News from the Kingdom of God. David Breeden

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      As we know from the canonical Gospels, religious authorities questioned the disciples of Jesus concerning their failure to observe basic purity laws. In answer to fairly concrete questions, Jesus offers more examples of the thinking in the first five sayings—all is one. What does this have to do with fasting, praying, charity, and diet?

      The radical shift that Jesus purposes—from orthopraxis (right-doing) to orthodoxy (right-thinking) has become such a basic feature of Western individualism that we can miss how radical this reorientation was.

      For more on the same subject, see saying #14.

      7

      Jesus said:

      Fortunate is the lion that a human eats,

      because that lion becomes human.

      Cursed is the human that a lion eats,

      because that human becomes a lion.

      Meditation

      Sufi tradition contains this story:

      Once a tiger was pursuing a man. The man ran and ran but could not escape the tiger. Finally, in desperation, the man stopped, turned, and screamed to the tiger, “Why don’t you stop chasing me?”

      The tiger replied, “Why don’t you stop being so appetizing?”

      8

      Jesus said:

      A wise fisherman cast his net into the sea.

      He pulled it up full of little fish.

      Yet among the small, the wise fisherman

      found a good, large fish.

      He threw the small fish back,

      Keeping the large one.

      Those with ears, let them hear.

      Meditation

      What is the net?

      Is it the words

      We weave to catch

      The truth with?

      And there

      Among the small

      We find larger . . .

      What?

      Meaning?

      Or something else?

      9

      Jesus said:

      Listen—a man came out to sow seeds.

      He took handfuls and cast the seeds.

      Some seeds fell upon the road;

      the birds came and ate those.

      Other seeds fell onto rocks,

      and those did not send roots into the earth

      nor did they send shafts rising into the sky.

      And some seeds fell into thorns,

      which choked the seeds,

      and the worms ate them.

      And other seeds fell upon good earth,

      and those gave fruit up to the sky.

      And the sower got sixty times yield from some

      and one hundred-twenty times yield from others.

      Meditation

      The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke all contain this parable, with the Jesus of Mark later explaining the parable to his disciples: “The sower sows the word.” This is the understanding that has come down to us through Christian tradition.

      What if, however, the sower sows fire, as in the following saying . . .

      10

      Jesus said:

      I have cast fire

      upon the world;

      look, I watch

      as it burns.

      Meditation

      What if fire

      Is the seeds

      The sower casts?

      What if fire

      Is the word?

      What if

      What’s sown

      Is thinking anew?

      In 1 Samuel 10, Samuel tells the young Saul this,

      . . . as you come to the town, you will meet a band of prophets coming down from the shrine with harp, tambourine, flute, and lyre playing in front of them; they will be in a prophetic frenzy. Then the spirit of the Lord will possess you, and you will be in a prophetic frenzy along with them and be turned into a different person.

      11

      Jesus said:

      This sky will pass away,

      and the sky above that

      will pass away.

      Those who are dead do not live,

      and those who live will not die.

      When you eat what is dead,

      you make it alive.

      When you come to be in light,

      what will you do?

      When you were one,

      you became two;

      but when you become two,

      what will you do?

      Meditation

      Meister Eckert said,

      We fight the dark

      Not knowing that

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