IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 806

ON LOVE; PART CCCXCV

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GoodWill IS Love in Action

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The Gospel of Thomas

These are the hidden words that the living Jesus spoke. And Didymos Judas Thomas wrote them down.

(35) Jesus says: “It is not possible for someone to enter the house of a strong (person) (and) take it by force unless he binds his hands. Then he will loot his house.“

(36) Jesus says: “Do not worry from morning to evening and from evening to morning about what you will wear.“

(37) His disciples said: “When will you appear to us, and when will we see you?” Jesus said: “When you undress without being ashamed and take your clothes (and) put them under your feet like little children (and) trample on them,  then [you] will see the son of the Living One, and you will not be afraid.“

(38) Jesus says: “Many times have you desired to hear these words, these that I am speaking to you, and you have no one else from whom to hear them. There will be days when you will seek me (and) you will not find me.“

(39) Jesus says: “The Pharisees and the scribes have received the keys of knowledge, (but) they have hidden them. Neither have they entered, nor have they allowed to enter those who wish to. You, however, be as shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves!“.¹⁴

In the last two posts we discussed this thirty sixth saying from the Gospel of Thomas and it opened up a broader discussion on the idea of “take no thought” (Matthew 6:25, Luke 12:22). This idea IS one of the more important aspects of the spiritual pursuit of the man who Truly desires to lead the spiritual Life as an aspirant and a disciple of the Lord and while it may be alright for the average man to see this as the worry, or anxiety, or concern or even fretting, that he should not do, for us this IS the very idea of not thinking about the self and the self in the world. In Vincent’s writing we found that the idea of take no care as it is properly framed in the Interlinear Version of the the Gospel of Thomas as the rather literal rendering of the Greek word but that the ideas on this word had changed, been abandoned, and we can only assume that the idea of not to worry became the more popular as the easier way to go. However, Vincent also introduced the idea of earnest thoughtfulness ⁴ which, when properly understood, can be seen to mean the same thing; that one not dwell on these things of the world…..not food, not clothing and not one’s Life.

Nonetheless, the Interlinear does render this saying from Thomas as “do not take care” but, based upon their doctrinal view, this is rendered as worry and concern and anxiety and fret by the various translators. In the Greek fragment this part is missing and yet the insertion by the translators is again “do not worry” and “do not be concerned” which is again their picking up on the doctrinal view. Here in this we seem to be alone in our contention that these words of “do not take care” and “take no thought” are the True intent of the Master and this we see clearly in the preponderance of other sayings regarding the Way of the disciple…he does not concern himself with the world, the self nor the self in the world. We can read this in the Master’s instructions on the Way to the Kingdom and His teaching on the requirements of the disciple and we can read this in Jesus’ words to Peter when his only apparent fault was to protect the Master in the world; here the Master says: “Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men” (Mark 8:33). For us these ideas are clear indications of the True meaning of “take no thought” but there is more; the very context in which these ideas are offered in the synoptic gospels lends much credibility to our claim as we read in Matthew where these ideas follow immediately upon the Master’s speaking about the source of treasure and the choice of God or mammon for the man that is sincere in his spiritual pursuits.:

“Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt , and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life” (Matthew 6:19-25).

The relationships here are clear and there should be no question about the Master’s True intent as He goes on to define the idea that if a man DOES “take no thought” about these things but acknowledges His closing saying we find the epitome of what the Christian considers as faith: “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33). This is a difficult thing to accomplish but it is at the same time the Way of the disciple. In Luke’s Gospel we have much the same presentation except that this saying comes immediately after the Parable of the Rich Fool, the man who cared only for the things of the world and whose thoughts were consumed with how he would store them and keep them. Here the moral is that the man dies and he loses ALL because he CAN NOT take it with him and the Master tells the listener in the end that this fate IS in store for ALL who “layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God“. Then there is the continuation of this thought as we read: “And he said unto his disciples, Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life” (Luke 12:21-22) and after this discussion we find that same idea as from Matthew when the Master says “seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you. Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:31-32). Here again the aspirant and the disciple need to have that sense of KNOWING which IS the ultimate of faith and “take no thought” whatsoever for the things of the world.

Our final point is on the rendering from the Gospel of Thomas, from the Interlinear version, which does not go directly to what clothing one wears as the doctrinal approach does but rather offers us this framing of the words of the Master: “Do not take care from morning up to evening, and evening up to morning for what (it) is which you will put upon yourselves“. Here the words are “what (it) is which you will put upon yourselves” and in the last essay we showed many ways to put on things other than clothing and, in accordance with the ideas presented in the synoptic gospels of Matthew and Luke, this could well mean the thoughts and the attitudes of the disciple to whom the Master is speaking. This could have naught to do with the idea of clothing whatsoever and perhaps in this light is a reason for the shortness of this as compared to the synoptics. The Greek version gives us similar understanding if we take the Doresse translation “If you have a garment, what do you la[ck?] ” and this because the sentiment is more in line with our understanding of the Interlinear version of the Coptic and the message of the synoptic gospels; the other choice is the framed question of “When you have n[o c]lo[thing], what do [you wear]?” (Bernhard) which seems to us to be out of place. Finally we must repeat our closing thought on this most important subject for the aspirant and the disciple and any who Truly desire such spiritual advancement in this Lifetime, in this world:

the idea of overriding importance here is not these differences nor the way that the translations differ; the common thread through ALL of this is that we should “take no thought“, that we “do not take care” and while the rendering of this as not to worry, or be concerned, or anxious or that we should not fret may work well for the average man, this is not sufficient for the aspirant and for the disciple who the Master clearly tells that he must forsake ALL; it is this aspirant and this disciple who must be convinced that his focus must be upon the things of God and not the temporal things of the flesh and therefore he must “take no thought“.

