“So heavenly minded, you're no earthly good,” Johnny Cash charges the self-righteous in No Earthly Good. The Pharisees certainly fit that bill, if by “heavenly minded” we mean religious. But a person can be religious and not spiritual. That may have been just what Jesus thought about Nicodemus' sect, the Pharisees. Jesus answered him, ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?"
Jesus says that the Pharisees have not “received my testimony.”
“If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?”
He keeps trying to convey that the realm in which he operates is that of the spiritual – and he infers that Nicodemus, and perhaps the Pharisees in general, operate too much in the realm of the religious, the material. In their insistence on keeping the finer points of the Law in every aspect, Jesus charges, they’ve lost sight of the Spirit indwelling all of God’s children. And in their pride at their ability to uphold God’s law, they forget to uphold the centrality of God's love and mercy.
What a delicate balance we are to keep, living as people of Spirit in this lush and complex, beautiful and painful world of flesh and matter. Can we keep our feet flat on the ground while tuned to the music of heaven? I think we can – and maybe one way to achieve that balance is to think of ourselves as conduits between these two realms, tuning forks that thrum with the pure notes of God-music as we touch the surface of this world.
If we really learn to live by the guidance of the Spirit, trusting our intuition in prayer, powered by the Breath of God, we can fully engage with the life of this earth. There’s a song I like called “Touching Heaven, Changing Earth.” That title describes the way we can combine our vertical and horizontal existences - forming a cross.
Do you feel balanced between attentiveness to the Spirit and engagement in the world? Do you list toward one or the other? Which way do you lean? What spiritual practices might help us tune our spiritual receptors, to live in the heavenly and the earthly spheres at once?
The Gospel does not tell us how Nicodemus responded to this conversation with Jesus, whether he was able to make the leap to perceiving by Spirit, or was persuaded by Jesus’ explanation about “God so loved the world,” sending his Son not to condemn, but to save. He does reenter our story at the end, after the crucifixion, when he helps to wrap Jesus' body, providing 75 pounds of embalming spices to anoint him until he can be buried after the Sabbath. That was a risky undertaking, given the danger Jesus’ followers faced in those traumatic days.
That strikes me as the action of a man who now understood, and was willing to allow the wind of the Spirit to blow him where it would; who was now so truly heavenly-minded, he was of great earthly good.
He keeps trying to convey that the realm in which he operates is that of the spiritual – and he infers that Nicodemus, and perhaps the Pharisees in general, operate too much in the realm of the religious, the material. In their insistence on keeping the finer points of the Law in every aspect, Jesus charges, they’ve lost sight of the Spirit indwelling all of God’s children. And in their pride at their ability to uphold God’s law, they forget to uphold the centrality of God's love and mercy.
What a delicate balance we are to keep, living as people of Spirit in this lush and complex, beautiful and painful world of flesh and matter. Can we keep our feet flat on the ground while tuned to the music of heaven? I think we can – and maybe one way to achieve that balance is to think of ourselves as conduits between these two realms, tuning forks that thrum with the pure notes of God-music as we touch the surface of this world.
If we really learn to live by the guidance of the Spirit, trusting our intuition in prayer, powered by the Breath of God, we can fully engage with the life of this earth. There’s a song I like called “Touching Heaven, Changing Earth.” That title describes the way we can combine our vertical and horizontal existences - forming a cross.
Do you feel balanced between attentiveness to the Spirit and engagement in the world? Do you list toward one or the other? Which way do you lean? What spiritual practices might help us tune our spiritual receptors, to live in the heavenly and the earthly spheres at once?
The Gospel does not tell us how Nicodemus responded to this conversation with Jesus, whether he was able to make the leap to perceiving by Spirit, or was persuaded by Jesus’ explanation about “God so loved the world,” sending his Son not to condemn, but to save. He does reenter our story at the end, after the crucifixion, when he helps to wrap Jesus' body, providing 75 pounds of embalming spices to anoint him until he can be buried after the Sabbath. That was a risky undertaking, given the danger Jesus’ followers faced in those traumatic days.
That strikes me as the action of a man who now understood, and was willing to allow the wind of the Spirit to blow him where it would; who was now so truly heavenly-minded, he was of great earthly good.
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