The Naked Truth (The Gospel of Thomas)

In this episode I am looking at two sayings in the Gospel of Thomas, sayings 36 and 37. Both have to do with clothing. Here they are: 

Jesus said, "Do not be concerned from morning until evening and from evening until morning about what you will wear." His disciples said, "When will you become revealed to us and when shall we see you?" Jesus said, "When you disrobe without being ashamed and take up your garments and place them under your feet like little children and tread on them, then will you see the Son of the Living One, and you will not be afraid."

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Transcript

Today I am looking at two sayings in the Gospel of Thomas, sayings 36 and 37. Both have to do with clothing. Here they are: 

Jesus said, "Do not be concerned from morning until evening and from evening until morning about what you will wear." His disciples said, "When will you become revealed to us and when shall we see you?" Jesus said, "When you disrobe without being ashamed and take up your garments and place them under your feet like little children and tread on them, then will you see the Son of the Living One, and you will not be afraid."

The first of the two sayings is familiar from the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew. But the Matthew version is much more extensive, having to do not only with worry about clothing, but about food and drink and the length of our lives. 

I should note here that all gospel-writing involves editing. That is true not just of Thomas, but of Matthew, Mark, and Luke as well. They did not record all that Jesus said, according to their oral and written sources. They selected what sayings to put in their gospels. Thomas here selected just one small part of the Sermon on the Mount about not being concerned about clothing. Then he put it with another saying that we do not have in the canonical gospels. 

Thomas focused on clothing and nakedness. Of course he is talking symbolically and not literally when he talks about disrobing. Jesus and his disciples did not walk about Galilee naked. If they did, we would have heard about it. The prophet Ezekiel, on the other hand, was known for stripping naked to make a point. But he was a bit crazy anyway.

In the Gospel of Thomas Jesus says not to be concerned about clothing. It seems to be a mild point, but its importance is not to be overlooked. Clothing is part of a person’s identity – both then and now. 

I usually wear flannel shirts. Three of the four seasons of the year, reverting to island shirts and t shirts in the warm weather. I do not do this consciously. I just like them. They are comfortable and warm. My daughter likes to wear as much as I do. Not so my two sons.  

My daughter's son does not like her flannel shirts. They were going to an event at the junior high school, and my grandson asked his mom to please not wear a flannel shirt. None of the other moms did. It embarrassed him. He is very aware of clothing, as most teenagers are. He buys t shirts with messages on them that make a point. They are part of his identity.

Jesus talks about the Pharisees with their long robes, wanting to be seen. So this is part of what Jesus is talking about. Jesus is saying not to be concerned about our identity. Our personal identity.  Our ego. When we fixate on personal identity, then we are lost in the ego. When we identify with the ego and all its trappings, then we are lost in illusion. 

But in the next saying he goes beyond being concerned about clothing and talks about getting rid of it. Let me read it for you again:

His disciples said, "When will you become revealed to us and when shall we see you?" Jesus said, "When you disrobe without being ashamed and take up your garments and place them under your feet like little children and tread on them, then will you see the Son of the Living One, and you will not be afraid."

This is talking about seeing Jesus as he really and seeing ourselves as we really are. Jesus is physically standing right before them. They can see him physically, yet they ask, “When will you become revealed to us and when shall we see you?" So obviously this is referring to spiritual sight. Talking about seeing Jesus’ true nature and not his body.

Jesus answers by telling his disciples to become like little children, which is a theme that Jesus uses several times in the gospels. Here it is about children stripping off their clothing and leaving it on the ground and running around naked. That is what little kids do. Our kids used to run around the house naked when they were small. Same with our grandkids. And they used to do it outside as well.

But at a certain age they become self-conscious of their nakedness. That is what the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is about. It is about coming of age. It is a myth that depicts the fabrication of an ego and the consequences of that ego. Jesus is telling his disciples that when they can once again disrobe without being ashamed, then they will see the Son of the Living One. They have to become like little children.

Again, he is talking about more than physical clothing here. Physical clothing is symbolic of all the psychological clothing that we wear. It represents the masks that we wear. That grandson I was talking about a moment ago made an elaborate mask to wear trick-or-treating on Halloween. It was impressive.

We all wear masks. Most people do not realize it. When we drop the masks, we see clearly. Clothing masks the body, but ego masks our true selves. So much so that when we look at ourselves we do not see ourselves as we really are. We see only the masks, the egoic clothing that we have constructed for ourselves and which society constructs for us. 

We identify ourselves with the egoic self, with the individual psychological self. We think that is who we really are. When that self feels threatened, then we protect that ego as if it were our life. But it is not our life. 

This is where many ideas about the afterlife and the fear of death comes in. People identify with the separate individual self and feel existentially threatened when that self is in danger. Death is the ultimate danger to the separate self. So we create myths of an individual afterlife. But deep down we know that the death of the body means the death of the individual self, which was created by the brain, which is part of the body.

We can fantasize all we want about a heaven where egos live forever, but that is just an illusion created by the mind because it cannot conceive of not existing. But the truth – the naked truth – is that all our masks will die. They will cease to exist. That scares our physical and psychological self to death. 

Yet when we allow the self to die, when we take out our psychological clothing and let it drop at our feet, and we step out of it and on it, then we see who we really are. We see the world as it really is. And we see Christ as he really is. He is the Son of the Living One. That expression means that Christ shares the eternal nature of the One with a capital O. The Living One. All life on earth are expressions of the One Life. 

As the prologue of the Gospel of John says, “In Him was Life and the Life was the Light of men, and the Light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.” When we let the masks fall – let the clothing fall, the psychological clothing fall – then we see the Naked Truth that we are one. Children of the Living One.