In the words of the Gayatri, which we have been carrying as the Quote of the Day for many days now, we find a prayer or a mantram that acknowledges that it IS from God that we have ALL sustenance, that ALL that we need comes from this Source and in this we should be able to understand that the desires of men in the world for the temporal things of Life serve to take him away from the Truth that ALL that one needs he already has but perhaps he has yet to realize this Truth. In relation to our topic above we should see this acknowledgement as a reasoned Way to better understand the words from the Master that tell us  “seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you. Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom“

O Thou Who givest sustenance to the universe,
From Whom all things proceed,
To Whom all things return,
Unveil to us the face of the true Spiritual Sun
Hidden by a disc of golden Light
That we may know the Truth And do our whole duty
As we journey to Thy sacred feet.

The Gayatri is really quite simple and straightforward in the form that we have here. It begins, as does the Lord’s Prayer, with an acknowledgement of the Majesty of God as the Giver of all Life and as our Source of all things. We ask only one thing in this prayer; that the true spiritual light of God be unveiled to us so that we may see it clearly. The Sun is the giver of light and life to our planet and all that is on it and, just as each of our forms veils the Spirit within, we ask to see and to know the Light that is behind the Sun that which we see.

Our next saying, the thirty seventh is a much misunderstood concept from the way that it is presented and discussed. The various translations and the Interlinear are pretty much the same and the Greek fragment, while shorter by leaving our the ideas of trampling, does offer the same ideas. However, the idea of note is clearer in the Coptic and must be assumed in the Greek; the idea of the way of little children. There is much commentary on this saying and we present a few here:

• Marvin Meyer writes: “As is hinted at by Cyril of Jerusalem, the ultimate source of these motifs of stripping and trampling may be the book of Genesis (2:25; 3:14-15). In their article ‘Stripped before God,’ April D. De Conick and Jarl Fossum concur that these motifs derive from the Genesis story, but they challenge Smith’s suggestion that saying 37 provides an interpretation of early Christian baptism. Instead, they note that stripping commonly refers to the removal of the fleshly body (compare saying 21), and trampling clothes ina childlike way may be understood as the renunciation of the flesh, so that the one who strips off and tramples upon clothes behaves like a child and achieves a childlike purity and innocence. De Conick and Fossum observe that in two Nag Hammadi documents, On the Anointing and Reality of the Rulers (‘Hypostasis of the Archons’), such trampling is said to aid in overcoming the world and the powers of the world, and in these two texts trampling is discussed in the context of anointing. Thus, they conclude, saying 37 describes the means employed (perhaps including anointing) for embracing purity and attaining a vision of the divine.” (The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus, pp. 85-86).
• Joseph A. Fitzmyer writes: “This question recalls that put in the mouth of ‘Judas, not the Iscariot’ (most likely Judas Thomas, the alleged compiler of this Gospel), by the writer of the fourth canonical Gospel, ‘Master, how does it happen that you are going to show yourself to us and not to the world?’ (Jn 14:22).” (Essays on the Semitic Background of the New Testament, p. 410). “In this saying, at least as it is preserved for us in the Coptic version, we find the characteristic Gnostic ideas about sexual asceticism that were current in the second and third centuries A.D. These ideas force us to classify this saying in the category of J. Jeremias’ ‘tendentious inventions’.” (Essays on the Semitic Background of the New Testament, p. 410).
• F. F Bruce writes: “The disciples’ question is reminiscent of the questions of Matthew 24.3 (cf. Mark 13.4; Luke 21.7) and Luke 17.20; but the answer is quite different from anything found in the canonical Gospels. As the primal sin in Eden was followed by a sense of shame at the awareness of being naked, so (it is implied) the restoration of primal innocence will be marked by the removal of such a sense of shame. For the reference to small children cf. Saying 22; for ‘sons of the Living One’ cf. Saying 3.” (Jesus and Christian Origens Outside the New Testament, p. 128).
• Robert M. Grant and David Noel Freedman write: “Whereas in the Church’s gospels such questions are not really answered, Thomas answers them by stating that the kingdom has come; it need only be recognized. Here the disciples are to become ‘naked’ (Saying 21) by stripping off the body; they are to become ‘like little children.’ Such stripping is mentioned by the Naassenes (Hippolytus, Ref., 5, 8, 44); while treading on the grament of shame was found in the Gospel of the Egyptians (Clement, Strom., 3, 92, 2). The disciples will be ‘sons of the Living Father’ (see Saying 2).” (The Secret Sayings of Jesus, p. 153).
• Funk and Hoover write: “The removal of one’s clothes can be understood in different ways, as we noted in the comments on Thom 21:4. It may be interpreted as an allusion to Christian baptism, where the naked candidate is reborn; it may be understood as a return to the heavenly state in which humans have shed their bodies; or it may denote the primodial state of andogyny in which the sexes are not differentiated. It is striking that in 37:3 Jesus speaks about himself; this is rare among sayings attributable to Jesus. His response is, of course, correlative with the question posed in the introduction in 37:1, which presupposes an understanding of Jesus as the messenger from heaven – a typical Thomean perspective. These sayings are not correctly attributed to Jesus.” (The Five Gospels, p. 494).

