4 Jesus said: The man aged in his days will not
hesitate to ask a little child of seven days about
the place of life, and he shall live. For there
are many first who shall be last, and they shall
become a single one.
Thomas joins the 'Four Gospels', all of whom remind us that we must be born again and/or that we must become 'as little children'. The baptism signifies the new birth, and when you come out of the water, you are as a little child - spiritually speaking. All five writers wanted us to understand that there are two kinds of life-- two lives in fact: the material and the spiritual.
Before he met John the Baptist, Jesus lived in the first mode, perhaps more perfectly than anyone else ever has. Coming out of the water he was someone else-- a spirit filled person. He did this to show us how to live.
The second part of the logion repeats the words of the three synoptics, with some amplification: those who hear the child "become a single one", God's answer to the prayer of Jesus in John 17.
So we go from the natural child to the spiritual child to complete oneness with God. PTL.
6 comments:
I like the idea of Jesus submitting to baptism by John the Baptist. It says very clearly that he had his own wounds, his own issues. This idea that Jesus bypassed the human condition, that he was somehow superhuman, is wiped away by that simple gesture. What burdens did he carry? It doesn't matter - just that he ached to be free of them. Thanks for your post!
Thanks, Nancy. I appreciate your creative comment. I managed to bring up your blog (after a long wait), but I was never able to comment; it timed out 3 or 4 times. Your work is really great.
I wish you were blogging with blogspot; those blogs seem to be much more readily available here.
Howdy Nancy! You found us over here!
Sorry Larry for being AWOL lately -- I'm feeling rather burnt out and am travelling on YM business next two weekends so no end in sight.
I'll start to be a bit more present by December but by then the season of tehf at guy in the red suit kicks in.
Hello Larry
Thanks for the excellent practical feedback. I have moved my blog to blogger, and I still haven't figured the durn thing out, but it's coming. Please visit again?
It's supposed to come up automatically, but in case it doesn't, it's nancysapology... and then blogspot.com/
Larry,
In this logion, Thomas talks about a seven day old infant. For an infant this young, his mother is not separate from him/herself. The seven day old infant is totally unconditioned by our material world. That small infant still exists within us. In some way, we remember what it is like to love like there is no other. We remember feeling the love of mother that we gave ourselves totally to. In some primoridal way, we remember being loved like that. It seems to me, that we then forget this - and so we spend the rest of our maturing years looking for this love 'in all the wrong' places. What if we could see again with the pure eyes of a seven day old infant? What would we understand about God's love then? What would it be like to be "re-membered?"
So true, Meredith, and so appropos. The infant has not differentiated himself from the mother, or from the universe. Thomas, and others like him, seem to be saying that we are headed back in that direction. PTL
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