God Invites Everyone To Feast at His Table

Written by Rev Gavin Blakemore (College Chaplain)

05 April 2026

For Term 1 Chapels, we have been exploring the first book of Genesis in the Old Testament, where we have been learning about Creation, Noah and the Ark, the Tower of Babel, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Alongside this, we have been travelling through the Christian season of Lent. That is a 40-day period to prepare for the coming Easter. Beginning on Ash Wednesday, Lent includes:

• prayer (seeking God),
• forgiveness (putting our relationships right),
• fasting (going without a little)
• charity (giving to the poor)

On Palm Sunday, we read of Jesus triumphal entry into Jerusalem in which he is treated as Messiah and King of the Jews. This is followed by Holy Week: Maundy Thursday (foot washing of disciples and the last supper), Jesus arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, and his terrible path to the cross at Golgotha and death on Good Friday.

All is lost; the disciples and followers of Jesus are broken and feel hopeless. This is what we sit with on Holy Saturday, our human feelings of being lost and broken.

After the Sabbath on Sunday morning, it is the women who go to put burial spices on Jesus' body and discover the tomb is empty and that Jesus is no longer dead. God has raised Jesus and overcome the power of death. We too are offered this life-transforming love of God.

We celebrated this special time in chapels and at the community Easter Celebration with the creation of a Cross Collage (pictured), an E.G.G. (Easter Graphical Game), and a traditional chocolate egg hunt on the Dunhelen fields. Our students demonstrate abundant joy and remind us of the new and transformed life that Jesus offers.

Easter contains the full spectrum of the human experience, just like we experience in real life. In the Easter story, we are reminded that God does not abandon us when we feel lost, broken, hurt, or at our lowest. Instead, God walks with us, looking for opportunities to transform that into joy when we know we are loved by God. In our experience of this joy, we are asked to follow Jesus in creating a world in which mercy, justice, and love lift up the lowly and demonstrate how God invites everyone to his feast table.

As you eat your large hollow eggs this Easter, remember they represent the empty tomb that no longer contains a body.

Jesus is no longer dead but is alive.

Christ is risen! Alleluia!