There are many ideas here in these commentaries as they try to related these words to baptism and to Adam and Eve before ‘the fall’ and while some do touch upon the idea of the children, we believe that most miss the point by getting tied to this trampling of the clothing, others by the idea of shame, and yet others by the idea of the fleshy body. The message here is much simpler from our perspective and we should note that it IS disciples who are asking this question and, based upon the nature of the question, we could assume that this is near the end of the Master’s time with us but this may not be True, According to our chronology ¹⁰ the Master does say “Yet a little while am I with you, and then I go unto him that sent me” (John 7:33) months earlier during His first visit to Jerusalem. It is likely from this type of saying from the Master that the disciples come to ask the question that we read in Thomas’ Gospel, “When will you appear to us, and when will we see you?“. Again, as we normally see in Thomas, the Master does not directly answer the question which is asked but gives them a sort of riddle or what we would call a parabolic saying. There is likely no True relevance here to the actual disrobing of the disciple but rather a statement of fact saying ‘when you can do this thing, disrobe without shame, then you will see me‘. Here we would insert that one would then be able to realize His presence. Relating this to the twenty first saying as some commentary does, we should see that the nature of the disciple is as the little child, the child who has not developed that sense of self, the child who is humble and unassuming, and, here in this saying we have the added idea of the child who is unashamed. In the synoptic Gospels we learn that it is necessary to be as a little child for the Kingdom as the Master tells us saying: “Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein” (Mark 10:15). In this combination of sayings then we have the Kingdom of God, discipleship and the idea of seeing Him ALL tied to this idea of the humble, meek and unassuming nature of the little child who has not yet been spoiled by the illusion and the glamour, the vanity, of Life in this world.

Here in this saying the requirement is that one is able to exhibit this unashamed nature of the little child in order to see Him which we interpret as to realize His presence as the Christ Within. All of the extra words about trampling are merely that, extra words that will detract some from the Truth of this mystery which is revealed only to those who can see. The Greek version simply states that “His disciples say to him: “When wilt thou appear to us, and when shall we see thee?” He says <to them:> “When you strip yourselves and are not ashamed […]” (Doresse) or, as Mr. Bernhard renders this: “His disciples said to him, “When will you be visible to us? And when will we see you?” He said, “When you undress and are not ashamed.” Here, without the idea of trampling and the specific mention of the little child, the message is the same and the nature of the little child is assumed.

We will continue with our thoughts in the next post.

Aspect of God	Potency	Aspect of Man	In Relation to the Great Invocation	In relation to the Christ
GOD, The Father	Will or Power	Spirit or Life	Center where the Will of God IS KNOWN	Life
Son, The Christ	Love and Wisdom	Soul or Christ Within	Heart of God	Truth
Holy Spirit	Light or Activity	Life Within	Mind of God	Way

Note on the Quote of the Day

This daily blog also has a Quote of the Day which may not be in any way related to the essay. Many of these will be from the Bible and some just prayers or meditations that may have an influence on you and are in line with the subject matter of this blog. As the quote will change daily and will not store with the post, it is repeated in this section with the book reference and comment.

We repeat here a Quote of the Day that we spent much time with over the course of our essays. In this affirmation we find the Truth of discipleship as we have been ever been expressing and here we can relate our themes of the last few days; “take no thought” for the things of the world and that we approach the Kingdom and discipleship in the nature of the little child, in humbleness, meekness, unashamed in any way and unassuming. The message that this imparts for us today IS that it IS the Soul that is at work in the world of men as it expresses to some degree the purpose, power and the will through Life in this world. These words are from a meditation offered to his students by our Tibetan brother and in which we find greater understanding of the message of the Master. This IS Truly the way of the disciple.

My Soul has purpose, power and will; these three are needed on the Way of Liberation.

My Soul must foster love among the sons of men; this is its major purpose.

I, therefore, will to love and tread the Way of Love. All that hinders and obstructs the showing of the Light must disappear before the purposes of the Soul.

My will is one with the great Will of God;. that Holy Will requires that all men serve. And unto the purposes of the Plan I lend my little will.

Let the peace of God rule in your hearts!

• ⁴ Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888
• ¹⁰ A Chronological Harmony of the Gospels; Stephen J. Hartdegen, O.F.M., S. Scr. (1942)
• ¹⁴ The Gospel of Thomas; Translated by Stephen J. Patterson and James M. Robinson; http://gnosis.org/