June sermons 2025

Sunday June 1
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit
Each year on the Sunday between Holy Ascension and Pentecost, the church celebrates the memory of the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council, the Nicaean council.  This year is the 1700-year anniversary of that event which took place in 325 AD. It is hard for us to imagine how those bishops and church people felt coming together for the first time, after recent persecutions, and in the presence of the Roman emperor himself, the honorary chairman, St Constantine!  On Tuesday, June 3, we will celebrate his memory as well as the memory of his mother, St Helen.  
 
The Nicaean Council would have been a joyful event, but at the same time there was worry about the spread of a heresy that originated in Alexandria, Egypt and was quickly spreading. This was the teaching of Arius, which undermined the teaching of Christ about Himself as one of the Holy Trinity, True God and true man.  Many of the Christians of that time had come from pagan culture.  It was difficult for them to feel comfortable about one God in Three Persons and with the Son of God becoming a man. The Arian understanding of Christianity was easier to accept. It spoke of the Son of God as the first creature of God the Father. The Council dealt with this challenge by accepting a common creed, which speaks of the Son being of one Essence with the Father, for the whole church. In his letter for the occasion, Patriarch Kirill highlighted the enduring theological and ecclesial significance of the Council of 325 AD quoting from church historian Prof Vasili Bolotov: “The Nicaean symbol was so precise that it could not be reinterpreted.  It could either be accepted or rejected. (Lectures on Early Church History, Vol 4. In Russian) The creed has been in use since then. It was slightly expanded and edited in the second Council a few decades later, in 381.  We use it in church in Liturgy, and in private prayers. 
 
 The Council also dealt with some practical aspects of church life.  For instance, it brought together Eastern and Western Christians to celebrate Easter together.  The Eastern Christians used to celebrate it together with the Jews.  In the West they developed a practice which the church now follows, always celebrating it on a Sunday. 
 
The Old Testament had emphasised the oneness of God in the world environment where there were countless pagan gods. We begin the creed with that affirmation: I believe in one God.  Yet, Christ revealed the inner life of God, the Trinitarian life. Christ’s salvation is about healing fractures in humanity, both on a personal level in us and on a social level in the community of the Church.  The Holy Trinity is a model and inspiration that gives strength for church unity.  Patriarch Kyrill, in his address, points to the challenges that the Orthodox world faces today.  He stresses that the only way we can overcome these problems is to act together in the way that the Church acted together 1700 years ago, in the first great Council. He writes, “The Lord looked upon His church and gave His faithful children strength and wisdom as well as courage to remain the salt of the earth and the light of the world, (Mt 5:13-14) and to be His fearless witnesses to the ends of the world, as He told His apostles (Acts 1:8). 

​Sunday June 8, 2025: Pentecost
Fr Nicholas Karipoff
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
“When the Most High came down and confounded tongues of men at Babel, He divided the nations. When He dispensed the tongues of fire, He called all to unity, and with one voice we glorify the Most Holy Spirit”.This is the kontakion of today’s feast.  The kontakion is a stanza or  a hymn that expresses a major aspect of each feast. Today at Pentecost it contrasts the spirit of the godless world with the spirit of God’s world, transformed in the Church by the Holy Spirit.
The godless secular world historically has always been trying to build another tower of Babel, as described in Genesis.  Now as never before it uses two levers - punishment and reward, or positive and negative reinforcement as we hear in psychology. These methods are coercive; they bend people’s will through fear and expectation of reward. The Old Testament of course, had that too, the carrot and the stick, and even Christ the Lord, uses these ideas of reward and punishment, as an entry level teaching tool. The message of the gospel is completely different and on another level. It is about love, and only love.  Love cannot exist without freedom, and freedom is negated by the “carrot and stick” approach. The unity to which we are called today is the unity of love, not a unity by force or by bribery. 
When there is no God in people’s hearts, they cease to be human. At best they are like animals, at worst they can be like demons, and yet God loves us. He loves us literally to death as we Christians know. He will not allow humanity to destroy itself spiritually, and the Holy Spirit who descends today energises the church founded by the Son of God. This is the energy of life, love and sacrifice. The church in the depths of its life is Christ Himself continuing His presence here on earth to make us fully human, to rise from the demonic and the animalistic level. Pentecost is a powerful reminder for us to live and walk in the spirit who transforms our life from a demonic hell that is possible, and often happens, to the joy and love of God in communion and love of our neighbour, with our brothers and sisters. As St Paul writes in Galatians: if we live in the spirit, let us also walk in the spirit, let us not become conceited, not provoking one another, envying one another. Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass you, who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Consider yourself less you also be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.  These are beautiful words from Galatians. We hear them in the reading for the ascetic saints, and it speaks very deeply about the very essence of Christian faith and life.  These are words we should follow. 

