Doubting Thomas?
Learning to see with the eyes of the heart
I am the light shining upon all things. I am the sum of everything, for everything has come forth from me, and towards me everything unfolds. Split a piece of wood, and there I am, pick up a stone and you will find me there.
These are the words of Jesus recorded in Logion 77 of The Gospel of Thomas. In some respects it sounds not unlike the first four verses of the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.”
Both of these texts teach that Jesus embodies the unitive principle of all reality, the source and end of creation, the fundamental aliveness and coherence undergirding and connecting all things. The saying from Thomas also connotes a sense of holism, of the identity of the whole in the part and the part in the whole. All is one, but the one expresses itself in the particularity of each stone and piece of wood.
There is another saying in Thomas that reminds us of John’s Gospel. In Logion 108, Jesus says, “Whoever drinks what flows from my mouth will come to be as I am, and I also will come to be as they are, so that what is hidden will become manifest.” Compare this to Jesus’ words in John:
“Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” (John 4:14)
“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will giver for the life of the world is my flesh.” (John 6: 51)
“Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5b)
These images of drinking, eating and abiding are ways of expressing the truth that our identity is found in Jesus. When we consciously recognize and live this truth then Christ is manifest in us. We are in Christ and Christ is in us; again, the whole is in the part and the part is in the whole. But more than that, Jesus feeds us – he gives us his life as food to nourish our souls, to energize our own spiritual growth. And he imparts to us the sacrament of Holy Communion so that he can continue to feed us; so that he can be as we are, and we can be as him.
The energy Jesus transmits to us occasions an evolutionary leap in human consciousness, amounting to a whole new creation. When the Risen Christ breathes on the disciples and says to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” he symbolically re-enacts the Spirit blowing over the water at the beginning of creation in Genesis. He transmits his own aliveness and invites them to set others free as he has set them free: free from bondage to sin and death; free from the nostalgia and grief and fear that keep them from perceiving their aliveness and their capacity to move into a new future together. (John 20:19-23)
The disciples’ experience of the Risen Jesus catalyzes their awareness of their own identity and power. They are able to see things they could not perceive before. They are able to do things they could not do before. Through Jesus, a channel has opened up between this world and the world to come, between earth and heaven, such that the disciples are able to live in this world according to the values and conditions operating in another world – the kingdom of God. They remain in this world, but not of it. And through them, this other world, the kingdom of God, will have real effects in this world: forgiveness, healing, reconciliation, discernment, empowerment. What is hidden will become manifest.
At the beginning of John’s Gospel, Jesus told his disciples that they would experience this opening between the realms: “You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” (John 1:51). But it still comes as a shock \when the Risen Christ appears to them, when they perceive that the energetic exchange between the realms transcends death and triumphs over the grave. Thomas was no exception in this regard. They were all doubting disciples.
Thomas gets a bad rap, but he only required the same catalyst that the other disciples experienced. They needed to see Jesus’ resurrection body until they could learn to perceive him within themselves, with the eye of the heart. And blessed are those who do so without the benefit of a resurrection appearance. Split a piece of wood and he is there. Pick up a stone and he is there. Can you perceive it?
The Thomas whom Western Christian tradition has belittled as “Doubting Thomas,” is the Apostle to Persia and India, according to Eastern Christian tradition. The Gospel long attributed to him was finally discovered in the unearthing of the Nag Hammadi library in Egypt in 1945. It would not appear in English translation until 1959, and only in the last thirty years has it begun to gain currency in church circles.
The Gospel of Thomas consists of 114 short sayings of Jesus. There is no narrative or biography. It does contain many of the “hard teachings,” parables, and beatitudes found in the canonical gospels, plus a number that are unique to Thomas. Scholars are divided about when it was composed, but its sources are as early as any of the writings in the canonical gospels.
Did Thomas write it? Given the “eastern” feel of some of the sayings, which partake of the sapiential or Wisdom literature of the ancient near east, it might reflect Jesus’ sayings as seen through the lens of Thomas’ encounter with the religious traditions of Persia and India. Whoever wrote it was certainly an advanced student of Jesus’ teaching and a mystic of the first order.
As we meditate on Thomas, and the resurrection experience he and others shared, let him be for us a mirror in which we come to perceive Christ ourselves. What do we need to let go of in order to see Jesus with the eyes of the heart? Are we clinging to the past, to a way of being church that is dying in the grip of nostalgia? Do we need to be healed of our fear or our grief? Do we have an image of Jesus, an expectation, that prevents us from receiving him as he is?
Perhaps our idea of Jesus is too small – my personal savior, my white Jesus who carries my projections, a good man who lived long ago – too narrow and confining to perceive the living, cosmic Christ. And, yet, he already is making his home in us, opening up a channel to transmit the energy of love, wisdom, and healing that we and our world so desperately need. Split a piece of wood and he is there. Pick up a stone and he is there. Open the eyes of your heart, and he is there. Can you perceive it?