FEEDING THE 5000

Reading this Sunday's Gospel Reading through Jeepney Hermeneutics means refusing to read the story from the comfort of the rich man's storehouses or his air-conditioned SUVs. Instead, we read it from inside a crowded jeepney, alongside workers, vendors, farmers, students, and the unemployed who know what hunger feels like. It insists that the Bible sounds different when heard from the perspective of the poor and marginalized rather than the propertied and privileged. 

From that vantage point, the disciples' excuses sound painfully familiar: "Send them away." "Let them fend for themselves." "We do not have enough." These are the arguments of a world organized around scarcity, exclusion, xenophobia, and self-preservation.

Yet Jesus refuses to dismiss the crowd.

What is even more striking is that the miracle does not begin with the disciples, the wealthy, or the powerful. In John's Gospel, it begins with a poor child carrying five barley loaves and two fish. Barley was the bread of the poor, not the wheat of the rich. The multitude is fed because a poor, hungry child shares the little he has with other poor, hungry people.

Inside the jeepney, this is not a story about charity flowing downward from the rich to the poor. It is a story about God's abundance emerging from the solidarity of the poor themselves. The child becomes the first disciple. He trusts that what little he has can become enough in the hands of God.

Jeepney Hermeneutics reminds us that God's liberating acts often begin not in palaces, boardrooms, or religious institutions, but among those whom society overlooks. The kingdom breaks in when one unexpected person takes a courageous step of faith.

Friends, the question remains: in a hungry world, will we join the disciples in making excuses, or will we join the child who offered his barley loaves and fish and helped unleash the abundance of God?

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

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PEARLS AND TREASURES

Reading Sunday's twin parables through Jeepney Hermeneutics means listening to them not from the comfort of an air-conditioned SUV, but from inside a crowded jeepney filled with workers, vendors, students, drivers, and the unemployed. We are asked to read from the perspective of those who know what it means to risk everything for survival and hope.

The merchant and the treasure hunter are often portrayed as wealthy investors making clever business decisions. But from inside the jeepney, the emphasis falls elsewhere. The shocking part of the story is not what they found. The shocking part is that they "sold everything they had". They emptied themselves because they discovered something worth more than riches, security, status, or possessions.

This echoes Jesus' command to the rich young ruler: “Sell everything you have.” The tragedy of that story is that the young man could not imagine a world beyond his wealth. He went away sad. The merchant and the treasure hunter on the other hand surrender everything, but they go away joyful. The difference is not the cost. The difference is the kingdom.

In a society where many jeepney passengers already live with economic uncertainty, these parables are not an invitation to romanticize poverty. Rather, they expose the illusion that possessions can save us. The kingdom of God is the treasure that relativizes every other treasure. It is a community where value is measured not by accumulation but by solidarity, justice, and participation in God's reign.

Friends, the challenge Jesus gives to the rich has not changed. The kingdom still demands everything from those who have everything. Yet the gospel insists that what is gained is infinitely greater than what is surrendered. Those who cling to wealth leave sorrowful. Those who discover the treasure of God's reign give freely and, like the merchant and treasure hunter, go away rejoicing.

*Art: “The Hidden Treasure,” JESUS MAFA, Cameroon, 1973 (from the Vanderbilt Divinity Library digital collection) 

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WHEAT AND BASTARD WHEAT

Most of us have heard this parable interpreted as a challenge to become good wheat. But for Sunday's Gospel Reading, let us focus on the weeds—masamang damo—the tares that look so much like wheat that some still call them "bastard wheat."

Like the parable of the sheep and goats, it is about judgment. And the central message is simple: God is the judge, not us.

The servants want to pull out the weeds immediately. They want a clean field. They want certainty about who belongs and who does not. But the landowner says, "No." Why? Because wheat and weeds look so much alike that pulling up one may destroy the other.

