The Good Shepherd Orthodox Church: Sermons

18th October 2026: On the feast of St. Luke the Evangelist, Daniel McInnes reflects on the return of the Seventy, ordinary people with no special skills who nonetheless drove out demons in the name of Jesus Christ. Drawing on St. Paul's call to walk in wisdom toward outsiders and to let our speech be gracious, he shows how Christ works through ordinary lives, and how living the life in Christ brings light and freedom to the people and places around us.

Chapters:

0:00 The Feast of St. Luke

0:32 The Return of the Seventy

1:38 Exorcism in the First Century

2:49 Christ Works Through Ordinary People

3:43 Walk in Wisdom Toward Outsiders

5:13 Christ Came to Destroy the Demons

6:04 Spiritual Darkness Today

8:11 Our Life Brings Freedom

11th October 2026: On the Sunday of the Holy Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, Fr. Nicholas Frazer explains why the Church fought for the holy icons: because the Son of God truly became man. Drawing on St. Paul's warning against empty quarrels and Christ's prayer that His disciples may be one, he asks whether our Orthodoxy bears fruit — in humility, communion, repentance and love.

Chapters:

0:00 The Seventh Ecumenical Council

1:16 Christ's Prayer to the Father

2:18 Why the Holy Icon Matters

4:39 Avoiding Empty Controversy

7:12 That They May Be One

8:31 Does Our Faith Bear Fruit

10:02 The Consequence of the Incarnation

11:05 Closing Prayer

4th October 2026: Drawing on C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce, Sub Dn. Timothy Grace explores the abundant life God offers us through the day's two readings. From St. Paul he draws the law of sowing and reaping: God loves a cheerful giver, and what we give freely bears fruit for eternity. From the Gospel comes the harder, supernatural call to love our enemies without discrimination — not a loss, he shows, but the path to true freedom, embodied by Christ on the Cross.

Chapters:

0:00 C.S. Lewis and The Great Divorce

1:12 Two Readings on Abundant Life

1:51 You Reap What You Sow

2:59 God Loves a Cheerful Giver

4:32 Love Without Discrimination

5:59 Who Is Your Enemy

7:16 When Someone Wishes You Harm

8:27 The Drowning Man Trial

10:03 Above the Clouds

10:33 Christ on the Cross

27th September 2026: On the Sunday of the miraculous catch of fish, Fr. Geoff Harvey asks what a fishing boat, a temple and a human being have in common. Christ does not wait for our nets to be clean or our lives to be tidy — he climbs into the ordinary boat of our weary hearts, our homes and our work, and asks us to put out into the deep. Fr. Geoff draws out three things the Christian life asks of us: receive his presence, trust his word, and leave everything for his kingdom — closing with the urgency of the call to make the treasures of Orthodoxy available to Australians in English.

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction

0:39 A Temple and a Fishing Boat

1:48 Receive His Presence

3:38 John Wesley and a Changed England

5:48 Morning Prayer and Hospitality to God

7:18 Trust His Word

9:22 Go Deeper

10:57 Leave Everything for His Kingdom

12:23 Do Not Be Afraid

16:18 Satan Is Also a Fisherman

18:14 Orthodoxy in English for Australia

19:14 Conclusion

20th September 2026: On the Sunday after the Elevation of the Cross, Daniel McInnes asks what it actually means to take up your cross and follow Christ. Our whole life — not just the Sunday part of it — is the cross we are given to bear, and bearing it well means giving to the people around us without calculating the cost or the return. Drawing on his work as a mathematician and on his days at the Defence Academy, he shows how the modern instinct to optimise everything fails in the places that matter most, and how even involuntary suffering trains us to give with our whole heart.

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction

0:16 Today's Gospel

0:59 What Is Our Cross?

