Lion devours mortal, becomes mortal.
Mortal devours Lion, becomes leonine.

You made your way through dusty streets,
sandaled, dry, hung in cloth worn soft by travel.

Your face browned in the sun, rough, intimately lined.
Your beard and your hair braided with sand.

The Lion came to devour that which was human.
Eat. Drink. Weep. Teach. Unyieldingly love.

Perish. You left a banquet table for the feast.
We consecrate and gorge to become worthy, yet

forget that on which the Lion feasted.
The Lion became mortal, we are one.

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Author’s Note:

In pondering Logion 7, it is said that the two images are not parallel. It is said that Jesus is describing two different states of human beings. I think I understand this, but I have a different way of seeing this parable.

Jesus, not as the lamb but as the Lion of God, leonine in his love for us, becomes human, lives human. The curse of being human is death itself. Jesus had to die because he was mortal. However, He left us the last supper, our communion, as a reminder. When we eat the Lion He becomes a part of us, we become the Lion. We need this reminder lest we forget that He is the Lion within us.

I think I will need to return to this logion and my understanding of this gospel grows.
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Logion 7 of the Gospel of Thomas translated by Thomas O. Lambdin as found at the Gnostic Society Library.

(7) Jesus said, “Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man; and cursed is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes man.”

The other poems in this series of my study of the Gospel of Thomas can be found at Theophany or here:

Towers/6
Through the Mirror/5
Alone/4
Breath/3
Sovereignty/2
Twin/1