The one who comes from above is above all.
The one who is of the earth is earthly and speaks of earthly things.

The association is usually the sky above and the earth below.  Yet, how far is the sky from the earth?  If you think about it, the earth and the sky are as much close as they seem to be far from one another.  Like so many dualities, at first glance they seem very different and distinct.  As we look again though, we can begin to see that their corresponding relationship establishes their identities: we know the earth in contradistinction to the sky and vice versa.  We know them as distinct in the context of their relationship.

As we move our physical bodies across the surface of the earth during the course of our lives, we are on the earth, but never completely in the earth until perhaps when we are buried.  We build upon and plant within the earth, while we simultaneously move through and are sometimes borne upon the air of the skies.  Our lived lives take place on the earth and in the sky – in between and participating in both.  Pulled down by gravity and literally inspired by the molecules in the air, we live on account of both.  Our existence as humans on the earth rely upon this relationship.

When the court officers had brought the Apostles in
and made them stand before the Sanhedrin,
the high priest questioned them,
“We gave you strict orders did we not,
to stop teaching in that name.
Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching
and want to bring this man’s blood upon us.”
But Peter and the Apostles said in reply,
“We must obey God rather than men.

Peter’s words of confrontation to the Sanhedrin (ACTS 5: 27-33) is quite telling.   Just as the earth/sky distinction, here is another seeming duality.  We must obey God rather than men.  God above is the one to be obeyed, rather than the requests of mere mortals below.  Again, though, I would point out the same inter-relationship between these two contradistinctions.  How far apart is God from humanity?  On the one hand, there is a sense of an abysmal gap between the two.  On the other hand, we also know that God is closer to us than we are to ourselves.  As the ultimate expression of this, Jesus is the earthly incarnation of God, a union that did not destroy the distinction but indeed echoed the divine vivification all of creation!

In John’s Gospel, the dualistic language continues, as does the underlying unifying element (JN 3: 31-36):

But the one who comes from heaven is above all.
He testifies to what he has seen and heard,
but no one accepts his testimony.
Whoever does accept his testimony certifies that God is trustworthy.
For the one whom God sent speaks the words of God.

The underlying unifying element is movement in relatedness.  It is movement itself that accomplishes the relationship between above and below, earth and sky, God and humanity.  A word is spoken and wanting to be heard.  This is God moving out and down into the earth of our lives.  Obedience to this spoken word of God is not so much a commandment as a responsibility to listen deeply to what or who is being sent.  When we can really listen without all of our blushing agendas, then the rigid lines that serve only to separate become permeable boundaries that become thresholds for the creative flow of divine human destiny – engagement and enlivenment.  Just as the earth and sky interrelate and flow into each other, so it is with the Divine and humanity.  Yet, we obstinately fail to accept.  The Gospel points out the reason why – and it’s a big one.

Whoever does accept his testimony certifies that God is trustworthy.

This is in line with Peter’s confession in the Acts of the Apostles that convicts the Sanhedrin of this very thing – not trusting God.  The religious powers of Jesus’ day do not find God trustworthy, because of all things, God is in the form of one of us – a human!  Having been in relationship with Jesus for several years, and going through his own experiences of not trusting God, exampled by his denial of knowing Jesus, Peter is in a very real place of truth when he speaks about being obedient to God, i.e., deeply listening to the one who is trustworthy.

Further infuriating the Sanhedrin, Peter fully confronts them with the graced power that grants the capacity of obedience and trusting in God.

We are witnesses of these things,
as is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.”

It is the Holy Spirit of God incarnate, Who is Love, that allows us to see God as trustworthy.  This Spirit is already given, but can only be received by those who can recognize Her!  To recognize is to see and receive deeply the loving words of trustworthiness flowing through the relatedness that God has with all creation.  It is within us always, yet we when we don’t listen, we cannot recognize, embrace or believe.

Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life,
but whoever disobeys the Son will not see life

John’s gospel is expanding disobedience to include not simply the failure to listen but indeed the failure to be able to see LIFE itself. 

If asked, most of us would say that God is trustworthy?  But where is this God whom we claim to trust?  Is this God in the skies above alone?  If we are shutting down the possibility of God being incarnate in our everyday lives, this is tantamount to not finding God trustworthy.  If we cannot trust that God is coming to us in and through our senses and the hands-on everydayness of our lives, then we really aren’t trusting God with our humanity?

We aren’t trusting God, because we are not allowing the Holy Spirit to flow and blow where it will as Jesus told Nicodemus.  This hiddenness of God in our everyday lives, in the people we encounter every day, makes it more difficult to recognize much less appreciate the freshness of the Holy Spirit’s movement.   But then are we making our own perception of GOD the limit of God?  This is a subtle yet very risky form of idolatry.  We are stymieing the very relatedness that IS God and that certifies that God is trustworthy.

He does not ration his gift of the Spirit.
The Father loves the Son and has given everything over to him

There is no rationing or measuring of degrees of God’s presence in our lives.  The perceived portioning out of Divine presence is only proportional to our openness to receiving the divine.  The availability of the Holy Spirit is omnipresent and exceedingly abundant.  The largesse of divine relatedness seeps into the cracks formed from all the brokenness of our lives and sprouts up as new life shoots, if we have the eyes to see and the hearts to listen, obey, and tend.  This is to seek Christ among the living. This is the trustworthiness of God in all situations, because no situation has greater authority in our lives than the inflowing and outflowing divine movement – the Holy Spirit – that creates and saves and sustains and makes all things new.

How shall we grant this supreme authority?  Where shall we seek and find this trustworthy God on the threshold of this new world being created in our midst today?

The joy of the saints must rise in death as the light of a candle possesses another world…so the holy life of mercy sprouts forth through the death in which self-will dies, and then God’s love-will alone rules and acts in all things[i]   

[i] Jacob Boehme, THE WAY OF CHRIST (Paulist Press: 1978), 192.