NOT ALL PEACE IS REAL PEACE

 

In Sunday's Gospel Reading, Jesus says something unsettling: “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” At first, it sounds wrong. Is not Jesus the Prince of Peace? But here, he reveals a deeper truth—not all peace is real peace.

There is a kind of peace that is only quiet because the weak have been silenced. A peace that exists because injustice is tolerated. A peace that keeps everything “in order,” but only for those already comfortable. It was Pax Romana then; it is Pax Americana now. This is the false peace Jesus refuses to bless.

Think of our daily life—like riding a crowded jeepney. Everyone adjusts, squeezes in, keeps moving. It works, but not always fairly. Some are burdened more, others benefit more, yet we call it normal. We learn to live with it. We keep the ride smooth, even if it is unjust. Jesus interrupts that ride.

His “sword” is not violence—it is truth that cuts through illusions. It exposes what we have grown used to: inequality, silence, fear. It challenges even our closest relationships when they are built on domination or control. “I have come to set a man against his father,” he says—not to destroy families, but to break patterns of injustice that hide within them.

To follow Jesus, then, is not simply to keep the peace. It is to seek true peace—a peace rooted in justice, dignity, and truth. A peace that empires can never birth. And that kind of peace often begins with disturbance.

Friends, the question for us today is simple but challenging: Will we settle for a quiet life that ignores injustice, or will we allow Christ to disturb us—so that a deeper, truer peace may be born?

Because oftentimes, the way to real peace is through holy disruption.

*Image, "The Time Jesus Started a Riot," copyright, Brendan Powell Smith, from Reboot (WordPress).

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FAITH AND FEAR

Jesus moves through towns and villages like a jeepney on a hard and dusty route. Not above the people, but among them, close enough to see the weary faces, close enough to feel how fear sits inside their bodies.  

In Sunday's Gospel Reading, Jesus sees the crowds as harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd and then sends others into that same wounded world. 

This is not a distant mission for heroes or experts. It is a roadside calling, born in ordinary struggle, read from the margins, and shaped by the lived realities of those who carry fear, poverty, and hope together. Jeepney hermeneutics insists that interpretation begins with local experiences and that even borrowed or imperial tools can be transformed into vehicles of liberation. 

And so this passage speaks sharply to our own fearful time. Fear is real. Fear paralyses. Fear makes people hide, deny, flee, or fall silent. The world of Jesus knew that fear well: empires rule not only by swords and laws, but by terror. To be sent out “as sheep among wolves” is not a romantic image. It is dangerous. It names the cost of discipleship honestly.  

Yet the Gospel does not ask us to pretend we are fearless. It asks us to go anyway. Sometimes our own faith is thin, trembling, and tired. Sometimes it is not enough for the road ahead. But grace also arrives communally: my faith can carry your fear, and your faith can carry mine. Like passengers making room for one another in a crowded jeepney, we are held by a courage that is shared.  

This is why the mission of Jesus is never solitary. Meaning, like travel, is communal. We do not journey alone; we read, hope, and resist together. What seems insufficient becomes enough when everyone brings what they can. 

So my friends, when fear rises and faith falters, let us remember: the harvest is still plentiful, compassion is still holy, and the road is still open. Jesus is still found in the crowded places, among the ordinary, sending fragile people to heal, to proclaim peace, and to freely give what they have freely received. And when our own faith feels too small, there is still mercy in this: someone else’s faith may be enough to carry us until we can stand again.  

*Art, "Christ teaching the Disciples," Painting, Panel (Walters Art Museum), Baltimore, MD, United States (from the vanderbilt divinity library digital collection).

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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 my mother'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 Gospel Reading from Matthew 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 left millions dead and tens of millions disenfranchised. Most of those who died were alone. No last visit. No last rites. No last touch. For millions more, physical touch has been replaced by virtual relationships provided by touch screens and digital environments. Many feel alone. Depressed. Afraid. And in desperate need to touch someone or be touched.

My friends, someone somewhere right now needs a healing touch. Someone somewhere right now needs to experience "Immanuel." Someone somewhere right now needs you! 

*art, "Healing of the Daughter of Jairus," (JESUS MAFA) available at vanderbilt divinity library archives.

**Of course there are many that have the opposite experience about touching and being touched. Topic for another post. 

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IMMANUEL

William Carrey's 87-page pamphlet, "An Inquiry into the Obligation of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen," was an exposition of Matthew 28: 19-20. Published in 1792, it is considered as the first published work on the theology of missions.

