Who Was Jesus ... Really? (The Gospel of Thomas)

Today we look at the thirteenth saying in the Gospel of Thomas. 

“Jesus said to his disciples, "Compare me to someone and tell me whom I am like."
Simon Peter said to him, "You are like a righteous angel." Matthew said to him, "You are like a wise philosopher." Thomas said to him, "Master, my mouth is wholly incapable of saying whom you are like." Jesus said, "I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring which I have measured out." 

And he took him and withdrew and told him three things. When Thomas returned to his companions, they asked him, "What did Jesus say to you?" Thomas said to them, "If I tell you one of the things which he told me, you will pick up stones and throw them at me; a fire will come out of the stones and burn you up." 

This saying in the Gospel of Thomas stands in clear contrast with the famous passage in the canonical gospels where Peter gives his famous confession of faith.  The Gospel of Mark says: 

“Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.” Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.”

In Matthew’s gospel Peter gives a longer and more famous answer: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”

The difference between the canonical and noncanonical accounts is the difference between traditional Christianity and Christian nonduality. 

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Transcript

Today we look at the thirteenth saying in the Gospel of Thomas. 

“Jesus said to his disciples, "Compare me to someone and tell me whom I am like."
Simon Peter said to him, "You are like a righteous angel." Matthew said to him, "You are like a wise philosopher." Thomas said to him, "Master, my mouth is wholly incapable of saying whom you are like." Jesus said, "I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring which I have measured out." 

And he took him and withdrew and told him three things. When Thomas returned to his companions, they asked him, "What did Jesus say to you?" Thomas said to them, "If I tell you one of the things which he told me, you will pick up stones and throw them at me; a fire will come out of the stones and burn you up." 

This saying in the Gospel of Thomas stands in clear contrast with the famous passage in the canonical gospels where Peter gives his famous confession of faith.  The Gospel of Mark says: 

“Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.” Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.”

In Matthew’s gospel Peter gives a longer and more famous answer: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”

The difference between the canonical and noncanonical accounts is the difference between traditional Christianity and Christian nonduality. In the New Testament Jesus asks his disciples what people are saying about him. The disciples respond that people are saying that Jesus is John the Baptist or Elijah or one of the prophets.  Only then does Jesus ask who they think he is, and there is only one answer from the apostles – that of Peter.

In Thomas he only asks who the disciples themselves think he is. And they give various answers. Peter says Jesus is an angel - a righteous angel. Other versions translate this: a just messenger or a righteous messenger. Matthew says Jesus is a wise philosopher. Both Peter and Matthew get it wrong, which is another way of saying that both the Gospel of Mark (traditionally based on Peter’s memories) and the Gospel of Matthew (which has the longest and most famous version of this story) have it wrong.

But Thomas – who does not even appear in the story in the canonical versions - got it right. Even he did not get it completely right. “Thomas said to him, ‘Master, my mouth is wholly incapable of saying whom you are like.” In other words, we are incapable of describing who Jesus is in his true nature. It reminds me of the opening words of the Tao te Ching. “The Tao that can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.” 

Thomas realized that names and titles are misleading. Words cannot capture the Divine. That is the difference between the gospel of nonduality and the theistic gospel you will hear from pulpits in this land. Most preachers think Christ can be defined in doctrines, creeds and confessions of faith, and you better get it right or else! They are so certain that they have the truth that they excommunicate and label people heretics who do not adhere to these verbal constructions. 

One has to recite the right formula and interpret it the right way with the right meanings of the words, or these Christians will say you are not really a Christian. For most Christians  orthodox theology - which means right doctrine - is what is important. They believe that ideas about God and Christ are really true, and that holding to these beliefs are what matter.

In Mark’s gospel Peter believed Jesus was the Messiah, with all that meant to Peter. In Matthew’s gospel a later and fuller theological formula is put into Peter’s mouth: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Jesus is not just the Messiah, but the Son of God. Then Jesus gushes all over Peter. 

