Last Thursday, just before Palm Sunday, the New York Times reported the release of a remarkable document, Gospel of Judas. This early Christian manuscript surfaced after 1700 years, discovered in the desert of Egypt. The script was written on 13 sheets of papyrus, both front and back. The manuscript was a mess of more than 1,000 brittle fragments. Beginning in 2001, four scholars undertook the herculean task of assembling and arranging the papyrus fragments. A consensus English translation appears in the book, The Gospel of Judas (National Geographic, 2006).
I found that reading the Gospel is demanding and rewarding. It is demanding because words, lines, and portions of the text are missing. In the 26 pages of the text, there are 150 footnotes. Jesus speaks to his disciples using metaphors grounded in Gnosticism and ancient Jewish wisdom unfamiliar to me.
And yet, reading it is rewarding because listening to Jesus speak in the script, I can hear the same tender, loving Voice that I hear every day while reading his unworldly masterpiece, A Course In Miracles. Although in time, it appears that the two manuscripts are separated by almost 2000 years, in truth Jesus' Voice is eternal.
As I listened to his Voice in the Gospel, I simply allowed the words to wash over me, and I found that I connected in three places in particular.
The first time Jesus appears before his disciples, he "laughed." Now that got my attention.
One day he was with his disciples in Judea, and he found them gathered together and seated in pious observance. When he approached his disciples, gathered together and seated and offering a prayer of thanksgiving over the bread, he laughed. (Gospel, pp. 20-21)
Jesus knew that they were following their will, not God's, although they piously, or dutifully, appeared to be doing God's will. In the Introduction to the book, an editor, Marvin Meyer, comments.
In the Gospel of Judas, unlike the New Testament gospels, Jesus laughs a great deal. He laughs at the foibles of the disciples and the absurdities in human life. (p. 4)
The second connection occurs while Jesus talking to Judas laughs and says to him, "You thirteenth spirit." (p.31)
By this Jesus means that Judas was excluded from the circle of the twelve because his true identity is spiritual. Judas' will and God's will are one. Not mine but Thine.
Finally, Jesus says to Judas, "But you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me." (p.43) Judas is instructed by Jesus to help him by sacrificing the fleshly body, "the man" that bears the true spiritual self of Jesus. The editor comments:
Judas finally betrays Jesus in the Gospel of Judas, but he does so knowingly, and at the sincere request of Jesus. Jesus is a savior not because of the mortal flesh that he wears but because he can reveal the soul or spiritual person who is within, and the true home of Jesus is not this imperfect world below but the divine world of light and life. For Jesus in the Gospel of Judas, death is not tragedy, nor is it a necessary evil to bring about the forgiveness of sins. Death, as the exit from this absurd physical existence, is not to be feared or dreaded. Far from being an occasion of sadness, death is the means by which Jesus is liberated from the flesh in order that he might return to his heavenly home, and by betraying Jesus, Judas helps his friend discard his body and free his inner self, the divine self. (pp. 4-5)
And from His heavenly home, Jesus now speaks to us today.
I could not have said, "Betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss?" unless I believed in betrayal. The whole message of the crucifixion was simply that I did not. The "punishment" I was said to have called forth upon Judas was a similar mistake. Judas was my brother and a Son of God, as much a part of the Sonship as myself. Was it likely that I would condemn him when I was ready to demonstrate that condemnation is impossible? T-6.1.15:5-9
Finally, In Absence from Felicity: The Story of Helen Schucman and Her Scribing of A Course in Miracles (1991), Kenneth Wapnick reports that on October 2, 1976, Helen asked Jesus this question, "Was there a physical resurrection?"
This is His answer.
My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it. The last one had gone. It was laid in the tomb, but there was nothing left to bury. It did not disintegrate because the unreal cannot die. It merely became what it always was. And that is what "rolling the stone away " means. The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond. It merely ceases to interfere with vision. To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. What is understood as nothing must disappear.
I did assume a human form with human attributes afterwards, to speak to those who were to prove the body's worthlessness to the world. This has been much misunderstood. I came to tell them that death is illusion, and the mind that made the body can make another since form itself is an illusion. They did not understand. But now I talk to you and give you the same message. The death of an illusion means nothing. It disappears when you awaken and decide to dream no more. And you still do have the power to make this decision as I did.
God holds out His hand to His Son to help him rise and return to Him. I can help because the world is illusion, and I have overcome the world. Look past the tomb, the body, the illusion. Have faith in nothing but the spirit and the guidance God gives you. He could not have created the body because it is a limit. He must have created the spirit because it is immortal. Can those who are created like Him be limited? The body is the symbol of the world. Leave it behind. It canot enter Heaven. But I can take you there any time you choose. Together we can watch the world disappear and its symbol vanish as it does so. And then and then--I cannot speak of that.
A body cannot stay without illusion, and the last one to be overcome is death. This is the message of the crucifixion. There is no order of difficulty in miracles. This is the message of the resurrection. Illusions are illusions. Truth is true. Illusions vanish. Only truth remains.
These lessons needed to be taught but once, for when the stone of death is rolled away, what can be seen except an empty tomb? And that is what you see who follow me into the sunlight and away from death, past all illusions, on to Heaven's gate, where God will come Himself to take you home. (Absence from Felicity, pp. 398-399)
He is risen. He is risen, indeed.
Happy Easter.
To read a copy of the Gospel, please click below:
http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/lostgospel/_pdf/GospelofJudas.pdf
(In respect to laughter, I invite you to take a look at my previous blog post, "Remembering to laugh").
Time Magazine Article: Kiss of Judas
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