Centuries later, interpreters of the passage, which is Sunday's Gospel Reading, still resonate with Carrey's exposition. Many missions dedicated to convert the "heathen" continue to be grounded on Carrey's exposition of "The Great Commission."  

I have always argued that Immanuel, "God-with-Us," serves as the thread that binds the 28 chapters of the Gospel of Matthew. The Gospel, in 1.23, proclaims that Mary's son will be called Immanuel, meaning "God-with-Us" (echoing Isaiah 7.14). At the end of the Gospel, in 28. 20, Jesus proclaims, "I am with you always..." God-with-Us to the end of the age!  The Gospel has one promise. We will never, ever, be alone. 

One can ask, "What does it mean to experience Immanuel, to feel God's presence in our lives?" More often than not, the answer is, "Be God's presence in someone else's life!" Matthew's Jesus was. 

So many people, struggling to live from one day to the next or from one meal to the next, have no time to read the Bible. What they do have is time to "read" us. 

My friends, our great commission is to do what Jesus did. Feed the hungry. Visit the prisoners. Welcome the stranger. Care for the sick. Befriend the lonely. Choose justice always. Let people know for sure that they are not alone, and then they will experience God's presence.  And proclaim, "Immanuel!" 

*art, "The Mission to the World," (JESUS MAFA, 1973, Cameroon), from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives.

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HELEN, MOSES, AND JESUS

Why are so many people having problems with the casting of multi-awarded actress Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy in Christopher Nolan's Odyssey?

Did these same people have problems with the casting of Charleston Heston, Ben Kingsley, Val Kilmer, and Christian Bale? All played an Egyptian Moses.

How about Max von Sydow, Robert Powell, Jeffrey Hunter, and Willem Dafoe? All played a Palestinian Jesus.

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JEEPNEYS AND PENTECOST

John’s Pentecost happens behind locked doors, not in power centers. Not in Rome. Not in the White House or Malacañang. Definitely not in the Philippine Senate! Jesus breathes Spirit into frightened people, not officials. This matters—especially now. This is not a Spirit that descends from above. This is a Spirit that squeezes in.

Read inside a jeepney, sin is never neutral. It is legislated, priced, and enforced. Who is declared colorum? Who is phased out in the name of “modernization?"Who absorbs fare hikes while wages stay frozen? Who is criminalized for surviving?

We know the answer. It is the driver. The commuter. The anawim.

In the Gospels, sinners are almost always those crushed by laws written without them. Jesus breaks Sabbath rules, heals without permits, forgives people the system already condemned. He does not protect order; he exposes it.

So when Jesus says, “If you forgive, they are forgiven. If you bind, they are bound,” this is not a license for church or state to police morality. Read from inside a jeepney, it is a command about movement and restraint.

To forgive is to set free—to protect livelihoods before profits,to loosen policies that choke the poor, to stand with drivers and commuters when they are told their suffering is necessary. To forgive is to set free—to let people disembark without penalty, to unbind the grip of laws that comodify the anawim, to refuse to confuse poverty with guilt.

To bind is to stop greed dressed as policy, to halt corruption dressed as development, and to restrain other-worldly theologies that remain silent while people lose their livelihood, their income, and their dignity.

The question Jesus breathes into us is not abstract. Are we setting free those being pushed off the road? Or are we helping bind them—in God’s name?

Are we binding those who would push us off the road? Or are we leaving them free to do their work--again, in God's name?

My friends, where are we seated when we read this Gospel? Inside a jeepney—or inside our comfortable SUV watching the jeepney disappear?

*art, "Pentecost," JESUS MAFA, 1973 (Cameroon), from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives.

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JESUS'S FAREWELL PRAYER INSIDE A JEEPNEY

Sunday's Gospel Reading is part of John's Farewell Discourse—his parting words before the cross. They are not unlike José Rizal’s Mi Último Adiós, written on the eve of his execution. Jesus speaks before Golgotha. Rizal writes before the firing squad. Both face death not with bitterness, but with love. Both die because of love.

In John 17, Jesus leaves behind not a sermon, but a prayer. He looks up and says, “Father, the hour has come.” He knows the cross is near. He knows his followers will soon feel lost and vulnerable. He knows he will no longer walk with them in the same way. So he entrusts them to God. “Holy Father, keep them… that they may be one.”