Reading this parable through Jeepney Hermeneutics, we are reminded that the kingdom of God looks less like a gated community and more like a crowded jeepney. The construction worker sits beside the student. The vendor sits beside the office employee. The grandmother sits beside the teenage parent. The churchgoer sits beside the person everyone else has already judged.

That is our problem. We are often eager to separate people into categories: good and bad, worthy and unworthy, us and them, wheat and weeds. Yet Jesus refuses to hand us the sickle.

Friends, history shows that whenever people become too certain that they are the wheat, they quickly label others as bastard wheat.

But God is a God of surprises. The people we dismiss may turn out to be God's beloved. The people who think themselves righteous will discover that judgment belongs to God alone.

And perhaps we should remember: Jesus himself was treated as unwanted, rejected, and illegitimate—the bastard son of Mary, according to his critics.

So let the field be. Let God be God.

The harvest will come in God's time.

In the name of the Crucified and Risen One, whom we call Lord and Savior. 

Amen.

*Image from Bernat Casero.

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THE SOWERS OF LUPANG RAMOS

When we hear the Parable of the Sower, we are often taught to focus on the soil of our hearts. Are we receptive? Are we faithful? Do we bear fruit?

But what if we listened to this parable from a jeepney crowded with farmers, workers, vendors, students, and day laborers en route to another day of survival? What if we listened not from the perspective of those who own the land, but from those who have spent generations struggling to live on and off it?

Jeepney hermeneutics begins on the road. It begins with ordinary people navigating potholes, traffic, uncertainty, and the daily labor of making a life. It asks not only, "What does this text mean?" but also, "Who is telling the story, and who among us is living it today?

In  Sunday's Gospel Reading, the sower scatters seed everywhere. Along the path. On rocky ground. Among thorns. Only some reaches good soil.  Conventional readings often portray the sower as careless or the soil as a metaphor for individual spirituality.

Yet for the peasants who first heard Jesus, the image may have been painfully concrete. The problem was not the farmer. The problem was access to land. The problem was a world where those who worked the soil often did not own it.

The people of Lupang Ramos--and peasant communities like it--know something about such realities. They know what it means to live under the shadow of displacement, to worry whether the place one calls home today will still be home tomorrow. They know the exhausting labor of building a community while powerful interests decide the value of land in terms of profit rather than people.

Friends, maybe the seed falling on the path is like the dreams of families constantly pushed aside by circumstances beyond their control. Their hopes are consumed before they can take root. The seed among rocks resembles communities trying to flourish despite insecurity and instability. Life appears for a moment, but the harsh realities of poverty, rising costs, and uncertainty scorch what little growth emerges. The seed among thorns is choked by systems that suffocate life: debt, precarious work, development aggression, and policies that favor wealth over human dignity. And what of the good soil?

Too often, we imagine good soil as a reward for virtue. But in Jesus' world, good soil was frequently controlled by those with power. The harvest was abundant, but abundance did not always mean justice. A hundredfold, sixtyfold, thirtyfold—these are staggering yields. The question is: who benefits from them? Who gets to eat this bountiful harvest?

Yet Jesus' story is not a surrender to despair.

The sower keeps sowing. Not because the conditions are ideal, but because hope is an act of resistance. God is not standing with the owners of the land and its harvest counting their profits. God is with the sowers, with the tenants, with the displaced, with the communities struggling to remain rooted. God is present wherever people refuse to abandon one another.

The good news of Matthew 13, then, is not that some individuals become better soil. The good news is that despite the rocks, despite the thorns, despite the systems that deny life, the seeds of God's future continue to be scattered among the poor. And whenever communities like Lupang Ramos struggle together for land, dignity, justice, and belonging, those seeds are already beginning to grow.

Art, "Parable of the Sower," JESUS MAFA, 1973 (Cameroon), from the Vanderbilt Divinity Library digital collection.

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GRACE IS ON THE MOVE

Jeepney Hermeneutics imagines scripture not from a place of comfort, but from the cramped, noisy, everyday journey of ordinary people — especially the poor. The jeepney becomes a moving space of survival, negotiation, and shared struggle. It is there, among passengers holding coins not bills, bodies pressed together, and destinations diverse, that the Word of God speaks in a particular way.

