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.