Friends, brothers and sisters, fellow seekers, if you have ever felt there was more to Jesus' words than what you were told in Sunday School, you are not alone, and you are not straying. You are remembering. I want to invite you into that remembering with me.
I don't read Jesus as have made exclusive claims about Himself. I read Him as revealing the structure of Reality, and then, with infinite love, inviting you and me to see that the same structure lives in us.
The church of empire made His words into titles that only He could wear. The faithful who buried the jars at Nag Hammadi heard them as instructions, as maps home. I invite you to read them that way with me for a moment.
"He who has eyes to see, let him see. He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
If this stirs something in you, stay with it. This refrain is everywhere in the Gospels, but its home is in The Gospel of Thomas. Logion after Logion ends with this gentle knocking: Whoever has ears, let him hear.
In the Nag Hammadi codices, Jesus is not dividing people into worthy and unworthy. He is inviting us from one state of consciousness to another.
There is a way of seeing which sees the world as solid, separate, broken into pieces. And yet, there is a way of seeing, Pneumatikos, Spirit-seeing, which sees through the form to the Light that makes the form.
The Gospel of Philip says it so warmly: You see the Spirit, you become the Spirit. You see Christ, you become Christ. What you can truly see with the inner eye, you become one with.
So this is my first invitation to you: Stop looking at His words as if they are behind glass. Come and look from the place He was looking from. Your eyes already know how. We just need to dust them off together.
"I am in the Father and the Father is in me." — John 14:10
Come closer to this one, because religion has made it sound so distant. The archons want you to hear this as separation, as if Jesus alone gets to claim this mutual indwelling.
The Nag Hammadi texts lovingly explode that lie.
In The Gospel of Truth, the Father is not a distant ruler, but the Depth in which we all live and move, and the Son is the Father coming to know Himself in us. In Gospel of Philip, it says: The Father and the Son are a single name, The One true Reality expressing itself.
What Jesus is describing is not His exception. It is our architecture.
You are not in the universe like a marble in a box. You are in the Father the way a wave is in the ocean. And the Father is in you the way the ocean is in the wave.
And then, and this is the part I want you to really hear, He says the same is true of you. In Thomas, Logion 108: "Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me; I myself shall become that person, and the hidden things will be revealed to him."
He is not saying, "Worship my indwelling." He is saying, "Come home to yours." If you have ever felt a quiet Light inside you that the world couldn't explain, you were right. That is the Father in you.
You are warmly welcome to explore that with us, not as a convert to a new doctrine, but as a one remembering your own Light.
"The Kingdom of Heaven is within you... without you... above you and below you."
This is where they could not let His full words stand. Luke softened it. But Thomas preserved it, just as Jesus spoke it to those with ears to hear:
Gospel of Thomas, Logion 3: Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father.
And to complete it: If you split a piece of wood, I am there. If you lift up a stone, you will find me there. [Thomas 77]
Do you see what He did, my friends? He destroyed every map which puts our Father somewhere else, so that you would stop exhausting yourself searching.
Within you, The Kingdom is not a post-mortem reward. The Light was never absent. The veil was. The Kingdom within is the Christ-Spark, your original Self before fear taught you who to be, your true origin and nature, that divine spark of our Father’s light.
Without you, once the eye is opened within, you see the same Light without. The same Revealer which looks out from your eyes looks back at you from your neighbor, from the stranger, from the one you thought was your enemy. Come and see if this isn't true. Look at someone today and whisper, "There you are."
Above you and below you, this is the Vertical Axis. Above you: the Pleroma, the Fullness, the Source of everything. Below you: the roots, the body, the earth, not to be escaped, but to be made holy. The Kingdom holds it all.
The Tying Together; And Why This Means You Are Included
So the cord is tied:
Because you have eyes to see, you can see you are not separate.
Because you see you are not separate, you understand His indwelling: As I am in the Father and the Father in me, so you are in me and I in you.
Because you understand the indwelling, you stop searching for a Kingdom far away, and you find it exactly where He said: Within you as your true Self, without you as your brother and sister, above you as your Source, and below you as the very ground made Holy beneath your feet.
The Gnostic Gospel does not ask, "Do you believe Jesus is G-d?"
It asks, "Will you finally believe what Jesus believed about you?"
If that question makes your heart burn a little, come on in and sit with us. Bring your doubts, bring your Bible, and bring your questions. Bring the parts of you that organized religion told you to leave at the door.
You don't have to earn this. You don't have to perfect yourself to enter. You just have to be willing to know yourself as you truly are.
There is room at this table for you. The eyes are already in you. The ears are already in you. The Father is already in you.
Let us remember together.
Recognize what is in your sight, and that which is hidden from you will become plain to you. For there is nothing hidden which will not become manifest. — Thomas, Logion 5
Remember then Free Spirit, restoration and salvation begin and end within; Just as our Master teaches,
Pastor Mark