gospel of Thomas 12

The disciples said to Jesus, "We know that you will depart from us. Who is to be our leader?"

Jesus said to them, "Wherever you are, you are to go to James the righteous, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being."

This is an unusual little saying for the Gospel of Thomas. So far there's been so much paradox – so many parables to interpret in subtle ways. But here the question is simple. The disciples have got the feeling that Jesus is going to die. We know that you'll depart from us, or maybe they just thought he was going to go off travelling. Enlightened masters do crazy things. They can disappear for years at a time, without so much as a by your leave.

We know that you will depart from us. Who is to be our leader? Oh, dear. I can almost feel Jesus groaning with despair. Why do people need leaders? The sheep, the followers, can't even conceive of life without a leader. And yet enlightenment demands that of us: that we live every moment without a leader, without some external authority figure to look up to.

But the disciples weren't quite there yet. So they wanted to know, who should be the leader. Well, if you have to have a leader, it's best to ask before the master departs. Otherwise, there will be all sorts of trouble – infighting, factions, several people wanting to be the leader. You know all the petty politics that unenlightened people get up to.

So they ask Jesus, who is to be our leader? And Jesus said, wherever you are, go to James the righteous. So he picked out James, James the righteous. Now either James was enlightened already, and Jesus was effectively pointing this out to the other disciples. That may have been the case. Or it may be that James was just a good person to be a leader, if he had the right human qualities of being able to care for the disciples and show them a good direction to go in; to hold together the community.

Anyway, Jesus said, wherever you are, you are to go to James. I think he was helping them to stick together. Because another thing that can happen when a master departs, is that the little community that is built up around him can just fall apart, fragment. But if everyone clusters around someone else at that point, the community can continue. 

So James was to be the leader, James the righteous. For whose sake heaven and earth came into being – now this phrase does seem to indicate that Jesus is really giving James the stamp of approval. Perhaps James is enlightened. It seems likely from this. And there's a strange thing about one master saying someone else is enlightened, because the person who has become enlightened doesn't need confirmation, not for themselves. This confirmation is for others, for the unenlightened, who are not yet in a position to reliably judge, who is enlightened and who is not. Once one is enlightened, then it all becomes clear: who else is enlightened, and who is still struggling. But beforehand, one is not in a position to judge. So Jesus was saying this, for the sake of the unenlightened disciples. And this has happened in the past in many spiritual traditions.

In Zen Buddhism, in days gone by, a master would appoint one of the other monks as his successor. One of the monks has become enlightened. The old master feels that his work is done and he can die. So he says to everyone else, Look this guy's enlightened. Follow him after I have departed. It keeps the whole exploration going, in terms of spiritual communities.

So this little record in the Gospel of Thomas is saying to me that James had also become enlightened, and that the disciples could trust in his wisdom, once Jesus had departed.