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Good morning. Whichever side you are on over the Downing Street parties there is nothing that is going to put an end to the criticism, nothing that will heal the hurt of the bereaved, or satisfy our sense that something has gone badly wrong. This part of the recent past is one we cannot put behind us, however much we might long for it all to be sewn up. It is a strange coincidence that the law breaking and fines have been announced during the holiest Week of the Christian Year. Reading the Gospels you can hardly be unaware of the irony, ambiguity, outrage, and moral complexity: the innocence of Jesus is set against popular anger and cynical pragmatism. The whole story is cast in political terms. Demonstrations, mobs, soldiers on the street. And everyone wanting their own version of justice. Yet there is a deep injustice in the story of Jesus’ crucifixion. And even those who try to be even-handed are left with question marks over their names. The Governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate washes his hands but the part he plays in the narrative does not go away. Outside the New Testament his subsequent career did not go well and he ended up being sent back to Rome in disgrace. But curiously some Christian churches later claimed he had converted to the faith and venerate him as a saint. You wouldn’t predict any of that the day after Good Friday – nor that he ended up being mentioned in the Christian Creed and still is to this day. As for our political crisis I would guess that few would take a bet on where things go next. This morning there is much justified anger, but also much shoulder shrugging. There’s a good deal of buck passing, but also a discernible caution. Our immediate judgements are frequently loud, passionate, and persistent, but justice is often not delivered in the short term. We have to find ways to live with that, however frustrating it is. If we turn the issue back on ourselves we can only try to be honest about our own failures and open to learning from them. The General Confession in the Book of Common Prayer spells this out prosaically in words that are so simple that they are almost all only one syllable. ‘We have left undone those things which we ought to have done and we have done those things which we ought not to have done. And there is no health in us’. All that is to say that from a Christian perspective there is no final judgement in this life. None of us even get to write our own obituaries.