2:11 Denying or Calculating

3:05 The Optimising Mindset

5:11 Giving Without Counting

6:54 Check Parades at the Academy

9:13 What Involuntary Suffering Trains

10:09 Give and Leave the Reward to God

13th September 2026: Ahead of the feast of the Exaltation of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross, Fr. Nicholas Frazer preaches on why the cross stands at the very centre of the Orthodox faith. Drawing on Christ's words to Nicodemus and on Ss. John Chrysostom, Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria, he traces the pattern of salvation history: death came through a tree in paradise, and life comes through the tree of the cross. The cross is shown as the revelation of God's love, the throne of the King and the defeat of death — and each of us is called to take it up daily in forgiveness, humility and repentance.

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction

2:50 The Bronze Serpent

4:09 Two Trees

4:56 Why He Must Be Lifted Up

6:38 For God So Loved the World

9:14 Death Cannot Hold God

12:06 Take Up Your Cross

16:39 Look Upon Christ and Live

17:32 Venerating the Cross

6th September 2026: Preaching on Father's Day, Sub Dn. Timothy Grace takes up the parable of the wedding feast and the guest without a garment. In the ancient world the host supplied the garments, so to arrive without one was not poverty but insult — and Christ, the great host, has supplied us with everything we need. Drawing on St. Symeon the New Theologian's call to run to the light while it still shines, he asks what excuse any of us will offer for not becoming holy. He closes with a word to fathers on steering between indifference and control, and on St. Paul as a model of invested, un-domineering fatherhood.

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction

0:42 The Parable of the Wedding Feast

2:15 What the Parable Reveals

3:01 Christ the Great Host

4:09 St Symeon: Run to the Light

6:18 A Word for Fathers

7:47 Between Scylla and Charybdis

11:09 St Paul's Model of Fatherhood

30th August 2026: Preaching on the parable of the wicked tenants, Fr. Geoff Harvey holds together two truths that can seem to pull against each other: we are saved by grace and not by works, yet a faith that bears no love has no life in it. The tenants' great failure did not begin with murder but with forgetting whose vineyard it was. Fr. Geoff offers three simple charges — stand firm in the faith, serve one another in love, and show love to the Lord — and points us to the stone the builders rejected, who has become the cornerstone of our salvation.

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction

0:21 Saved by Grace, Not by Works

2:42 The Parable of the Vineyard

4:33 It Began with Forgetting

5:00 Stand Firm in the Faith

7:11 Serve One Another in Love

10:12 Show Love to the Lord

12:21 From Rejection Came Resurrection

23rd August 2026: In this sermon on the rich young ruler, Daniel McInnes asks what it really means when Christ tells the young man to sell all he has. The problem, he explains, was never wealth itself, but the hold that wealth had over the young man's heart. Whatever sits on the throne of our hearts in Christ's place becomes a weight around our necks, and the godly sorrow of seeing it clearly is the beginning of repentance. When Christ is at the centre, the good things of this world are not denied us but restored to their right place.

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction

0:39 Do Not Come with Flattery

1:33 Keeping the Commandments

2:13 Wealth Is Not the Problem

4:08 Godly Sorrow and Repentance

5:23 The Throne of Our Hearts

6:38 Christ at the Centre

8:51 With God All Things Are Possible

9th August 2026: In this sermon, Sub Dn. Timothy Grace explores the Orthodox understanding of suffering, distinguishing between the voluntary hardships we take on through the ascetic disciplines of the Church and the involuntary trials that come to us against our will. Drawing on the day's epistle and gospel readings, he shows how both kinds of suffering, when met with patience and the right attitude, can open the heart to the grace of God. He reminds us that the Church is the place where these two forms of suffering meet, and that even what feels like failure by the world's standards can become our victory in Christ.

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction

0:56 Voluntary Suffering & Corinth

3:31 The Ascetic Disciplines

5:19 Christ Sets the Example

6:28 Involuntary Suffering

7:58 The Gospel & St Gregory

9:24 The Great Paradox

11:14 St Sophrony on the Paradox

12:13 The Church: Where the Two Meet

13:13 Making Involuntary Voluntary

13:42 Conclusion