Reflections on the Gospel of Thomas

Yeshua says… See, I have sown fire into the cosmos, and I shall guard it carefully until it blazes. Gospel of Thomas, Logion 10

Sermon given by Alison Hine on August 3rd 2014 at The Episcopal Church of Incarnation, Ann Arbor Michigan


I would like to dedicate these words in memory of Karl and Jane and to Brian.

The Aramaic word Maranatha means Our Lord Come. It appears scattered through the Bible. We can use it as a mantra. Maranatha whispered in heart over and over invites us to open into deep listening. Maranatha, Maranatha, Maranatha. Our Lord Come.

When the first atomic bomb was tested in the desert of New Mexico in July 1945, Oppenheimer, the head of the Manhattan Project, later reflected. “We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, Vishnu takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’

The second atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in Japan, on the Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6th 1945. 140,000 people was killed in the initial firestorm.

We celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration by remembering  when Jesus and three of his apostles go up  Mount Tabor. At the top of the mountain, Jesus begins to shine with bright rays of light. Then the prophets Moses and Elijah appear next to him and he speaks with them. The voice of God calls out to Jesus: “You are my son”.  In this moment Jesus reveals to his disciples his origin and also the complete transfiguration of his body into divine light. Body, soul, divinity into one, in Jesus, as Jesus, through Jesus. This was and is the great evolutionary leap from a God in the heavens, far away, remote  to God in human flesh. And a possibility for all humans.

In Hiroshima a different light exploded. One that brought utter destruction and the final death of our innocence. We now had the power for complete annihilation .

Several months later another explosion took place. It did not ignite right away. In December 1945 in a cave in Northern Egypt, thirteen codices containing  over 50 texts were discovered. They seem to have been compiled from the second  to the fourth century. Some, including the Gospel of Thomas, may date back even earlier than the  gospels of the New Testament. After many delays, and much scholastic infighting Elaine Pagels published her best selling book, The Gnostic Gospels, in 1979. I still have my marked up copy. I remember my atheist heart  chuckling with a kind of perverse delight: “this will surely upset the apple cart”. Little did I know that this was the beginning of a long journey of my own.

Over the last few years I have been drawn over and over into these Gospels, particularly the Gospel of Thomas.

It begins: I who write this am Thomas- the double, the twin. Yeshua (the Aramaic name for Jesus), the Living Master spoke, and his secret sayings I have written down. I assure you, whoever grasps their meaning will not know death.

Today in honor of the Feast of Transfiguration I will try to unpack some of these sayings. This is a different atomic explosion.

In Logion 10 Yeshua says… See, I have sown fire into the cosmos, and I shall guard it carefully until it blazes.

In logion 71. Yeshua says… I will destroy this house and no one will ever be able to rebuild it.

In logion 82 Yeshua says… Whoever comes to me dwells near the fire. Whoever moves away from me remains far from the kingdom.

What is he talking about? What is this fire? What is this destruction?

But first let me say something about this Gospel and the others discovered at Nag Hammadi. There are no stories about the life of Jesus, his ministry as a healer, his miracles, his Virgin birth, his divinity, his crucifixion or his resurrection. These sayings seem to be have been written down during life of Jesus and are the wild wisdom teachings of an enlightened Jewish mystic. It is tantalizing to think that these might be the words of Jesus. Sometimes there are echoes of these sayings  in the official Gospels. These are the words that Jesus gave to those “who have ears to hear and eyes to see.” Can we hear two thousand years later

When I first read these sayings they seemed shocking and incomprehensible.

In logion 2 Yeshua says.. If you are searching, you must not stop until you find. When you find you will become troubled. Your confusion will give way to wonder. In wonder you will reign over all things. Your sovereignty  will be your rest.

So to understand we must search. In my case this went on for a very long time. I mean decades. And at first we may not even  know what we are searching for. The only tool we have for our search is our own ego, our own dualistic mind, which knows through linear discursive  thinking. This is a world— a wondrous and important world— that knows through collecting knowledge, by comparing and contrasting, by judging, evaluating. And  by dividing reality into multiple parts: inside and out; real and not real: right and wrong; more or less. And over the centuries we have learned much this way.

 So to go back to Logion 2. “you must not stop until you find”. Find what? Is it mystical experiences, exalted states? Yes, but that is not enough. More important is that we find a new capacity within. A capacity to hear and see. Not with the egoic mind, but with what is now being called the unitive mind, the non dual mind. And this is not the intellect but an alchemical transformation of the mind into the heart. This is the heart of wisdom. And the alchemical transformation is called  inner work.

