ANCIENT ISRAEL ≠ BIBLICAL ISRAEL ≠ STATE OF ISRAEL

Ancient Israel is not Biblical Israel, and Biblical Israel is not the modern State of Israel. Ancient Israel refers to historical peoples and political communities of millennia past. Biblical Israel is a theological and literary construct shaped by the diverse voices, memories, and struggles preserved in Scripture. The modern State of Israel, established in 1948, is a contemporary political entity with its own institutions, policies, and responsibilities.

Conflating these three realities turns biblical narratives into political blank checks. Our collective task is to resist interpretations that use Scripture to justify the occupation, dispossession, or the denial of Palestinian rights.  We are called to read from the perspective of those pushed to the margins and to ask whether our interpretations advance justice, dignity, and liberation for all.

The Bible is not a deed of ownership for any modern state. It is a library to be interpreted responsibly, with particular attention to the plight of the oppressed.

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*The image is from the Arch of Titus in Rome built by Emperor Domitian in 82 CE to commemorate the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE.

LOVING GOD IS LOVING OTHERS

LOVING GOD IS LOVING OTHERS

Sunday’s Gospel Reading from Matthew is also found in Mark and Luke. Most scholars consider Mark’s version the earliest. Asked about the greatest commandment, Jesus responds with the Shema from Deuteronomy: “Hear, O Israel!” Love God with your whole being.

But shema means more than hearing. In many biblical passages, hearing demands a response. To hear is to act. The question, then, is not simply whether we believe in God or profess our love for God. It is this: How do we love God? 

Here comes the answer we would rather avoid: We love God by loving our neighbor! 

Notice the singular “this” in the exchange between Jesus and the scribe in Mark and between Jesus and the lawyer in Luke. The scribe affirms that "this" matters more than burnt offerings and sacrifices. Jesus tells the lawyer, “Do this, and you will live.”

Not merely believe this. Not simply preach this. Do this.

What does loving God mean when an entire people cries out for freedom, dignity, justice, and the right to live in peace? Does this mean standing up for Palestinians whose homes have been destroyed, whose lands have been taken, whose families have been torn apart, and whose humanity is repeatedly denied? 

Jeepney hermeneutics invites us to read Scripture from the cramped seats of ordinary people, especially those pushed to the margins—not from the Rolls-Royces of the powerful like Trump, Netanyahu, and their ilk. We must always ask: Whose suffering does our theology ignore? Whose dispossession does our interpretations justify?

To use the Bible as a land title to legitimize the displacement, demonization, and destruction of Palestinians is to turn Scripture against the very neighbor God commands us to love. No theological claim can excuse the denial of another people’s dignity. No appeal to divine promise absolves us of our responsibility to pursue justice.

My friends, agape is not merely a feeling. It is a decision expressed in solidarity, resistance to injustice, and concrete acts of compassion. Every day, we choose whose lives matter.

To love God is to stand with our Palestinian sisters and brothers. We choose to take sides. We choose justice. We choose to serve people and planet!

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IMAGE BEARERS

Coin collectors highly value the denarius in the photo. It dates to the time of Jesus. The denarius shown to Jesus by the Pharisees and Herodians in Sunday's Gospel (Matthew 22:15–22) likely belonged to a similar imperial coinage.

The question about paying taxes to Caesar was a trap. The Pharisees, who opposed Roman occupation, had reason to expect Jesus to say NO. The Herodians, who supported the Roman-backed Herodian dynasty, had reason to expect him to say YES. Either answer could get him into trouble.

Jesus asks for a coin: “Whose image is this, and whose title?”

“The emperor’s,” they reply.

The coin bore Tiberius Caesar’s image and the inscription identifying him as son of the divine Augustus. Its reverse associated imperial authority with the title Pontifex Maximus, or chief priest. For Israelites, such imperial imagery and claims raised profound theological problems. The coin embodied an empire that demanded not only taxes but also recognition of its power and sacred authority.

Jesus replies: “Give back therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Give Caesar his coin. It bears Caesar’s image. But do not confuse Caesar’s image with God’s image. And never mistake imperial power for divine ownership.

