Step one is to try and get the facial expression on Jesus as he speaks the words of this weeks Gospel to His friends.  Is he sternly wagging his finger?  Or is he smiling?Our answer will predict the outcome.  The first will leave us feeling burdened, the second will set our foot tapping to the beginning of a dance that will take us beyond death!

A few weeks ago, a son stood in our beautiful church to speak at his dad's requiem.  In thirty years of priestly ministry, I have never heard anything more moving. Any man would have been proud that his son should speak so well of him.   At one point he was reminiscing about the night his dad met his mum.  He wrote, 'To be there as he landed those short, urgent glances on a young woman .... making  the dance floor her own.  To witness his interior debate as he steeled himself for the ask.  And then to know what it felt like as he clutched her hand in his, as a badge of pride, and walked that bit taller, because she was walking with him.'

This seems to be very close to what Jesus is revealing to His disciples.  The outpouring of the Spirit is a wild ride.  And just as the spirit of another person can enlarge our hearts and our lives, so to, those who ask to be in communion, hand in hand with the Risen Saviour move onto the dance floor He has made His own. 

The music brings us alive and we sense we are no longer subject to the losses which come with time! The unending dance of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit has no beginning and no end. It is going on right now, just beyond our normal vision, just outside our normal range of hearing. But as we continue to grow in love, our awareness opens ever so slightly, and our feet begin to tap on the vibrant earth.

Once upon a time, there was a someone who believed in too small a God.  Every 
time their trust was shattered or they were pulled into the land of loss, their   heart was broken. Its beat became a little more hushed.  Then, out of the blue   sky, someone came with excited words about mustard seeds, and secrets hidden in the heart of death, and treasures found nowhere else but in the landscape of grief.  The stranger said that God only breaks hearts open, and stretching His arms on a cross and rising from death showed them how.  Once upon a time, someone had an understanding of God that blew their mind! 
 
The Missionary, Edwina Gateley put it like this,
 
Sometimes, I remember, in a hushed moment, the daring of my youth.  All I claimed and gathered in,  built up and spread out - casting the word of God all over the world in a  great young surge of missionary zeal.


Sometimes, I remember, in a hushed moment, the thousands of miles I 
travelled.  Crossing mountains, desert and bush land to far distant peoples, 
inspiringly different and gloriously colourful.
 
Sometimes, I remember, in a hushed moment, how they moulded me,
giving me new voice and a deeper vision,
leaving me lonely amongst my own. 

Sometimes, I remember, in a hushed and sacred moment,
How my small familiar God
Slipped from my hold
Like a doll
As I stumbled
Gasping
Into the Divine Expanse.


Edwina Gateley, ' Growing into God' pp 52 -53 (2000) 

Imagine a Gate made of nothing.  God passes through. God speaks. It might sound like a Big Bang but Creation has begun.  That is why it is not wholly accurate to say that God created the Universe.  Why? Because God is still engaged in this wonderful work, the world and every heart in it still being created. 
God passes through the Gate again.  'I am who I am' has become Jesus.  He speaks your name.  He passes back through the Gate and calls you to Follow Him.  You try to get through but you can't, you get stuck.  Too much baggage.  You have to let go.  Of what?  God waits.

Any Leader can be a True Shepherd or a Terrorist.  The latter steal by craft and deceit with violence and death.  As they depart, they always leave us feeling smaller and with less.  
St. John uses the powerful 'steal, kill, destroy' to describe them.

The Beautiful (Good) Shepherd always leaves us more and with more than He found us.  Why? Because He know us by name.   He is no stranger to us. His voice resonates in the depth of our soul and of our longing for life.  So He walks ahead of us, bringing us to pasture. To places where we find nourishment and strength. 

Jesus is the Gate.  He is 'The Bread of Life', ' The Living Water', 'The True Vine', 'The Resurrection and the Life'. All of these are images of Love without Regret flowing through Him, so that we might have Life and have it to the Full.  His name means, 'God is with us!'

He invites us to bring life not death.  If we steal, kill or destroy someone's name - even our own- maybe we have to look again at our understanding of who He is.  

God waits.  What do we have to lose to pass through the Gate?  

Like her friend, she would curse the barren tree and glory in the lilies of the field.She lived between noons and midnights: in those moments of high dance when blood is wisdom and flesh love.

But now, before the violated cave, on the third day of her tears, she is a dark pool of grief spent upon the earth. Someone has taken her dead Jesus, unoiled and unkissed, to where flies and worms more quickly work.

She suffers wounds that will not heal, and enters into the pain of God, where lives a gardener who once exalted in her perfume, knew the extravagance of her hair, and now asks her who she seeks.

In Peters dreams, the cock still crowed.

He returned to Galilee to throw nets into the sea and watch them sink like memories into darkness.  He did not curse the sun that rolled down his back, or the wind that drove the fish beyond his nets.  He only waited for the morning when the shore mist would lift and from his boat he would see Him.  Then, after naked and impetuous swim with the sea running from his eyes, he would find a cook, with holes in his hands, stooped over dawn coals, who would offer him the Kingdom of God for breakfast.

On the road that escapes Jerusalem, and winds along the ridge to Emmaus,

Two disillusioned youths dragged home their crucified dream.

They had smelled Messiah in the air and rose to that scarred and ancient hope only to mourn what might have been.And now, a sudden stranger falls upon their loss, with excited words about mustard seeds, and surprises hidden at the heart of death, and that evil must be kissed upon the lips, and that every scream is redeemed for it echoes in the ear of God, and do you not understand what died upon the cross was fear!

They protested their right to despair, but he said, "My fathers laughter fills the silence of the tomb.!"  
Because they did not understand, they offered Him food.  And in the breaking of the bread they knew the imposter for who He was - the Arsonist of the Heart.

After the end, comes the conspiracy
Of gardeners, cooks and strangers.