She danced gracefully and delicately and with dignity. She danced in her earthly, perishable body.
She danced.

‘Dance, dance wherever you may be’
I say that she danced because every time she said goodbye to someone,
on the day before she died,
she would ask to be lifted up into a standing hug and she was so unstable,
so fragile
that she and the person being hugged would begin a faltering type of waltz
across the carpeted living room floor.

‘I danced in the morning when the world was begun’
Our reading from Paul today starts with the wonderful words
‘Listen! I tell you a mystery!
Listen I tell you a mystery! We will not sleep but we will be changed, in a flash, in a twinkling of the eye and our perishable body shall be reclothed in the body of the Spirit, in the body of God.
Fantastic stuff. Unfortunately though Paul doesn’t go into too much detail as to how or when this transfiguration will take place, but he does assure us that it will and our reading is completed with the memorial words O death where is thy victory! Oh death where is thy sting.

What happens inside you when you hear these words? Do you feel doubt? Derision? Despair? Desire? Delight?
Listen I tell you a mystery!
We will not sleep but we will be changed, in a flash,
in a twinkling of the eye and our perishable body
shall be reclothed in the body of the Spirit, in the body of God.

Paul believes that transformation is necessary before a person is able to enter into heaven. He also believes that this transformation will occur for all of us at the moment of the Parousisa, the coming of God.
Now Paul was writing, as are all our biblical writers, at a particular time, from a particular world view, with a particular vision. Some of the language that he uses and the theology that he chooses may not make complete sense to us today.

And that’s OK. In fact that good because it shows that we are thinking and questioning and engaging actively with the big issues.
Life and death, life and death.
Dance, dance wherever you may be.
So lets look at the first big issue that Paul raises.
Heaven. What does this word even mean?
Fluffy white clouds, beautiful, bubbly, cherubs bouncing about?
Maybe?
Or is it light, shining, clashing, spinning light or caught up in a whirl of love?
Maybe.

The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning once wrote
‘Earth’s crammed with heaven
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit around and pluck blackberries.’
So is heaven life here on earth, life in the clear god moments when we suddenly connect into the spirit force which pulsates all around us?
Is heaven the here and now if only we knew how to look?
Maybe.

Certainly for those folk who have experienced medical death and who have then been brought back, heaven is a myriad of things,
ranging from loved ones holding open longing arms,
holy figures standing in welcome,
shining corridors of light and pulsating waves of love.
Listen I tell you a mystery! Truth is we just don’t know. Not with our mental mind anyway.
But with our mind of faith, our mind of hope,
if we sit quiet and still it can be possible to connect into the heaven space,
the place of continuation.

The next big idea that Paul gives to us is the idea of the Parousia,
the idea that Christ will come again and that in this moment we will experience transformation.
Now before we dismiss this idea out of hand lets have a little think about it more deeply.
When Christ comes again we will experience transformation.
Wild crazy wacky idea?
Listen I tell you a mystery.
Guess what?

Christ has already come, yesterday and today and tomorrow.
Every time we break bread, or baptise a baby.
Every time two or three are gathered in my name I will be there.
Eve time we go into a quiet room and shut the door, Christ is there.
Every time we stand for justice,
every time we smile at the stranger
or sooth the one in pain.
Christ is there and we, we are transformed, we, we enter heaven.
Dance, Dance wherever you may be.
I miss my gran.
I really, really miss her.

No amount of theology is going to take away from the fact that she didn’t get to hold her newest great-granddaughter in her failing arms.
But if I let myself have a quiet moment,
a moment where I welcome god into my heart
and where I don’t just sit,
plucking blackberries
then I can still feel her powerful strength dancing inside me
and I can know that she has indeed been set free from her perishable body
and she is indeed clothed in the cloth of immortal life.