Jesus on Self-Inquiry (Gospel of Thomas)

I have taken several trips to the Eastern Mediterranean countries to visit Biblical sites – Israel, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt. One year I took a trip to Greece that followed the journeys of the apostle Paul. One of my favorite sites was not a biblical one. It was Delphi on Mt. Parnassus. It was said that the maxim "Know thyself" was inscribed upon the Temple of Apollo there. Today it is called self-inquiry. 

These words are the teaching of Jesus, according to the third saying in the Gospel of Thomas. Jesus said, "If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."

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Transcript

I have taken several trips to the Eastern Mediterranean countries to visit Biblical sites – Israel, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt. One year I took a trip to Greece that followed the journeys of the apostle Paul. One of my favorite sites was not a biblical one. It was Delphi on Mt. Parnassus. It was said that the maxim "Know thyself" was inscribed upon the Temple of Apollo there. 

I climbed around the ruins but did not see the words of the Delphic oracle engraved anywhere.  But I sat on the mountainside and imagined people coming to that site to read and ponder those words. If I remember correctly, it was said to be engraved over the entrance. The saying is certainly the entrance to the spiritual life. Today it is called self-inquiry. 

These words are the teaching of Jesus, according to the third saying in the Gospel of Thomas. This saying has two parts. It probably should be divided into two sayings, but whichever scholar first numbered these sayings put them together. And I can see why, so I will take them together. Let me start by reading the saying in its entirety: 

Jesus said, "If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."

The first part is where you find the Kingdom of God, also known as the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of the Father. Christians talk a lot about heaven. They picture the Kingdom of Heaven as up there somewhere, although when pressed they can not say exactly where. They say Jesus ascended physically into the air to heaven, and they expect Jesus to someday appear in the sky returning from heaven to establish his kingdom on earth. 

That is not what Jesus taught according to the Gospel of Thomas. Jesus said the Kingdom of Heaven is not up in the sky. It is not in the clouds or above the clouds. It is also not in the depths of the sea. In other words Jesus is saying it is not a place in time and space. He said, “Rather, the kingdom is within you and it is outside you.” That is his way of saying it is everywhere. 

We are used to the canonical version of this saying where Jesus says that the Kingdom of God is within you. It can alternately be translated “in your midst,” although that is usually included only as a footnote. Here in Thomas Jesus clearly says, “the kingdom is within you and it is outside you.” It is omnipresent, just as we think of God as omnipresent. The Kingdom of God is the presence of God.

Then Jesus gets to the part about self-inquiry. He says, “Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father." 

Jesus is saying that once you know the Kingdom of God, then you know yourself. And once you know yourself, then you know God. When you see who you really are, then you know what God really is. When you know God, God knows you. As Meister Eckhart said seven hundred years ago, “The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me. My eye and God's eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge, and one love.” Jesus is saying that God knows God’s self in you. “When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that you are the children of the living father.”

This is what it means to say that we are made in the image of God. Genesis says we are made in the image and likeness of God in the way that we say that a son is the spitting image of his father or a daughter of her mother. Only Jesus is not talking about a physical resemblance; he is talking about a spiritual resemblance. The more we inquire into our true nature, we see it is not just a resemblance. We see it is identity.

Perhaps that is one reason Thomas is called the twin, which is the literal meaning of the name Thomas. In self-inquiry we look within and we look without. We look into the mirror of the soul and see that our true identity looks a lot like Christ. The Eternal Christ, the Universal Christ. We are Christ’s twin. 

The apostle Paul wrote: “We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.” When we see who we really are, then we see who Christ really is. When we see who Christ really is, then we see who God really is. And we can come at it from the other direction. When we search for God and find God, then we find ourselves and know ourselves for the first time.

T. S. Elliot famously wrote: “We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring. Will be to arrive where we started. And know the place for the first time.” That place is the Kingdom of God, which is our home. That is the lesson of the Parable of the Prodigal son, who traveled to the far country and only found what he was looking for and found himself, his true nature, when he returned home to the Father.

Jesus continues in the saying, “But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty." That is the condition of the vast majority of humans. People do not know who they are. Alan Watts wrote that wonderful little book entitled “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are.”

 People do not know who they are. At an existential level they feel that sense of lack. That is why some young people, and middle-aged people, and even older folks go in search of themselves. They feel “poor in spirit.” And that is a blessing, as Jesus said in the beatitude; that poverty is what prompts us to search until we find the kingdom of God. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

If we postpone that spiritual search until a more opportune time, then we always feel we are lacking. Organized institutional religion cannot fill that void. The only thing that can fill that void is finding the Kingdom of God. Not in some far-away country. No need to travel to a holy land like Israel or India or Tibet. The Holy Land is within you and all around you. 

If we do not embark on this pilgrimage then we always feel that poverty and it will consume us. “But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty." 

Listen again to this saying of Jesus in a slightly different translation: 

"If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the (Father's) kingdom is within you and it is outside you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty."

That is it for today. Grace and peace to you.