This diverting exercise, along with a glass of sherry is about all I can remember from that visit, and, for better or worse, it was my first real encounter with Christianity in England.

In a gesture that has no analogy in our everyday lives, we allow a kind stranger to touch our faces.

And so the pronouncement of an uncomfortable truth is accompanied by tenderness, accompanied by a reminder that God's judgment is itself enfolded in God's love.

There comes a point, however, when we close our books and go out into the light of day, to offer to the world what we have learned, what we have made, ourselves prepared for service and perpared to work for the good not only of ourselves, but for others.

When pressed on what can be done, Henslowe says ‘Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.’

‘How?’ Fennyman asks.

‘I don’t know,’ he says, ‘It’s a mystery’.

Closeted in the upper room, literally con-spiring, breathing together, as they sought to find a way to survive, they are confronted by the resurrected Christ, and his words for them are not words of reproach or judgment, but simply: peace be with you.

And it is my hope that by disagreeing well, recognising ourselves in those with whom we hold deep disagreement, not only is it possible that a truth yet unimagined by some or by all might be discovered, but that in the process of this recognition, something of God might be revealed.

The first Christians were not stupid or naive when they called Jesus Lord and King: they knew that they were actively appropriating the titles of the Emperor and of his local puppet and applying them to the crucified body of their teacher and their friend. And it is this one we praise when we sing in a few weeks’ time ‘glory to the newborn king’. It is a conscious, radical re-appraisal and transmutation of the idea of human kingship to reveal and resemble the nature God, who is before and beyond and above every human category and authority.

It is the great gift of Isaiah, for Christians brought to its most visible form and consummation in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, that we may see the holiness of God shining through any human life. And it is with these ordinary, wonderful people in mind, whose lives show this new world emerging, that we celebrate All Saints’ Day today, giving thanks for all the holy ones, showing us the way to God’s dream and vision of love.

Share in suffering. Work hard. Not because in this way we somehow earn salvation, but because by putting ourselves in the way of serving others, by shaping our lives in the form of Christ who lived and died for friend and strangers, we will find life. We will become that love which reconciles and repairs.  And like a golden thread, weaving through a tangled web, our lives might show something beautiful to the world.

By loving one another, by placing the needs of the other at at least the same value as our own, together we will make our life together something beautiful indeed: a community of self-offering love.

This passage is the first mention on the Gospels of what would come to be known as the doctrine of the Trinity, or, as I prefer to call it, the doctrine of the strangeness of God.

The invitation of the empty tomb, from which the women fled silent and afraid, is to run with them. To run with them until they, too encounter the risen Christ among their friends, in their community and in their lives and so their lives are transformed. The risen Christ, for Mark’s Gospel is not found in any tidy identities or neat rules and patterns of behaviour. Rather the Resurrection for Mark points to an invitation to participate in the risen life of Jesus now, in our lives, and so live out the Resurrection life in the very shape and colour of our life today.

If you have found yourselves in the tombs, the tombs of anxiety or fear, of misgendering or mis-recognition, of misogyny or racism, of wondering if you are worth it or wondering if this is all worth it, may this Eastertide find you encountering this life that is freely bestowed and without precondition.

When was the last time you stood with your bare feet on the earth? Maybe you were standing in grass in a park or in your garden. Maybe you felt the fine grains of sand slip between your toes at the seaside. Perhaps youwalked out of the river, slipping and squidging through the mud to the bank.

At the very end of last year, on the 26th of December, Boxing Day, the world lost one of its fiercest and happiest fighters on behalf of justice and reconciliation: The Rt Reverend Desmond Tutu.

When I was an undergraduate, I was fortunate enough to hear Bishop Tutu speak, and while it is long enough ago that I cannot remember much of what he said in his speech, I have retained the impression of a joyful fireball, radiating the heat of truth and the light of hope.

Vanity of vanities. All is vanity.

•

In the summer of 2007, I drove with my dad from Boston, Massachusetts to Seattle, Washington en route to California to begin my training for ordination. I had lived in New England for the better part of six years by this point, on my own, and I rarely had passaengers in my car.

Where are you from? What are you studying? What do you do? How has your term been so far?

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that most everyone in this room has asked or been asked questions like these at least once since arriving in Oxford.

As quotidian as these questions may be, and however often we may find oursleves posing them and answering them, I am convinced that they serve an important function in our lives and in our shared life, because these questions are an entry point to our stories.