Let us hear this prayer from inside a jeepney. A jeepney is a small world on wheels—crowded, sweaty, noisy, diverse. Students, laborers, vendors, elders, children sit side by side. Most are strangers, yet all are traveling together. Fares are passed hand to hand. Bodies adjust. Someone always makes space. Somehow, in a jeepney, there is always room for one more. This is the world Jesus prays for. Not Trump's. Nor the Philippine Senate's. Especially not Duterte's!

He does not ask that his followers be taken out of the world. He asks that they be kept in it—protected, held together, and not torn apart. Unity, in this sense, is not sameness. It is shared life. It is choosing to stay together, even when the road is rough and the ride is uncomfortable. 

The God Jesus trusts is not a God of domination, but a God who keeps—like a mother who protects life, like a womb that shelters what is fragile. A God who makes space for the vulnerable. This is the church Jesus leaves behind: not a building, but people who love, individuals who know how to make room for others, how to carry one another’s burdens, how to love even when the journey is hard. And even dangerous. That is why we still have hope—because love is still experienced, every day, in crowded places, on difficult roads, among people who choose to work for peace based on justice. 

Among people who choose to love.

*Art, "The Ascension, " JESUS MAFA 1973, Cameroon (available from the Vanderbilt Divinity Library digital art collection).

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LABOR PAINS AND ABIDING LOVE

On the night before his death, Jesus speaks to his friends not from a place of safety, but from the edge of loss. Sunday's Gospel Reading  is part of the Farewell Discourse in John’s Gospel. Jesus knows what is coming. Arrest. Execution. Absence. And so he speaks again and again about the Advocate—the Helper, the Holy Spirit—who will come, who will abide, who will remain. But his friends do not seem to hear the promise. 

Fear has a way of drowning out hope. Love sounds abstract when the world is falling apart. Presence feels impossible when separation is near.  John’s Gospel was written for a community living after trauma—after violence, after expulsion, after the slow grind of imperial power. This is not a triumphant church. This is a frightened, grieving community learning how to survive.

And so Jesus does not promise escape from pain. Jesus promises presence.  “I will not leave you orphaned.”

In the ancient world, to be orphaned was to be exposed—to have no protection, no future, no one to stand with you. Jesus is not offering sentiment. He is making a promise of solidarity, of accompaniment. The Spirit will come. The Advocate will abide. God will not withdraw. Jesus later compares this to labor pains. Birth mothers know this is not a romantic image. Labor hurts. It can feel endless. It consumes the whole body. 

Jesus does not say the pain will disappear. He says the pain will not be meaningless. He says you will not be alone. Love, in John’s Gospel, is not a feeling. Love is remaining—staying present when everything else is falling apart. Love is what resists abandonment.

The Spirit, like a mother, comes not with spectacle, not with domination, but with breath—quiet, sustaining, abiding. So hear the good news. Jesus does not promise that storms will cease. Jesus does not promise that grief will be easy.  Jesus promises companionship.

Friends, even now, life is being born where death, destruction, and despair rule. Even now, communities in Negros, in Mindoro, in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Iran are being restored in ways we cannot yet see.  Even now, love is abiding—holding us together long enough for hope to emerge.

Take heart! We are not orphaned.  We are not alone. God abides.

*Art, "The Holy Spirit" by Frank Wesley (1923-2002), available at the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives.

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GOD'S HOUSE HAS SPACE FOR EVERYONE

Sunday’s Gospel Reading offers us an alternative vision—one that stands in stark contrast to a world where displacement, dispossession, discrimination, and disenfranchisement are lived realities, especially for the most vulnerable among us. This vision is not sentimental escapism. It is deeply grounded in the Gospel of John, and it is a vision shaped by communities struggling under empire, exclusion, and fear. 

For many of us, this vision finds poetic expression in the song “Mansion Over the Hilltop.” The imagery was comforting, even if imperfect. Most modern translations now speak not of “mansions” but of “rooms” or “dwelling places”. This shift is not merely linguistic—it is theological. "Dwelling" in John is never about luxury or private ownership; it is about abiding presence, shared spaces, and communal belonging.