Sunday June 15, 2025. Sunday of All Saints.
Fr Nicholas Karipoff
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
The feast of Pentecost, which we celebrated last Sunday, completed a massive story that has been presented to us over the last six months, of God’s salvation. The great outpouring of the Holy Spirit energised the apostles, the martyrs, the prophets, the hierarchs, the ascetics and the righteous ones as we hear in the troparion, to bring to God a plentiful harvest, and this is what we celebrate today, the Sunday of All Saints. 
Christ said to His disciples, and to us, ‘I am the Vine you are the branches, he who abides in me and I in Him bears much fruit. For without me you can do nothing’. This what we celebrate today, but the church is not a museum of past glories. All saints speak to us in different ways. They teach us how we can bear fruit. Saint Seraphim of Sarov was asked once, ‘How come we don’t see great miracles in our time the way that used to happen in the past?’ He answered and said to this person ‘It is because people today do not have the same commitment to Christ as the people in the past did’. 
I remember just a couple of weeks after I was ordained a priest, I had a conversation in a house with some people present and there were also two priests present. I don’t remember who said what, but it was addressed to me, and I said in response to that person ‘Well I am not St John of Kronstadt’ and the other older priest, said ‘Seriously, what is stopping you from becoming another St John of Kronstadt?’. When I remember this, I feel great shame for my feeble commitment to Christ, we should be ashamed of ourselves. The saints were people like us, but they overcame their passions, their lukewarmness, they burned with the Holy Spirit just like the apostles did. 
At Pentecost these apostles became candles as they went out into the dark and cold world and they lit up thousands of other candles and hearts. Cold winds are blowing today, very much so. First, we had Covid, then Ukraine, then Gaza and now we are standing on the verge of the risk of a third world war with what is happening in Iran, but these are all just external problems. They are caused by the spiritual illness of humanity. 
What is the solution? We must wake up, come alive and rise from the dead, as St Paul says, rise and stand up as burning candles together with the apostles, the martyrs, the prophets, the hierarches, the ascetics and the righteous ones. When I am just a single candle in the wind I am not going to survive for very long, it doesn’t work, but if we stand together, we become a great bonfire. It will only shine brighter in the blowing wind and that is the experience of church and history. 
The church shines when times at at the most difficult. Today is no different, we are in very dangerous times. They are dangerous not only because of the external threats and wars, but because of the spiritual threat which is much more terrible than these wars. 
Happy namesday to all of you on this day of all saints! We should all remember our saints today!
 