Here is where we must read the story from the cramped seats of the jeepney, not from the comfortable backseat of Caesar’s chariot. What does the empire claim to own? The labor of workers? The land of farmers? The bodies of the poor? The lives of those it exploits and discards?

People are not property. They are not commodities. They are not Caesar’s possessions.

Genesis tells us that human beings are created in the image of God. Every person bears that image—not merely the powerful, the respectable, or the religiously acceptable, but also those society excludes, dehumanizes, and treats as disposable.

Perhaps the real question is not simply what belongs to Caesar. It is this: Who bears God’s image, and who dares to deny it?

God has already claimed God's own: every human being, God's beloved sons and daughters. Every. Human. Being. Especially those whom we have been taught to consider otherwise.

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WEDDINGS AND KILLINGS

Why do we identify the King in Sunday's parable with God? Or the masters, fathers, and landlords in Jesus's other parables? 

The king is a king. He is on top of an intricate system of honor and shame, patronage, property, and privilege. He is rich. He is powerful. He hosts a banquet. His invite is turned down. He is shamed. He gets back at those who shamed him. He has them killed and burns down their city. 

Then he gathers the dregs of society to his banquet. He finds one of the dregs not wearing the wedding robe, which the King obviously provided--where do you expect the dregs of society to get clothes for a royal wedding?

The King is a King. He is rich. He is powerful. He is benevolent, but he has been shamed--again! He has his minions bind the man, hand and foot, and thrown out to where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 

This is how many among us, who proudly call ourselves God's People and God's Chosen, imagine God and God's Kingdom. This is why so many among us support the "burnings and the killings" in Gaza because God's People and God's Chosen have been shamed by The Unchosen. And the burnings and killings did not start three years ago! 

My friends, there is no war in the Holy Land. The State of Israel has an army, a navy, an air force, 90 nuclear warheads, and the US Government! Palestinians have none of these. There is no war in the Holy Land. What is there is an Occupation. 

*art, "The Marriage Feast" by John Everett Millais (from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives).

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WICKED TENANTS?

A rich absentee landlord plants a vineyard, claims ownership, and leaves. Others till the soil, prune the vines, and harvest the grapes. When the fruits come, representatives of power arrive to collect what belongs to the owner. Conflict erupts because the vineyard has become a site of competing claims: legal ownership on one side, labor and survival on the other.

Most traditional readings quickly identify the landlord with God and the son with Jesus. My friends, not every king is God. Not every landlord is holy. The parable first presents us with a landlord, an heir, and tenants within an economic system marked by unequal power. The landlord remains wealthy throughout the story. The tenants end up dead. Their resistance is crushed by the violence of property and inheritance.

The son in the parable is the heir of accumulated wealth. His death reveals the desperation of people who see no future within a system that excludes them. The landlord’s return reveals how inheritance protects itself: those who challenge concentrated ownership are removed--massacred--and new tenants replace the dead. The vineyard remains in the hands of the powerful.

This reading does not celebrate the tenants’ violence. Neither does it romanticize the landlord’s revenge. Instead, it asks why so few inherit vineyards while so many inherit hunger. Why do some receive land by birth while those who work the land remain dispossessed?

The parable becomes a warning: whenever wealth, land, and power are concentrated in a few hands, justice cannot be reduced to legal ownership. The cry of the landless will continue to haunt every vineyard.

*Art: Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, 1606-1669. Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt University Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.

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THE PARABLE OF THE TWO SONS AND THEIR FATHER

Stories about two sons abound in the Hebrew Bible: Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob. When Jesus told this parable, his listeners probably thought of these familiar pairs. Matthew, writing decades after Jesus, used the story to challenge the hypocrisy of the religious elite. For Matthew’s Jesus, the tax collectors and prostitutes were the older son. The religious leaders were the younger.

The late Rev. Alberto Palma Velunta Jr., Tatay, had two sons: my older brother and me. So this parable is personal.

The father asks both sons to work in the vineyard. One says no but eventually goes. The other says yes but does not.

In Jesus’s world, the father owned the household. His authority was absolute. But the father in the parable does not punish either son. No banishment. No darkness, weeping, or gnashing of teeth. No one is treated as property.