In Sunday's Gospel from Matthew 11, Jesus describes a generation that cannot be satisfied:  

“We played the flute for you, but you did not dance; we sang a dirge, but you did not mourn.”  

Seen from the jeepney, this sounds familiar. The poor are often criticized no matter what they do. If they protest, they are called unruly. Troublemakers. Even red-tagged. If they endure silently, they are ignored. Like passengers blamed for the system’s failures, they carry burdens not of their own making.

Jesus thanks the Father for revealing truth not to the “wise and learned,” but to the “little ones.” In the jeepney, the little ones are not abstract—they are the workers, vendors, mothers, students, drivers. Those who know hunger, long queues, and uncertainty. They may not have power, but they have a deeper knowledge of life’s weight. They understand what it means to trust, to hope, and to survive together.

And then comes the heart of the message:  

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened… and I will give you rest.”

From a jeepney lens, this is not simply spiritual comfort—it is an invitation spoken directly to those already carrying too much:  

- The fare that is barely enough  

- The long work hours without security  

- The daily struggle to be seen and heard  

Jesus does not deny their burden. He recognizes it. And he offers not escape, but companionship: “Take my yoke upon you… for I am gentle and humble of heart.” Solidarity. 

In the jeepney, a yoke might feel like another load added—but Jesus’ yoke is different. It is shared. It is light because it is carried together. It is a call to a community where suffering is not ignored, and where dignity is restored.

Friends, this Gospel invites us to ask:  

- Who are the “little ones” riding beside us whom society overlooks?  

- How do we, as followers of Christ, make their burdens lighter—not heavier?  

- Can we become part of that gentle, humble presence that Christ offers?

The kingdom of God is not revealed from above—but experienced from within the crowded, struggling journey of the poor. Like a jeepney ride, it may be uncomfortable and unpredictable—but it is there, in shared humanity, in the daily quest for peace based on justice, that grace is already moving.

*Art by Zee-m Tiempo (2017). Cover for Reading the Parables of Jesus inside a Jeepney. 

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THE ECONOMY OF A GLASS OF WATER

Friends, we often look for God in the grand, catastrophic, and spectacular moments of life. We look for a booming voice from the heavens or a massive, history-altering miracle. 

But as Jesus closes his great missionary instructions in the Gospel of Matthew, he redirects our gaze entirely. He pulls our attention away from the grand stages of the world and points it toward the ground. He points it toward the details.

In first-century Palestine, the "little ones" Jesus speaks of were the absolute nobodies of society. They were the orphaned children, the passing strangers, and the desperately poor. They possessed zero social status, zero legal protection, and no safety net. Their only hope was God. And Jesus, revealing his fierce bias for the vulnerable, makes these exact people the gatekeepers of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Jesus reminds us today that caring for others does not require grand, performative acts of generosity. The Kingdom of God is built on a different economy—the economy of a cup of cold water. A cup of water costs nothing to the wealthy, but it means survival to a parched stranger. It is a micro-act of compassion. A piece of barley loaf. A listening ear. A door held open. Love, in the economy of Christ, is always found in the smallest details.

This text strikes a beautiful, resonant chord in the great hymn of Immanuel—God-with-us—that permeates the entire Gospel of Matthew. We often complain that we cannot feel God’s presence, or we wonder where God is in a broken world. But we forget a fundamental truth: the best way to experience God’s presence in our own lives is to be God’s presence in someone else’s life.

When you extend welcome to the stranger, you welcome Christ. When you offer a cup of water to the vulnerable, the divine presence becomes tangible. God is not hiding; God is waiting to be discovered in our simple, everyday transactions of human and non-human compassion. Go out today and look for the details. Be the presence of Immanuel to a world parched for love.

*Art, "Jesus welcomes All" mural in Sudan. Artist, anonymous. From the vanderbilt divinity library digital collection. 

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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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