He says, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” 

Catholics say Jesus is appointing Peter the first pope. Protestants will say that the rock Jesus is talking about is not Peter himself, but Peter’s confession of faith, making this Christological formulation the rock that the church is built upon. As I said last time, this is obviously later church orthodoxy put into the mouths of Peter and Jesus in order to establish the power and authority of the church. The fact that these words are not found in the earlier gospel of Mark show that these are not the original words of Peter or Jesus. 

But in the Gospel of Thomas, Peter says Jesus is an angel or a messenger, which is a far cry from the Messiah or the Son of God. Peter got it wrong, but Thomas got it right ... kind of. He says, “Master, my mouth is wholly incapable of saying whom you are like.” Thomas says in effect that words and ideas cannot describe the Eternal Christ, and any attempts to do that are misleading.

Yet even in Thomas’s gospel, Thomas is corrected by Jesus. He points out that even calling him “Master” is a mistake. Jesus said, "I am not your master.” Wow! It reminds me of the scene where the man calls Jesus, “Good teacher” and Jesus scolds him saying, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God!” Jesus would not even accept the description “good.”

In the Gospel of Thomas Jesus will not accept the title Master. Jesus is trying to point Thomas beyond the label Master, beyond the need for an authority figure. It reminds me of the Zen saying: If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him!” That is a hyperbolic way of saying that all religious titles and authorities are dangerous. 

Then Jesus says to Thomas, “Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring which I have measured out." So Jesus is saying that he is not his master. He is just someone who found the Water of Life and is spooning it out to whoever is ready to drink it. It reminds me of the Zen Master who said that for forty years he sold water by the river. Jesus sold water by the river for three years before he was killing for doing so.

It is reminiscent of the story of the woman at the well in the Gospel of John. Jesus said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” The water that Jesus gives just primes the pump, and soon water will be springing up by itself.

Jesus has been teaching his disciples where to find water. But only Thomas heard his message an found it and drank from it. He drank so much from it that he has become intoxicated by it. I love that analogy of spiritual awakening. It is a type of intoxication of joy and peace and love. We see things differently when we drink from the spring of living water of eternal life.

On to the rest of the saying. In the New Testament gospels, after Peter’s confession of faith, Jesus instructs the disciples not to tell anyone that he is the Messiah. Scholars call this the Messianic Secret. It is a theme throughout the Gospel of Mark. The Gospel of Thomas has its own version of the Messianic secret, but this one is told only to Thomas and not the other disciples. Here it is again:

And he took him and withdrew and told him three things. When Thomas returned to his companions, they asked him, "What did Jesus say to you?" Thomas said to them, "If I tell you one of the things which he told me, you will pick up stones and throw them at me; a fire will come out of the stones and burn you up."

Thomas has a private audience with Jesus where he is told three things that the other apostles do not know about. When they ask him about it, Thomas says that if he told them even one of the things that Jesus told him, they would stone him! The funny thing – or maybe not so funny – is that this is exactly the attitude that the orthodox church had to the people who accepted the Gospel of Thomas.

What did Jesus tell Thomas, and which Thomas could not tell the other disciples? There is no way to know exactly that these three things are. Some think they are three things mentioned in the next saying, but I don’t think so. It is meant to be a mystery that is unspoken. 

But in general we can say that it is the type of teaching that we find in the Gospel of Thomas. It is what I call the gospel of Christian nonduality. It is that we and Christ are one, just like Jesus said that he and the Father were one. That is what would have gotten Thomas stoned. That is called heresy today. Yet Jesus prayed in the Gospel of John that we might know that oneness with the divine as he knows it.

That is why Jesus did not speak this openly to all of the disciples. Jesus was testing his disciples to see which of them was ready to hear what he had to say. That is why he asked them who they thought he was. By their answers Jesus knew that Peter was not ready. Matthew was not ready. Therefore the gospels based on their teachings – the Gospels of Mark and Matthew – do not include this wisdom. Only the Gospel of Thomas includes it. This is Jesus’ Gospel of the Kingdom of God.