Maybe this parable is not really about obedience. Maybe this parable is about parents who do not give up on their children.  Like Tatay Bert. Like Nanay Cely. Like your fathers and mothers.

Parents do not keep a ledger of their children’s disobedience. They know that children are people, not property. People change. Eventually, we learn to do what is right without being told.

And perhaps that is the point: the Kin-dom of God is not a reward for perfect obedience. It is a home where all of us belong.

The tax collectors and prostitutes will enter ahead of us. Not because they are more deserving, but because they have learned to say yes to grace.

After all, the sons in the parable shared the same father. All will enter the Kin-dom of God. You and I, we all share the same Creator. We will eventually all learn to say yes to grace.

*Photo: Rev. Alberto P. Velunta at 28 with his two sons.

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ARAWAN AND ANAWIM

Why do we so easily identify the rich landlord in Jesus’ parable with God? Why do we call his actions benevolence and grace? And why, so often, do we instinctively take the side of the rich and powerful in Jesus’ stories?

Perhaps we have been reading from the wrong seat.

Jeepney hermeneutics asks us to read Scripture from inside the cramped and noisy jeepney—not from one of the landlords imported SUVs, where the "arawan" (day laborers) commute looking for work.

A denarius was not a bonus. It was subsistence wage: enough wheat for one person for one day, or barley enough for three. Just bread. Nothing more. The arawan lived from one day to the next. 

So why did those who worked twelve hours grumble? Because they expected more when they saw those who worked only one hour receive the same denarius. They hoped this landlord might be different. They hoped he would recognize that twelve hours of labor should mean more than one day’s subsistence.

But the landlord was not different.

He used the denarius to divide the arawan. He took one aside and reminded him of his supposed generosity. He turned the workers against one another while protecting his own wealth.

This is where the parable unsettles us.

Perhaps it is not a story about God’s generosity at all. Perhaps it is a story exposing how wealth exercises power: by controlling wages, dividing workers, and calling exploitation generosity.

Jesus preached good news to the anawim—the poor, the vulnerable, and those whose survival depends on tomorrow’s work. Yes, the anawim include the arawan. 

So let us stop demonizing the arawan for grumbling. Maybe their grumbling is a collective recognition that something is very wrong. Maybe their grumbling is the sound of justice demanding to be heard.

Photo: "Day Laborers Brought in by Truck from Nearby Towns" by Wolcott, Marion Post, 1910-1990 (from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives).

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THE BENEVOLENT MASTER AND THE UNFORGIVING SERVANT

When we read this parable, we are often told it is about forgiveness. But perhaps Jesus is describing something far more familiar: life under empire.

Palestine in Jesus' time was occupied land. For millenia, one empire after another had ruled, taxed, and exploited its people. The detail that unlocks the story is the debt: ten thousand talents. An unimaginable amount. Ironically, it echoes the tribute Rome demanded from its colony. This is not an ordinary debt. It is the language of imperial extraction.

The king, then, is not necessarily God. He resembles the rulers who accumulate wealth through systems that burden the poor while appearing generous. He cancels a debt that should never have existed in the first place, and in doing so appears merciful. The colonizer always looks benevolent in the victor's story.

But Jesus does not stop there.

The servant whose debt is canceled immediately turns against a fellow servant who owes him a tiny amount. He has become what the system trained him to be. Empires rarely rule by themselves. They rule through people who have learned the habits of domination.

The jeepney carries the marks of its history. Born from American military vehicles, it was transformed by Filipinos into something useful, beautiful, and uniquely ours. Yet its origins still tell a story of occupation. The same vehicle bears both oppression and resistance.

So does the servant. He carries the empire within him.

Jesus exposes how domination persists. The oppressed can and do become agents of oppression. The colonized can learn the logic of the colonizer.

The challenge of the Gospel is not merely to receive mercy. It is to break the cycle, to refuse the empire's script, to imagine a different way of living together, and to birth a world where masters and servants are no more. 

*Art, "The Unforgiving Servant," JESUS MAFA 1973, Cameroon (from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives).

