READING THE PARABLES OF JESUS INSIDE A JEEPNEY: NOW AN AUDIOBOOK!

READING THE PARABLES OF JESUS
INSIDE A JEEPNEY
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IN MEMORY OF HER

Mark and Matthew also have versions of Sunday's Gospel from John. In Matthew's and Mark's narratives, the woman who anoints Jesus with expensive perfume is unnamed. Jesus tells his disciples to remember what she did in memory of her. John's Gospel does exactly that: the woman who anoints Jesus is named. She is Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus.

A reading of the canonical gospels focused on his followers would show that--more often than not--they cannot understand what Jesus does and what he says. Over and over Jesus has to explain his words and his actions.

Over and over Jesus tells them about his suffering and his resurrection--and they misunderstand and disbelieve him. All four gospels end with women coming to the tomb to anoint a dead body! No one among Jesus’s twelve male disciples believed that he will rise again.

But one woman in the whole narrative does believe: the unnamed woman in Mark and Matthew; Mary of Bethany in John. She anoints Jesus for burial because there would be no body to anoint later. There would only be an empty tomb—as the named women disciples led by Magdalene discover when they came Easter morning with their anointing oils.

Friends don't forget this, ever: only one person believed that Jesus will be raised up: a woman.

And she was right!

Art, "Jesus speaks about forgiveness", JESUS MAFA, 1973, Cameroon (available online at the vanderbilt divinity library art galleries).
 

REVELATION ON REVELATION

 

THE SHORTEST SHORT INTRODUCTION TO REVELATION
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THE LOST BOYS

Luke 15 has three parables: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son.

Many among us grew up with allegorical interpretations of these parables. The sheep, the coin, the son all represent the sinner who is lost then found and saved by God.

My friends, let us try to read the parables as parables about shepherds and sheep, women and coins, and fathers and sons. The shepherd is not God. Nor the woman. Nor the father.

The shepherd is responsible for sheep under her care. The woman is responsible for her coins. The father is responsible for his sons.

If sheep, coins, and sons go astray, we ask those responsible: why?

For so long our interpretations have shielded and protected those responsible for sheep, coins, and sons. It is time we ask the shepherd, the woman, and the father: why did you lose them?

For so long we have shielded and protected David and Eli from what happened with their "lost" sons. We still do so with today's Davids and Elis.

*Art, "The Prodigal Son," JESUS MAFA, Cameroon, 1970 (available at the vanderbilt divinity library revised common lectionary art galleries).

https://a.co/d/7BlGW4z
 

THE PARABLE OF THE FIG TREE

 

For three years the owner of the Fig tree has waited. For three years he was patient. For three years he longed for one thing, fruit from his tree. Three years pass and there were none. So, he orders his gardener to chop it down. Waste of good soil. His gardener pleads, "Give it another year. I will dig around it and put manure." Give it another year.

We call them people with "green thumbs." People who love plants. People who sing and talk to them like they were people. People like the gardener who pleads, "Give it another year." People who celebrate the inter-connectedness of all life. People who believe in second chances for everyone and everything. People who know the magic properties of manure.

Then there are people who treat everyone and everything as property, as commodity, as disposable, as opportunities for extraction and exploration. And every single day they acquire square kilometers of prime agricultural land, ancestral domain, and public lands for profit.

There's a term for this insatiable greed: development aggression.

And everything and everyone in the way--everything that does not produce profit--is chopped down; is told, "May no one ever eat fruit from you ever!" Not just Fig trees.

*Art, "Children eating Figs" (M365 copilot generated image). https://a.co/d/6IdSfim

THE PARABLE OF THE WIDOW AND THE UNJUST JUDGE

Homilies on this parable tell us that if we persist, like the widow, in prayer, pleading to God, then God, like the judge, will relent.

Stop imagining that the judge in the story is God. He is not. He is a judge that did not fear God nor respect people. Jesus describes him as an unjust judge. He is like so many in the world's justice systems that serve the powerful, the propertied, and the privileged. (There are exceptions, of course, like the ICC and the ICJ.)

And then there's the widow. Widows are among the three most dispossessed people in the Bible (along with orphans and refugees), fighting for justice like so many in our country today: the thousands of widows caused by Duterte's anti-poor War on Drugs.

Tens of thousands of widows brought about by militarization, by large-scale mining, by human trafficking, by the US-led War on Terror, by powers and principalities fueled by insatiable greed and lust for profit. All crying out, all relentless, all persistent in their quest for justice.

And the unjust judge relents. Not because he had a change of heart. Nakulitan lang siya. The situation changed because the widow never gave up. Morning, noon, and night. Rain or shine. She was in his face. Standing her ground. She never lost hope. She fought for justice and justice prevails at the end. Then and now, widows who fight for justice never give up.

Dear Friends, justice always prevails. This is why we should always choose justice. And always stand with widows and orphans and those whose only hope is God.

*Art, "Persistent Widow" from FreeBibleImagesdotorg.

https://a.co/d/0pXQ2pz
 

HENS AND FOXES

 

Close your eyes. Imagine Jesus.

Is he handsome? With piercing blue eyes? With shoulder length blond hair? White? This is Trump's Jesus.

In Sunday's Gospel Reading, the most definitely nondescript, most probably brown-eyed, and Galilean Jesus compares himself to a hen, and calls Herod a fox. Now, this hen is calling us to follow him. This hen is also calling the rich--which includes Trump, Musk, Bezos, and their ilk--to sell everything they have, to give the proceeds to the poor, and to follow him.

Now, this hen is a prophet, like John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, Huldah, Anna, Amos, and Miriam, who speaks for God: The God who always takes the side of orphans, widows, and refugees.

Foxes want hens dead. Then and now. Herod wanted to kill Jesus. But this particular hen was not afraid of this particular fox. He had a mission to complete. And it was waiting for completion in Jerusalem.

Close your eyes again. Imagine Jesus. Not your Personal Lord and Savior. Nor Trump's.

But Jesus, the Prophet: Jesus who is risen among today's hens--mothers, sisters, daughters, relatives, and allies--fighting for justice for their kin extra-judicially killed in the War on Drugs; Jesus who is one hen among many hens--undeterred by death threats from foxes--rising up and "gathering their brood under their wings."


*There are hens who do not fear foxes. MS365 copilot generated image.