When Jesus says, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places” (John 14:2), Jesus is not describing real estate in the afterlife. This is the same Gospel that proclaims, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). God’s dwelling is not removed from the world—it is planted firmly within it. God’s house is where God chooses to live, and God chooses to live among people who are vulnerable, displaced, and marginalized. 

My friends, God’s house has space—safe space—for everyone. In a world obsessed with borders, exclusions, and gated communities, John insists on radical hospitality. This vision, then, is God’s vision for the world God loves, not a distant heaven disconnected from present realities. It is a vision that calls us into the hard, unfinished work of making space—real space, safe space, just space—for others. It challenges systems that normalize displacement and invites us to embody God’s dwelling here and now.

The work is not easy. It demands courage, solidarity, accompaniment, and sustained commitment. But as followers of the Risen One, you and I are not spectators. We are participants. We are part of the ongoing realization of God’s household—called to live, build, and resist in ways that make God’s inclusive dwelling visible in our communities, churches, and world.

art, "All Are Welcome," book cover of the New York Times bestselling book by Alexandra Penfold and Suzanne Kaufman.

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SHEEP AND THEIR SHEPHERD

Many of us grew up hearing John 10 through a heavily allegorical lens. The shepherd was never really a shepherd. The gatekeeper was never really a gatekeeper. The sheep were never really sheep. The thieves and bandits were reduced to abstract villains. In the process, the earthy realism of the text—and its social bite—was often lost.

John’s Gospel does not dissolve history into metaphor. It thickens it. The imagery Jesus uses emerges from real pastoral practices in first-century Palestine. Real sheep do recognize the voice of their shepherd. Real shepherds do call sheep by name. Real sheep do follow that voice beyond the safety of the sheepfold and into open land. And real sheep do flee from voices that signal danger or exploitation. This is not romantic symbolism; it is lived knowledge.

The sheepfold, in this passage, is not the site of abundant life. It is a holding space—protective, necessary, but ultimately temporary. No pasture grows there. No springs flow there. Life is sustained there only in the most minimal sense. Fullness of life lies elsewhere.

This is why the shepherd does not remain inside the fold. The shepherd calls the sheep out. The direction of movement matters. Jesus leads outward—into fields that are exposed, contested, and uncertain. Into what Scripture dares to call wilderness. In John, salvation is not withdrawal from the world but engagement with it, even at great risk. The shepherd goes ahead, not to guarantee comfort, but to embody trustworthiness in dangerous terrain.

“Life in all its fullness” is therefore not a promise of enclosure, certainty, or control. It is a promise of "relationship on the move." It is accompaniment. Solidarity. The shepherd’s voice does not eliminate risk; it makes faithful movement possible. The wilderness is not romanticized, but neither is it feared. It is where grass grows, where water flows, where life—precarious yet real—can flourish.

Friends, this challenges our tendency to confuse the sheepfold with the Kingdom of God. Again and again, we construct religious, institutional, and even theological enclosures and mistake them for life itself. We protect them. We defend them. We refuse to leave them. And yet, the Gospel insists that what truly gives life is often waiting beyond the walls we have learned to trust.

The Risen One does not call us deeper into confinement but forward into shared vulnerability. Already ahead of us. Already in the open land. Already where life, in all its fullness, can be found—if we are willing to listen, to recognize the voice, and to follow.

*art, "The Good Shepherd," Julien Dupre (1851-1910), from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives.

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THE RISEN ONE AS STRANGER

Friends, reading Luke 24 inside a jeepney draws attention to how revelation often arrives quietly, from the margins, and through the ordinary rhythms of the road. Revelation is not forced upon the believer but unfolds in lived experiences, especially in moments of disorientation and desperation. 

The Emmaus disciples embody this: grief-stricken, confused, depressed, and walking away from Jerusalem, they encounter the Risen One not as a triumphant figure, but as a stranger who listens before speaking.

Jeepney Hermeneutics sharpens this insight. Like passengers sharing a cramped, uncomfortable, moving vehicle, the disciples and the stranger share a journey marked by vulnerability, storytelling, and unplanned companionship. Meaning is negotiated along the way. The Risen One does not immediately reveal an identity but joins the conversation, interprets Scripture in transit, and becomes recognizable only in the shared act of breaking bread.

This lens invites a searching question: how often is Christ encountered today as an unrecognised companion—in strangers, disrupted plans, and shared journeys? Sunday's Gospel Reading suggests that resurrection faith is born not in certainty, but in walking, listening, solidarity, and hospitality, where hearts begin to burn before eyes are fully opened.

art, "Jesus appears at Emmaus," JESUS MAFA, 1973 (Cameroon), from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives.