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WHERE TWO OR THREE

Taking care of the least is a major theme in Matthew’s Gospel. Matthew 18 makes this especially clear. Jesus places a child in the midst of the disciples and warns against causing “little ones” to stumble. He speaks of the shepherd who searches for one lost sheep. He then teaches the community how to respond when one member sins against another. His teaching echoes Deuteronomy 19:15.

Children are God's “little ones.” When a child is abused, neglected, bullied, exploited, or silenced, the child is not merely a problem to be managed. The child is the very person Jesus places at the center. The child is the one the community is commanded to protect.

This changes how we understand Jesus’ teaching about confronting sin. When someone is harmed, the burden should not fall on the wounded person. The offender is given opportunities to listen, repent, make amends, and change. First, one person speaks. Then two or three. Finally, the whole community becomes involved. The movement is toward truth, restoration, and justice—but never, ever, at the expense of the vulnerable.

This is where the church must refuse false neutrality. When a child says, “I have been hurt,” our first response cannot be, “Are you sure?” “Maybe you misunderstood.” "You are over-reacting." "It was only a joke." “Think of his family.” “Think of the Church.” Such responses silence the child and protect the powerful.

Unfortunately, the church and its institutions, including seminaries, have a history of protecting the powerful and the privileged.

We listen to men more than we do women. We reserve the best spaces for the rich rather than the poor. We believe adults more than we do children. Many times, we protect the oppressor instead of the oppressed. More often than not we take the side of the offender over the offended. 

In reality, we are the two or three or more who gang up on the little ones to force them to withdraw their complaints in order to protect the integrity of our institutions. Many times we are the two or three who force the victims to forgive their oppressors because their oppressors have already asked God for forgiveness. 

Recent studies on teen pregnancies in the Philippines show that adult men are responsible for pregnancies of girls 10-14 years old. Under the law this is considered statutory rape. 

Jesus calls us to become the “two or three” who stand beside the little ones. To listen. To believe. To seek truth. To establish safety. To hold offenders accountable. To create spaces where children can speak without fear and where adults understand that authority is a responsibility, never a license to harm. Or a perk of entitlement. 

Jesus goes after the lost sheep. He welcomes the little ones. He binds and loosens for the sake of a community transformed by justice and mercy.

So let us take a stand. Let us be the second and third person who makes “two or three”—and then many more. Let us stand against abuse, exploitation, discrimination, harassment, rape, violence, and every culture of impunity. 

Where the vulnerable are cared for, Jesus is present. Where two or three gather to protect the little ones, Jesus is always present. 

*image from heartlightdotorg.

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GET THEE BEHIND ME, PETER!

Many of us know what it is like to ride a jeepney. The road is crowded and noisy. The ride is equally crowded and noisy. Along the way, we hear voices. A lot of voices. People call out directions, stops, warnings, and advice. Some want the ride to go slower. Some want to take a safer route.

In this Sunday's Gospel Reading, Peter is one of those voices. He loves Jesus and does not want him to suffer. He tells Jesus to avoid the dangerous road to Jerusalem. Yet Jesus calls him “Satan,” not because Peter is evil, but because he has become a roadblock. He stands in the way of God's journey.

Jeepney hermeneutics teaches us to read Scripture from the streets, where ordinary people struggle for dignity, justice, and hope. The road Jesus takes is the same road traveled by the poor, the forgotten, and the oppressed. It is a road marked by risk, danger, and sacrifice.

Often the people who block our way are not enemies. They are family, friends, and loved ones who fear for our safety. Like Peter, they want to protect us. Yet discipleship sometimes requires moving forward despite loving resistance.

Friends, in every journey we undertake, we must discern which voices to heed and which ones to leave behind. Not every warning is God's direction. Sometimes courage means continuing the journey despite fear, uncertainty, and opposition.

Jesus tells Peter, “Get behind me.” The journey must continue. Like a jeepney moving through crowded streets, God's mission presses on toward justice, compassion, and abundant life for all. And like Peter, those who resist today may one day become companions and witnesses on the road of costly love.

Amen!

*Art, "Get Thee Behind Me, Satan!" by James Tissot (1836-1902), from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives.

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WHO DO YOU SAY I AM?

