ONE CHILD'S OFFERING

There are many people who imagine this story-- which we find in all four canonical gospels--as an actual event in Jesus's ministry. Then there are those who argue that it is a parable. All the parables we have looked at so far are stories that Jesus told. This one is different. It's a parable from the early church. Jesus is a character in the parable.

He sees the multitude hungry and, following the teachings of the Law and the Prophets, he tells his disciples to feed them. In the Synoptics, his disciples make up excuses. Send the crowd away. Let them feed themselves. In Sunday's lection from John 6, they tell him: we don't have enough funds to address the situation.

The excuses then sound so much like our excuses today.

Then a young child, possibly 12 years old or younger, offers what he has. Five barley loaves and two fish. And the miracle of feeding of the 5000 begins. There is a tradition that says barley tastes good... to cows, sheep, and horses! The poor, the anawim, ate barley. It was all they could afford. The rich had storehouses of wheat, and fattened themselves with it.

Do not forget this. Ever. The barley loaves and the fish that led to the feeding of the poor and hungry multitudes were offered by a POOR AND HUNGRY child. Many times we forget that the answer to our prayers is already among us. Many times, God's liberating acts begin when one--just one we usually do not expect--takes that step forward, that leap of faith, that offering of bread and fish.


*art, "Jesus multiplies the loaves and fish," (JESUS MAFA, 1973) from vanderbilt divinity library digital archives.

SLEEPING IN CHURCH

Many people sleep during Sunday services. Many people find such behavior unacceptable. Many other people understand the reasons why many people sleep during Sunday services.

In Genesis 1, God works for six days and rests on the seventh. Even God needs a break. Even God needs to take a nap.

Sunday's lection offers us a glimpse of Jesus declaring a break for himself and his discples. Mark 6:31 reads: Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”

They did go away to a quiet place and got some rest.

My friends, almost everyone needs a break. I say "almost everyone" because one-third of the world's wealthiest people are born wealthy and they will die wealthier without ever working one minute in their entire lives. This post is not about them.

This post is about people who live from payday to the next; those who do not even get the minimum wage; those who have never had a restful sleep in years; those dead-tired people in the pews who take naps during the pastor's sermon.

Please rest. Even God needs a break. Even God needs a nap.


*image: Rowan Atkinson as "Mr Bean" sleeping in church

PRINCESS AND PROPHET

Kakay Pamaran's work on Salome is a brilliant thesis using Historical Jesus Research methods. She argues that the "princess's dance which led to the prophet's death" tradition is part of a much bigger extra-canonical Salome Corpus that is still waiting to be collected, catalogued, and celebrated.

Salome and Mary Magdalene are two of the most attested interlocutors of Jesus in extra-canonical Christian literature. There are scholars whose research have shown how Mary Magdalene has been systematically erased from orthodox traditions. Kakay's research pursues a similar trajectory. There are copies of Mark where Salome completely disappears from the list of the women who discovers the empty tomb. Matthew’s and Luke's accounts do not mention Salome.

Many people today would call Magdalene a prostitute or adulteress and Salome a temptress or seductress. All these are false. Fake news. Kakay's work calls the church to repent of its violent sins of systematic erasuring and institutional forgetting.

More importantly, Kakay's work challenges the church to open the canon and discover the diverse, pluriform, and multivocal Christian traditions that make up the 99% that orthodoxy have marginalized.

Friends, please read Sunday's lection. Please read it in Greek if you are able. Salome, in the passage, was a GIRL. A LITTLE GIRL.

*Kakay Pamaran, Salvae Salome: Corpus, Myth, Canon, and the Quest for Salome (Union Theological Seminary, Philippines Master of Theology thesis, 2021). 

THE BASTARD FROM NAZARETH

Homecomings conjure up positive images for a lot of people, especially graduation and vacation days. For many, homecoming is almost synonymous with reunion.

But Sunday's lection on Jesus's homecoming paints a different picture. His townmates ask, "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?" Mark's 'The carpenter from Nazareth, the son of Mary' (read, bastard) was a hard sell. It was certainly a hard sell for the other Nazarenes; in the Lukan version of this story, they tried to throw Jesus off a cliff.

I always ask my co-learners to imagine a daughter or sister or friend--who is barely out of her teens--being pregnant and telling everyone that the father of her child is the Holy Spirit. Mark's 'The carpenter from Nazareth, the son of Mary' (read, bastard) was a very hard sell. Then and now.

To this day, the bastard from Nazareth who lived his life with and for those whose only hope was God; who preached good news to the poor; who challenged the rich to sell everything they have and give the proceeds to the destitute; who defied empire and its life-negating systems; and who commanded everyone who followed him to offer one's life for a friend; remains an extremely hard sell.

You can't exactly sell a way of life that carries a high risk of being executed by the state, can you?

*art, "Jesus as a child in Nazareth," (JESUS MAFA) available at the Vanderbilt Divinity Library digital archives. 

TOUCHING MOMENTS

Like many people, I was nurtured in a "touchy-feely" culture. Many of our pains, physical or otherwise, were soothed and massaged away by the healing touch of our loved ones. Holding, hugging, and kissing were all integral parts of our growing up years.

Touching helps in making us feel safe, loved, and not alone. We learned the science behind all these touching moments much later. I always have a bottle of Vicki's Vaporub. Its scent alone reminds me of Nanay's "haplos ng pagmamahal."

