Third Sunday of Advent 16th December 2018 – Preparing the way for Good News

Deacon Chris Saccali

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

DRIVING PAST THE APPROACH TO OUR VILLAGE a couple of weeks ago I noticed a notice board propped up at the side of the road with the words GOOD NEWS emblazoned at the top and bottom. “Great” I thought to myself, “we could all do with some of that.” Next time I passed by, I slowed down as much as I dared so that I could read the small print (always a wise move) and discovered that the good tidings were referring to upholstery covers being restored or mended! But that got me thinking on how our spiritual lives can and need to be renewed and restored in this refreshing, yet penitential advent period.

Today, on the third Sunday of Advent, we are thinking about John the Baptist and his message of Good News. This phrase Good News comes right at the end of this passage in verse 18 in Greek Evaggelion literally the good message/ announcement which is also the word in Greek for gospel. Originally it was used in Roman times by the town crier to announce messages about the Empire. Only later did Good News come to have a Christian connotation such as we read here in Luke’s gospel.

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Advent Sunday 2018 Athens

Fr James Harris

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness…

We don’t have to look far to see very dark forces at work in these days. Some recent headlines illustrate the point:

• More people have died at sea attempting to reach Spain ifrom north Africa n the last three months than during the whole of 2017
• 10 provinces of Ukraine are now under martial law
• Famine in Yemen
• Murder in synagogues; murder in embassies

I don’t need to go on – but I could.

And Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan – they rarely even make it into the news bulletins these days…

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SS Simon & Jude 2018

Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan

‘I believe in one holy, catholic and apostolic church.’ We say this every week in the Creed, and the observant among you would have heard this very phrase being used in the Licensing ceremony of Fr. James just a couple of weeks ago, when the Archdeacon said, ‘The Church of England is part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, worshipping the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  It professes the faith uniquely revealed in the Holy Scriptures and set forth in the catholic creeds, which faith the Church is called upon to proclaim afresh in each generation.’

Being an apostolic church has at least two implications for us. Firstly, the word means ‘sent’. The NT verb is apostello, but it will be better known to modern Greek speakers as the verb stelno, ‘I send’. God ‘sent’ his Son into the world as his Word made flesh. St. John’s gospel uses the verb frequently. So as God sent his Son, Jesus, so Jesus at the time when they received the anointing of God’s Holy Spirit, sent his ‘apostles’ to be Christ’s presence, Christ’s message, Christ as gospel, into the world.

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Harvest Festival Deuteronomy 8: 7-18; Luke 12: 16-30

Fr James Harris

For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land… a land of vines… of olive trees and honey… [where] you shall eat your fill.’

Sound familiar?!

Just take a moment to look around you – at the sheer beauty, goodness, abundance of this place, this land which the Lord our God has given us, in which, for whatever reason, and for however long now, he has seen fit to have us live.

Ever since we arrived here as a family at the end of August, I have been reminded just how close to the terrain of the Holy Land we are here in Greece, how similar the landscape is in this land where east meets west. Those verses from Deuteronomy could’ve been written about this place as much as about the Promised Land. And, in one sense, of course, they are written about this land and about every piece of land – because as much as they are describing a specific geographical location to which the people of God were being led at that point in history, they are also describing in universal terms the type of relationship, the covenant God has made with his Creation as a whole.

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Healing Eucharist – 18 October 2018 (St Luke) Isaiah 35: 3-6; Luke 10: 1-9

Fr James Harris

We gather today with a particular intention to ask for God’s healing.

 The healing power of God is all at once complex to understand, multi-dimensional, wonderful, transformative and mysterious.

 Healing is primarily a work of God the Holy Spirit – the Spirit that brooded over the waters at the moment of Creation; the Spirit that alighted on Jesus at his baptism, that empowered his ministry and teaching and that raised him from the dead; the Spirit that emboldened the disciples and apostles of the early Church; and the same Spirit that enlivens the Church today, that makes Christ real and enables us to call God Father.

The healing work of the Spirit is about straightening out and making right; it is about unfolding and loosening; about unlocking, unblocking and setting free; regenerating, reviving; soothing and embalming.

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Licensing of Canon Bruce Bryant-Scott – Crete Oct 12th 2018 (Acts 27, 13-26; John 20, 19-23)

Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan

I chose the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles for purely pragmatic reasons. It mentions Crete which connects the island to the journey of the great apostle St. Paul on his way to Rome which would his place of martyrdom.

The second reading tells of St. John’s version of what we would otherwise call Pentecost – it his powerful statement of the risen Jesus Christ outpouring the Holy Spirit on his disciples.

By the end of this sermon I hope to have joined up these two rather disparate readings.

If you were here for the liturgy on the Feast of Pentecost this last May, you would have heard a sermon from me about authentic witness. ‘If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck, then it is a duck’. An authentic description.  I further added, just to complicate things, what sounded to be an octopus (χταποδι), but I was actually describing bag-pipes (γκαιδα). Try playing a Scottish reel on an octopus, or eating a little dish of marinated bagpipe!

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Harvest Sermon – St. Andrews Patras 7th October 2018

Revd Canon Leonard Doolan

The words of so many of our harvest hymns are great. They express the beauty of God’s glory in creation, but also there is something very comforting about them.

The seasons come and go, not with relentless monotony, but each season with its own distinctiveness . καλο  φθινοπορο. The evenings begin to change, and even in Greece there is a crispness at times in the early mornings and late evenings.

For the beauty of the earth,  For the glory of the skies,

For the love which from our birth, Over and around us lies.

Yet despite the beauty that God reveals in his creation as his handiwork, there is much that distorts it, which is our handiwork.

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Trinity 19: Genesis 2, 18-24, Mark 10, 20-16

Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan

We have just all witnessed Sarah and Luke saying their marriage vows to each other in the sight of God. The reason they asked for this is that they were married in a Registry Office when their faith did not mean the same to them.  We rejoice that they are making a journey of faith together and we pray that renewing their marriage vows here will bring a rich blessing to their marriage.

The vows are lovely – of course they are, and the vows when they were first married represent the legal commitment to each other. I rather like the words we all said together for they represent the spirit of marriage, and most importantly that marriage should bring joy and be life-giving.

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