In our tradition we know this heart of wisdom as Sophia or as the Word.  Her beauty is proclaimed in Proverbs 8: 22

“The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works,
    before his deeds of old;
 I was formed long ages ago,
    at the very beginning, when the world came to be.
 When there were no watery depths, I was given birth,
    when there were no springs overflowing with water;
 before the mountains were settled in place,
    before the hills, I was given birth,
 before he made the world or its fields
    or any of the dust of the earth.
 I was there when he set the heavens in place,
    when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep,
 when he established the clouds above
    and fixed securely the fountains of the deep,
 when he gave the sea its boundary
    so the waters would not overstep his command,
and when he marked out the foundations of the earth.
Then I was constantly at his side.
I was filled with delight day after day,
 rejoicing always in his presence,
rejoicing in his whole world
    and delighting in mankind.

We live in profoundly psychological times. Many of us have embarked on this journey of inner work. But there is a profound difference between most psychological work and the inner work of transformation. Psychotherapy ultimately is about supporting, healing and creating a more functional, flexible, mature ego. And this is crucial work. Spiritual work goes beyond this. The journey begins with a healthy enough and resilient— in my case stubborn and determined— ego.  But ultimately it is about the transformation of the ego into a soul of living presence capable of  hearing and seeing through the wisdom of the heart. So in a sense the ego gets displaced from being in the driver’s seat and becomes the bystander and the servant of living presence. The alchemy is the  burning away of what blocks, obscures our capacity for the wisdom of the heart.

In logion 71. Yeshua says… I will destroy this house and no one will ever be able to rebuild it.
He may be speaking about many kinds of houses: the temple of religious corruption, the domination system, but at a personal level my sense is that he is talking about the house of ego.

And he goes on to say: in logion 82 “Whoever comes to me dwells near the fire. Whoever moves away from me remains far from the kingdom.” So who ever invites the fire of the Cosmic Christ, the fire of love into the house of ego will come closer to the kingdom. What a paradox. This is a fire of ego burning. And it is a fire that liberates and  clears the way for the kingdom of living presence. Our minds, hearts and bodies are jammed pack with thoughts, feelings, memories, beliefs, positions, convictions, ideologies, which we believe completely is the sum total of what and who we are. There is no room for God.

So it takes a fire. And for me it is an ongoing fire. A never ending fire. Sometimes it blazes and I am angry, hurt, frustrated. And sometimes the fire burns with blessings. In either case the ego is there —the devil of temptation— to give into despair and give up or to  turn the blessing of grace into self importance. So the fire not only burns away much of what we hold true, but it also tests us. Will we give up, will we turn away, will we create an idol of our self importance, turn the grace of wisdom into dead religious carcasses?

So back to Logion 2.” And when you find you will become troubled.” How true. You finally have the capacity to see and know that you have carefully built a up a house of cards and called this me, my ego.  For me this was more than troubling. It was a deep sense of complete failure and  hopelessness. This is called the Dark Night.

A few months after I entered this church I asked Joe about the people who sang out the Psalms. He lent me The Songs of Israel by Guthrie. I was electrified. One day, I was on the phone with two of my spiritual friends. We were exploring our experience in the present moment— the practice of presence. Suddenly I knew without a doubt that “I AM that I AM”. And in the same moment I could feel as though I was traveling through time back to those prophetic voices in the desert proclaiming the very same truth. In a flash I was connected through deep time to a very ancient lineage. And as soon as I struggled to say these words out loud I could hear the voice of the superego accusing me of being presumptuous, too big for my britches and making the whole thing up. Somehow I managed to escape most of the tongue lashing. But then over the months I became troubled. In fact was I so disheartened, so dead, so tired of this whole spiritual enterprise that I was ready to give up. The superego had me completely, and I was convinced of my complete sense of failure. I seemed to be crawling through life.

So what did I do? I kept up my daily spiritual practice in the midst of whining and railing at God. As best as I could I kept coming back to the present moment. I forgave my lengthy lapses. I walked outside with my morning cup of coffee. I tried, often fruitlessly, to push away the superego. I slept a lot. I complained a lot to my friends. I went to church and prayed. My life line was my daily meditation practice.

Six months after my mystical experience  I entered a spiritual retreat ready to give notice. To my utter surprise I was met with the grace of loving kindness. I lived in a cloud of bliss for days. Somehow in this hell, by not quite giving up—thank you stubbornness!—, grace carried me, Jesus carried me, truth carried me until enough of me burned up. You could say that the recognition of the truth of my identity, my birthright as I AM, challenged and exposed my historical identity, my personal sense of meaninglessness, and my deeply rooted despair and alienation— in short my atheist heart. This had to be traversed. In the past this journey had led to breakdown. This time the center held in some mysterious way.

But “then your confusion will give way to wonder. In your wonder you will reign over all things. Your sovereignty will be your rest.”

After the surrender of the ego to the much larger truth of who you are,  Jesus then says  “you will reign over all things”. And this does happen. Not just for Jesus but for you and I as well. “you will reign and your sovereignty will be your rest.” If you let these words wash over you, perhaps you can feel that you are no longer this contracted fearful tiny self.  You have discovered that through this journey of fire  your identity has become vast and is at peace. This is the kingdom of heaven on earth and in human beings.