Sunday 22 June 2025
Fr Nicholas Karipoff
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
The passage from Matthew that we just heard for today, the second Sunday after Pentecost, speaks of the calling of the first apostles by Christ, He says to them, ‘Follow me’, and they literally abandoned their nets and followed Him to become fishers of men. 
The Aramaic phrase that the Lord uses when He says, ‘Follow me’, has two meanings, or two nuances. First, the literal one, ‘Follow me’ and the second one is ‘Become my followers’.
Everything in the gospel does not just have a historical sense, the words of the gospel are addressed to the whole world including each one of us. We are at the end of a huge procession which begins on that day with the calling of the apostles. Can you imagine a 2000-year-old procession, with many, many millions of people? The Generals and the Officers of this huge army are the saints. 
Today we remember the Saints of Rus - Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, the Eastern Slavs. This army includes today’s saints and all the saints which we celebrated last week, the Sunday of All Saints. This army fights and overcomes hate with love. Aggressiveness, coercion, intolerance and judgement only increase hatred. 
The fallen angels, who are beings of former beauty and glory, suffer intensely, because they have lost these attributes. Their only goal is to infect human beings with their hatred and so we begin to torment each other. Human beings too can experience an evil joy, a malicious joy, seeing the suffering of someone whom they hate. When love is lost, hatred can build up to cataclysmic levels. 
On this day in 1941, at 4am, a five-million-man army crossed the border. It was the German invasion into the Soviet Union and that is when the real Second World War began. Interestingly, it also coincided with the Sunday of all Saints of Rus. We are followers of Christ, like the apostles. The purpose of us coming to church on Sundays and other occasions is not what we think it is; it is not to get an individual blessing for ourselves. Instead, it is to overcome our sinful individualism and to overcome the hateful dividedness of this world. The purpose of coming to church is to become the loving family of God. If we are followers of Christ, we come here to receive the gift of Christ’s divine humanity. Christ came into the world to defeat pride with humility; to defeat hatred with love.  It is very different to the world and to an individualist approach to life. 
Remember what St Silouan has said, ‘If you do not love your enemies, you cannot call yourself a Christian yet’. We want to be Christan!  Let us think about why we come here to church. If we want to continue to judge our neighbour, to show aggressiveness towards each another, and unforgiveness towards him or her what is the point? The point is that IC XC NI KA – Christ is the winner, He is the conqueror. He wins! Let us be on His side. Eventually He will win with every one of us. Why do we create a hell when we can be in heaven?!
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Sunday June 29, 2025
Fr Nicholas Karipoff
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
My sermon today is inspired by a sermon from priestmonk Methody Savellov-Jogel. Father Methody was an amazing man, an earthly angel, who died at the age of twenty eight in 1940 in Harbin, North East China. 
The Saviour talks about the eye of the soul. If the eye is darkened, we will see everything from the dark side with irritability and lack of love towards our neighbour. This often shows up in conversations about a third party in which seemingly harmless chatter and gossip and criticism can lead into mercilessness and slanderous judgement. Even more hurtful and damaging is the darkened eye in direct encounters between people. It is interesting to note that the word ‘atrocity’ comes from two Latin groups of words ‘ater occulus– ‘black eye’,and  refers to the dilated pupil of a person who is in a really intense rage. 
Christ prays for His enemies, ‘Father forgive them, they do not know what they are doing’. They do not know because they are seeing reality through vision darkened by the strong passions which lead to hatred. This is what happened with Christ, and it can happen over and over again. Christ’s love and forgiveness can extend to everyone. Only we need to remember that He died on the Cross for each one of us which means, not only me, but for my neighbour as well, He died for him or her, and that might include the person about whom we might be gossiping, slandering and judging. We should pose this question to ourselves, ‘If the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness?’. Christian faith and life are not about moralism which judges and condemns according to a set of rules that governs external behaviour.
‘We preach Christ crucified’, writes St Paul. Our cross in following Christ is a transformation of our heart but the moralist does not see the heart. The crucified son of God is scandalous to those who see God as a punishing power. It is insane to those who want to see God in intellectual terms, as the first cause of the universe. The most moving Church contemplation of the whole year is Good Friday. The church invites us to understand Christ crucified and the transformation in the repentance of the Good Thief. He is the first saint of the New Testament. A thief, a robber, cleansed on the cross and accepted in paradise. His story too is scandalous and insane for people who cannot understand Christianity properly, people who understand in moralistic terms, yet all of the saints invite us to identify with the good thief and with his words, ‘Remember us O Lord when they comest into Thy kingdom’.
 

 

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