Ramble for Kirwan Uniting Church Keeping in Touch pew sheet Easter Day 2024

On this mountain the LORD Almighty will prepare

a feast of rich food for all peoples,

a banquet of aged wine —

the best of meats and the finest of wines.

On this mountain he will destroy

the shroud that enfolds all peoples,

the sheet that covers all nations;

he will swallow up death forever. (Isaiah 25:6-8a)


My favourite Easter Day OT reading. Unfortunately it’s Year A, and my really really last service at KUC falls in Year B, so we’ll use the Acts 10 option. But I can use Isaiah 25 for Leisa’s cousin’s and my Best Man’s funeral on Maundy Thursday. In scripture, mountains have been the setting for cosmic battles between good and evil. Such a mountain figured large in Pete’s life. His namesake St Peter Brock, and Holdens, battled the evil forces of Ford on Mt Panorama. Pete, his dad, and father-in-law were all and always Holden. Pete’s daughters, like all sorrowing, like Mary Magdalene, want to know what’s happened to him. “They’ve taken away our Lord, and we don’t know where …”


The greatest OT prophet can’t adequately answer that question. Because it’s beyond even his Holy Spirit-inspired experience or comprehension, as it is ours. St Paul in 1Cor2: “…no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no human mind has conceived the things God has prepared for those who love him.” So he reverts, as he must, to metaphor. And what a metaphor! Isaiah didn’t know anything about Bathurst Corporate Boxes or Hospitality Packages, but that’s exactly the paradigm. This Easter, not only for Pete and you and me, but for “all peoples”, death has been swallowed up for ever. St Paul again quoting Isaiah: Death has been swallowed up in Victory!


Thine be the glory, risen, conquering Son!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ramble for Kirwan Uniting Church Keeping in Touch pew sheet 25 June 2023.

  (I wonder if they've missed me? 😊) Well, we’ve lived in our little cottage for six months now. We love it, it’s comfortable and homely, and very “us” - you know what I mean by that. Maudie the German Shepherd loves it, she can cavort around the yard all day long, fetching balls which Leisa throws morning and evening, and making me chase her for those same balls during the day while Leisa is at work to pay the mortgage. I think that the cockatiels love it. It’s difficult to tell. Holly, the hen bird, would never let on, and Glimfeather, the cock bird, would chirp happily in a Force 4 cyclone. I’m sitting on the front deck as I tap this, looking up at Castle Hill right behind us. It’s not perfect, of course. The irrigation points leak, and the system is counter-intuitive in the extreme to programme. The bathroom slopes alarmingly to one end. It’s on one of the busiest roads in Townsville. That’s not such a problem for me until I put my hearing aids in. Maudie loves it most of all
Read more

Ramble for Kirwan Uniting Church Keeping in Touch pew sheet 1 January 2023

  Our new pad has an electrically operated gate for our cars to come in and out (to our electrically operated garage, which is being used for storing assorted unopened and part-opened boxes for the time being.) The pedestrian gate opener is obstructed (on purpose, for security reasons) by a padlock. So how do parcel deliverers, meter readers and bearers of mulled wine (thankyou Robin   😊 ) gain ingress? Well, they press the groovy wi-fi connected camera doorbell which rings my and Leisa’s iPhone, wherever we might be in the world, displays their pic and allows one or both of us to tell them that we’ll be right down (if the dog is safely in) or ignore them if we’re in Woop Woop so that they can leave goodies at North Ward or JCU PO. Except it’s not connected yet. Give me a day or two to understand the accompanying installation instructions. Two well-known instances in scripture of Jesus, as it were, pressing the doorbell, are in Revelation 3: “Behold I stand at the door and knock.” And
Read more

Ramble for Good Shepherd Sunday 21st April 2024

 Sheep are popularly imagined to be dumb creatures, easily led, easily picked off one by one by predators because (it is wrongly thought) they scatter in all directions at any alarm. The image isn’t helped by Monty Python skits like this: (You will carry on reading after the clip, won’t you?) Of course, this picture of a solitary, scattered, sheep is what Christians fasten on to. Like today’s Psalm 23, The Lord is *my* Shepherd. Or Luke 17, we cast ourselves as the lone lost sheep, sought out at great cost by the Great Shepherd. And yes, praise God, it has been a most wonderfully comforting picture, held in front of countless believers as they navigate their own Valley of the Shadow of Death. We have a unique, personal relationship with the Shepherd. If we consider at all that sheep are in a communal flock, the Shepherd cares for the whole fold, it is only in the context of all going astray. But it turns out that sheep aren’t that stupid after all. It’s not only “'Arold, that m
Read more