If we read our Bibles and pray everyday, we will grow, grow, and grow in the realization that many of the healing narratives in the Gospels involve touching. Sunday's lection has two sections: the first part has a woman suffering for twelve years who touches Jesus's cloak; in the second part, Jesus touches a twelve-year old girl's hand and tells her to rise up.

The pandemic has left millions dead and tens of millions disenfranchised. Most of those who died were alone. No last visit. No last rites. No last touch. Years of physical distancing has made so many of the living socially distant. Alone. Depressed. Afraid. And in desperate need to touch someone or be touched.

Friends, someone somewhere right now needs a healing touch. Someone somewhere right now needs to experience "Immanuel."


*art, "Healing of the Daughter of Jairus," (JESUS MAFA) available at vanderbilt divinity library archives.
**read How to Hug During a Pandemic (The New York Times)
***Of course there are many that have the opposite experience about touching and being touched. Topic for another post.

THE MUSTARD SEED

Gaius Plinius Secundus--aka Pliny the Elder--in his Natural History 19.170-171, argues that the mustard in Sunday's parable from Jesus was a wild weed. He said, "That mustard [sinapi kokkos] …grows entirely wild… and when it is sown, it is scarcely possible to get the place free of it, as the seed when it falls germinates at once.”

John Dominic Crossan tells us that the "smallest of all seeds" in the parable was a wild weed shrub that grew to about five feet or even higher. Even in their domesticated form, they were a lot to handle. Mustard in a well-kept garden not only spread beyond expectations but also attracted birds of all forms.

Much to the chagrin of gardeners, the birds would go on to wreck the natural balance of a well-manicured garden with thesir unpredictable feeding habits, their nesting, and worse, their droppings.

Gardeners, of course, did not want weeds in their gardens. They especially did not want wild mustard at all cost. They spend time creating the perfect balance in their gardens: putting in the best; throwing out the worst. A well-tended garden has no room for wild mustard so they cut mustard young and at the roots.

But mustard weed have ways of coming back. They always do.

The parable likens God’s reign, God’s kingdom to a weed. It grows where it is not wanted and eventually takes over the place. The wild mustard from Galilee that sprung in the domesticated garden of Judea, that attracted all kinds of birds that gardeners despised, was swiftly cut down.

Always remember this—The God we worship is an executed God. He was executed by the empire for the life he lived in solidarity with the poor and the stories of compassion he told.

Many scholars of first century Palestine now agree:: enemies of Rome who were executed by crucifixion had their naked bodies left hanging on crosses for the vultures and wild dogs to feast on, thrown into mass graves, or hastily buried in borrowed tombs.

Nobody really knows where lie the bodies of hundreds of students, church workers, community leaders, farmers, fisher-folk, laborers, and activists who disappeared during the Marcos Regime. And the countless more who have disappeared during the Aquino, Ramos, Estrada, Arroyo, Aquino, Duterte, and the BBM administrations. Philippine soil is nourished by the blood of fallen sisters and brothers in unmarked, mass, shallow graves, just like Andres Bonifacio--who, at 34, was murdered with his brother and whose bodies were robbed of garments and then thrown naked into a hastily dug grave.

All were wild mustard that had to be cut down lest they disturb the domesticity of the gardens tended by the rich, the powerful, and the religious elite, the majority of whom take pride in calling themselves, their institutions, and their structures “Christian.” But Jesus’s vision lives on. And those of many others live on.

Mustard weed have ways of coming back. When you least expect them. Ask any gardener. You can never completely eradicate wild weeds. They have a way of sprouting in places where they disturb, disrupt, and dismantle.

They always do! And when they do, birds, all sorts, start arriving!


*art, "A Parable - The Mustard Seed" by Cara B. Hochhalter (2019), available from the vanderbilt divinity library art collection.

BINDING THE STRONG MAN

Parables are subversive speech. Subversion is often considered a crime. A crime warrants punishment. A punishment's severity depends on the magnitude of the crime. If a crime is considered severe, like insurrection, then it warrants execution. Therefore, parables can get one dead.

With that logic in mind, consider this: Sunday's lection is one of Jesus's most subversive.

"If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first binding the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered."

This parable can be summed up in one word: insurrection.

Many scholars say the kingdom refers to the State, more specifically, Rome and its puppet government in Palestine. The house refers to the Temple, more specifically, the religious elite beholden to empire. Satan, of course, refers to Rome.

As a side note: Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor of Judea, and Joseph Caiphas, the High Priest, the two people directly responsible for Jesus's execution, were close friends. Both were removed from power in 36 CE. Many historians agree that the "cleansing of the temple" was Jesus and his followers' attempt to "bind the strong man and plunder his house."

Lest we forget, Jesus led 5,000 in that "cleansing" and was executed as an enemy of the State, as an insurrectionist. The charge, "King of the Jews," supports that. He was crucified with two other insurrectionists or rebels, not thieves or robbers.

We do not like this Jesus.

This Jesus is so unlike the one we grew up with, so unlike the one our colonial masters taught us to obey without question, so unlike the one whose portraits and paintings--usually blond and blue-eyed--adorn our places of worship.

This Jesus will not be welcomed in many of our churches today.

*art, "Binding the Strong Man, " [Arrest of St. Patrick] available from vanderbilt divinity library archives.