Those who have ears to hear should listen.
This is where the Kingdom reality breaks into view. This is when we understand that we are standing—and have always been standing—on Holy Ground. Each of us carries the Kingdom within. Everyone bears the seal of Christ.
But, if we can grasp the notion that we are filled with the fullness of Christ who fills everything in every way, then—and only then—are our eyes opened to realize that our connection with God has never been something we needed to discover outside of ourselves. It’s like wandering through our house, searching for our glasses when they’re sitting on top of our head. Or, like searching in the dark for our phone using the flashlight that’s on our phone.
“Do not tell lies and do not do what you hate,” he is shining a spotlight on their motives, and challenging the notion that suffering and abstaining from food or pleasure is what God desires from us. Why? Because, as we’ve already seen in this Gospel, Jesus is more concerned with our understanding of the lie of separation between God and Humanity. If, at the core of our being, we are already connected to God, there is no point in fasting to get God’s attention. There’s no reason to beg for God’s attention in prayer. God is already living and breathing within every single one of us. This realization undermines the religious practices of fasting, prayer, and alms giving as a means to curry favor with God. God desires that we will rest in the reality of our inseparable connection with God; to understand our Oneness with God, and to live our lives with that perspective.
...reminding ourselves that everything Jesus says in the Gospel of Thomas is somehow related to the illusion of separation, our oneness and connectivity with God and everyone else, or the shift in perspective one must experience in order to see the reality of oneness with greater clarity. This saying essentially encompasses all of those ideas at once. What I mean is this: There are two competing realities; the real world of oneness, and the false world of separation. In the Gospel of Thomas, whenever Jesus mentions “the world” he is pointing to the false reality; the illusion each of us has been taught to believe—a lie that says we are separate from God and from one another. This is the “world’ that Jesus has come to “cast fire upon.” It’s not Planet Earth he is referring to. It is the “world” or our reality marked by an ignorance of the Kingdom reality wherein all things exist by, through, and for Christ. Another way to express what Jesus is saying in this case might be something like: “I have set fire to the entire world system that continues to perpetuate the lie of separation, and I won’t stop until it’s completely burned to the ground.” Jesus is passionate and zealous for people to be set free from the toxic beliefs even the most religious among us claim to be “Gospel truth.” He opposes anyone who suggests that God is angry with His children or that we are separated from God for any reason. His heart is burning with the fierce fury of pure love that consumes every lie that exalts itself against the wisdom of our God—our God who is love incarnate. Once we fully embrace this notion that we are already one with the Divine Presence of God, and always have been, this awareness of our eternal connectivity with every single other person—who is also always one with the very same God—opens our eyes and the false reality which had been built upon the foundations of division, separation, and individuality become consumed in the unquenchable flames of truth. When the lie of separation is finally exposed, it ceases to exist. It vanishes in a puff of smoke and all that remains is reality itself. We now stand in the ashes of the lie that once imprisoned us. We are set free from the illusion. But, as long as there are others still enslaved by this illusion, the fire must continue to blaze. All around us people continually accept this delusion. They are blind to the truth of connectedness, as we once were. They suffer, as we once did, because they believe God is far away. They weep because they are convinced that their hope is “out there” somewhere beyond them, even as the glorious presence of Christ blazes within them and all around them. We are moved by their tears. We are acquainted with their sufferings. We know how they feel. But the fire is still burning. That cleansing, purifying, healing fire of Christ rages on. As the darkness is being exposed to the light of this beautiful fire which Jesus himself has kindled, reality breaks through. Blind eyes are opened. The lame learn to dance. The lost are found. The children return home to a Father who was waiting for them with open arms all along. In this saying, Jesus promises us that this fire will burn until every last lie is eventually, and inevitably obliterated, and everyone is, at last, set free from the illusion. In that day, you and I will know that Christ is in the Father, and the Father is in us, and we are in them. Let us guard this fire until that day comes.
Jesus said: “This heaven will pass away, and the one above it will pass away; and those who are dead are not alive, and those who are living will not die. In the days when you ate of what is dead, you made of it what is living. When you come to be light, what will you do? On the day when you were one, you became two. But when you have become two, what willyou do?”
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