to all of us. These are the words of the 5^th century St. Augustine of Hippo regarding baptism candidates learning the words of the Creed. No caning if we can’t recite it from memory – but I hope most of us can, and if not it is not such a bad exercise to attend to if you don’t know the Creed. The Credo (Latin) or πιστέυω (Greek) lies at the centre of the delivery and transmission of Christianity. However, it has to be more than that, and it is. It is the core summary of our faith, and it is what holds together the life of baptism, the life of faith, life itself.

We will all be aware that when a candidate for baptism reaches the very high point of baptism in the water of the font, that the words to accompany this deep action are: I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the son, and of the Holy Spirit.

The Creed that we are meant to learn without getting a beating, according to St. Augustine, is but the statement of the church, a sacred statement, as to how we understand these words at the administration of baptism.

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Sermon preached at the Zoom Worship for Pentecost Sunday 31st May 2020

Deacon Christine Saccali

May I speak in the name of the living God Father Son and Holy Spirit Amen

I have not preached on zoom before so here goes. So many things are different from usual at the moment, aren’t they? And we don’t know if or when the world will return to how it was before this COVID pandemic. I don’t want to use the word normal as what is normal anyway and who is normal?

Interestingly enough, one of the novels I have caught up on during lockdown is Normal People by Sally Rooney which was made into a very popular BBC TV series shown recently. It is an extraordinary book for its ordinariness- nothing really happens but it is relational describing the ongoing relationship between Marianne and Connor against the background of their young lives. Now I am just reading the young author’s first book Conversations with Friends. On the fly leaf there is the quote,’ In times of crisis, we must all decide again and again who we love.’ Again there are many references to normal in the dialogue.

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Audio Sermon for Pentecost Sunday 31st May 2020

Sermon for Pentecost Sunday 31st May 2020: Acts 2, 1-21; John 7, 37-39.

Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Church Athens

‘Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall; Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king’s horse and all the king’s men, couldn’t put humpty together again.’

Today is the crowning moment of the Easter season – Pentecost. In St. John’s gospel we are told nothing of the 50 days between the resurrection and the sending of the Holy Spirit. We depend on St. Luke for that in the Acts of the Apostles. We’ll return to that event described by St. Luke in a moment.

If we were to sum up the 4^th gospel, St. John’s gospel, it would be the word, ‘glory’. This is the sentiment of great priest theologians like Michael Ramsey, an illustrious Archbishop of Canterbury last century.

‘Out of a believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water. Now Jesus said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified. ‘ John 7 39 (today’s gospel).

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’ ” Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!'”
“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’,” Alice objected. “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

There may be many times in our lives when we might feel that we may as well be speaking to Humpty Dumpty than to the person we are actually speaking with. Few of us have the rare privilege of speaking to the original Humpty Dumpty, as Alice did, in Lewis Carroll’s  Alice through the Looking Glass.

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