So when Jesus says in Logion 10… “See, I have sown fire into the cosmos, and I shall guard it carefully until it blazes”,  we can be assured that in this fire of transfiguration, in this fire of the Christ consciousness we will not be abandoned. Even if we fail over and over, if we forget, and if we are deeply troubled Jesus will guard this fire until we blaze in glory.

Two explosions happened in 1945: one of utter destruction, the other of love.

Marnatha, maranatha, maranath. Our Lord come.

Reflections on a three year journey and one that continues. 

Our circle dedicated to the practice of presence started in the fall of 2011. For several years we focused on meditation and how to settle into an sense of the embodied now. We kept coming back to our arms and legs, fingers and toes. We explored how the superego, or the inner critic, attacks us, judges us and insists that we cannot and should not expand beyond the confines of our contracted familiar ego self. We faced the need to dismiss and reject this shaming, debilitating voice. We are not children in need of continual scolding and punishment. We are beings of presence capable and desiring to grow and expand into the spaciousness and love.

Many people have come over these years,  and some have stayed. There is a sense of presence as we take our seats together. The sincerity, openness, trust and depth has slowly grown over the seasons of our work together. We hold the fullness, confusion, despair in the lightness  of our collective presence. And through this grace these moods shift and the presence clarifies and deepens. 

As the facilitator and co host with Joe I have learned to trust this movement of moods. I seem to have less need to know where this is going, or try to make it all alright and more trust in the generosity and intelligence of the field of  presence we cultivate together week after week.  I am learning, along with you, to be an open vulnerable instrument, so that presence can teach me. So I can see my own  shadows, my fixed ideas and my own superego. I am humbled by what is emerging. It is mysterious. It reveals itself slowly with little nudges,  in moments of inspiration and in warm hearted generosity. 

As we ended our time together for the summer I have been looking back. Where have we come from and what is pulling me and maybe you forward?

We have spent the last year reclaiming sacred words. Words that are so overused, or so debased by secular or fundamentalist certainty, that some of us almost gag when we hear them. Or we simply walk away. And why not? Our instinctive recoil points to the savagery, misogyny and persecution  of religious practice over the centuries. But are we loosing something precious?

So let me take a big view. We live in what is being called the post modern world which in this is a world deeply suspicious of authority, tradition, hierarchy. We embrace relationship, the personal narrative, freedom, individuality and creativity. 

So  it is not surprising that our circle of pilgrims is called to a contemporary, even interfaith  spiritual understanding. We meet in a circle, we share together in a circle, we listen to all the voices, not just mine or Joe's. We use psychological understanding help us navigate through the lens of ego to living presence. And yet both Joe and I have felt a powerful pull to reclaim the sacred and ancientness  of the Word of Wisdom. Why this mix? 

You may be familiar with the writings of the philosopher Ken Wilber. His significant contribution is that consciousness and in turn culture evolves. What is striking is that this evolution mirrors our own evolution from childhood to adulthood. I won't go into great detail but simply say that we live in times of a great evolutionary pressure. These times are being called the Second Axial Age. Our post modern relational view is a reaction to the modern, rational scientific paradigm that began in the West during the Enlightenment. Each new level of consciousness reacts to the previous level by rejecting it as naive, dangerous, simplistic, and not inclusive enough. 

These paradigm shifts are always times of turmoil and even bloodshed as the new challenges the status quo. During the first Axial Age, the monotheistic religions, the mythic level, rejected the pagan view as superstitious and heretical. And now the post modern view rejects the hyper rationality of the enlightenment, and the authoritarian hierarchy of the mythic feudal religion--now called fundamentalism-- of the Middle Ages. And so it goes. Well not quite. What is emerging now  as we are increasingly immersed  in the   global village is  what Wilber calls the Integral view. This  view does not  simply reject the preceding evolutionary stage. The Integral perspective recognizes that there is precious wisdom in all the previous stages of evolution of consciousness and culture. The integral view attempts to recover what is precious from the past and bring the treasures  forward into the present.

Without realizing it this  is how our circle seems to be evolving. We are peeling away the misunderstandings, limitations and ignorance of earlier wisdom streams without throwing out the mystical essence of the Word. Can we reclaim words like God, the Father, worship, sin, prayer and through our contemplation in presence feel the living presence. Do they come alive, take us deeper. Do they align us with the countless humans who have prayed these words for generations before us? Do they take us across theological divides, wars even, to the deepest core of love?

I hope some of you feel this. I have discovered-thanks to the internet- that many other small circles like ours are undertaking similar journeys.  I sense we are tapping into an awakening. It is happening in small circles on the edges of, or outside, religious institutions. This is the way of the post modern ethos! Even though it seems that our numbers dwindle at times, we are part of something larger. This is the mystery of collective prayer and practice. What a blessing to be part of this unfolding. And it can’t happen alone.