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RISING UP TOGETHER

Friends, fear has a way of locking doors.  Fear locks the mind, the heart, the future.  The disciples were not cowards—they were wounded. They had hoped, trusted, and loved, and now they were afraid that death might come knocking for them too. Like it did with Jesus. 

Scripture must be read where people actually live—not only in temples or classrooms, but in homes, streets, and everyday struggles. The resurrection does not happen in a palace. Not in the White House nor in Malacanang. It happens inside a locked room, among people who are confused, scared, and unsure.

This is important: Jesus does not scold them for their fear. Jesus enters it. “Peace be with you.” Not peace as an idea—but peace that walks through locked doors.

A jeepney is never private. It is crowded, noisy, unpredictable. Right now, it's on survival mode. You ride it not because it is comfortable, but because it remains the struggling masses' way to get somewhere. You hold on, even when the ride is rough.

The disciples wanted safety behind closed doors.  But resurrection faith is not a locked room faith.  It is "a jeepney faith"—shared, risky, communal. Jesus does not tell them, “Stay where you are and be safe.” Jesus says, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

Too often, Thomas is called “the doubter.”  I think Thomas refuses a secondhand resurrection. He wants a faith that touches wounds, not rumors. For many among us, doubt is often treated as disrespect. But the Gospel today tells us something radical: Jesus does not reject Thomas. Jesus returns for Thomas. He does not shame him.  He shows him the wounds. Resurrection does not erase pain. It transforms it.

Notice this: The risen Jesus still has scars. This speaks directly to our fear and doubt today: fear of failure, fear of the future , fear that faith might not be enough, fear that God is not present in suffering, injustice, or loss. 

Jeepney hermeneutics teaches us that faith is not about a smooth ride. It is about staying on the journey together, even when the road is broken, even when we do not see the road. As long as we can still see each other. 

Thomas believes not because everything is explained—but because Jesus stays long enough to be encountered, long enough to be experienced. You and I believe without seeing, not because we are certain, but because we have encountered, we have experienced enough grace to keep on riding.

Friends, fear has a way of locking doors. Doubt asks hard questions.  But resurrection opens roads. Jesus enters our fear.  Jesus welcomes our doubt.  Then Jesus sends us—not alone, but together.

Community always births uprisings. We rise up together! 

*Art, "Jesus appears to Thomas," JESUS MAFA 

1973, Cameroon (from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives). 

MEETING JESUS ON THE ROAD

 

For the Gospel of Matthew, Easter does not begin with alleluias. It begins with women walking—quietly, fearfully—toward a tomb.

Sunday's Gospel Reading tells us that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary go at dawn carrying grief, unanswered questions, and love that refuses to stay home. They are not celebrating yet. They are simply faithful enough to keep moving.

I have argued for thirty years that a jeepney is a place where ordinary people with different stories, struggles, pains, and hopes are brought into conversation. Theology happens not in perfect silence or comfortable spaces, but in ordinary, crowded, sweaty, uncertain spaces—on the road.

That is exactly where the resurrection happens. An earthquake shakes the ground. An angel speaks. Fear rises. And yet the message is simple: “Do not be afraid.” God does not remove fear first. God speaks into it. Easter begins with the concrete, everyday realities of the people. Especially among those whose only hope is God. Easter is not God ignoring fear; Easter is God entering it. And then comes the most beautiful detail: Jesus meets the women on the road.

Not at the tomb where the women went looking for him. Not in the heavens where most of us are looking for him. But on the road.

The Risen One does not wait for us to arrive at perfect faith, perfect courage, or perfect understanding. The Risen One walks with us while we are still figuring things out.

The women fall down and worship—but Jesus does not let them stay there. He says, “Go and tell.” Resurrection always sends us back—to family, to community, to wounded spaces and hurting places—with hope we did not manufacture ourselves.

My friends, Easter tells us this: Christ is risen—and still riding with the people. Still present in crowded roads. Still meeting us between fear and faith. Still turning ordinary journeys into holy ground.

So, wherever we are today—tired, uncertain, lost, grieving, or hopeful—never, ever, forget we are not traveling alone. Christ is risen. And Christ meets us on the way.

Amen.