Close your eyes. Imagine Jesus.

Not the handsome Jesus of Hollywood, ivory icons, and stained-glass windows. Not the distant Christ who reigns above history. Not Trump and MAGA's Constantinian Lord. 

Imagine Jesus riding with us in a jeepney: squeezed between workers rushing to a construction site, vendors carrying baskets to market, students counting coins for fare, farmers wondering if the harvest will be enough.

In Sunday's Gospel Reading, Jesus asks, "Who do people say I am?" The disciples answer: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets. They name people who spoke truth to power and carried the burdens of their communities. Prophets did not stand above the people. They stood among them.

Through the lens of jeepney hermeneutics, Jesus is not found in comfort but in companionship, in solidarity. Jesus rides where the poor ride; waits where the unemployed wait; listens where the forgotten speak.

Like Miriam, who sang liberation at the sea, and like the prophets of old who challenged kings, Jesus announces God's dream for a world where dignity is not a privilege of the few. His question is not only "Who do people say I am?" but also "Which Jesus are you following?"

The Jesus of privilege and entitlement who blesses the status quo? Or the Jesus who stands with the dispossessed, who calls the rich to sell everything they have and to give all the proceeds to the poor, who insists that love of God cannot be separated from justice for the oppressed?

If Jesus were riding our jeepneys today, would we recognize him? Or would we pass him by because he looks too ordinary, too poor, too political, too much like the people whose struggles we would rather not see?

Perhaps the first step of discipleship is to open our eyes and find the Prophet from Nazareth among the least of our siblings. Where he has always been. And where he is waiting for us to join him.

*Art, based on the work of Tom McElligott for the Episcopal Ad Project. Updated 2018 by Rev. Emmy Kegler

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THE LITTLE BITCH WHO TAUGHT JESUS A LESSON

Sunday's Gospel Reading presents us with a Canaanite woman who refuses to stay in the place assigned to her. She crosses borders, interrupts Jesus' journey, challenges a dismissive response, and insists that her daughter deserves life. Whether one translates Jesus' words as "dog," "little dog," or more provocatively as "little bitch," the sting of exclusion remains.

Her courage transforms the encounter. She exposes the limits of ethnic and religious boundaries and reveals that God's mercy cannot--and must not--be contained by prejudice or privilege.

Jeepney Hermeneutics reminds us that Scripture is encountered from below—from the voices of those who have long been dismissed, colonized, or silenced. 

The woman's resistance echoes the struggles of Filipinos confronting poverty, Palestinians seeking dignity, Indigenous Peoples defending ancestral lands, migrants crossing borders, and mothers protecting their children from violence and hunger. Their stories become lenses through which the gospel is heard anew.

The miracle, then, is not only the healing of a child but the widening of God's table. The road of God's kingdom becomes more like a jeepney than a private carriage: crowded, noisy, uncomfortable, yet radically open. Those once treated as outsiders become indispensable teachers.

Like the Canaanite woman, they continue to challenge the church to make room, cross boundaries, and discover that God's compassion always travels farther than our prejudices.

*Art, "The Canaanite Woman asks for healing for her Daughter" by Bazzi Rahib, Ilyas Basim Khuri (from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives).

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FACING THE AI STORM

The Gospel of Matthew begins with a promise: “They shall name him Immanuel,” which means “God is with us” (Matt. 1:23). It ends with another promise: “I am with you always” (Matt. 28:20). Between these two promises unfolds the story of Jesus, the living presence of God among ordinary people. The question Matthew continually asks is not simply, “Where is God?” but “How can we participate in God's presence in the world?”

 

Through the lens of jeepney hermeneutics, we see faith not as a private journey but as a shared ride. A jeepney carries the 70% who depend on the cheapest mode of public transportation: peasants and daily wage workers, students and minimum wage earners, the weary but also the hopeful. It is crowded, noisy, and oftentimes uncomfortable, yet it moves because people make space for one another. In many ways, it resembles the church and the human community navigating life's roads together.

 

The unprecedented expansion and adoption of AI in practically all aspects of life have often been compared to a raging storm. Some say we are all in the same boat in the midst of a storm beyond anyone’s control. 

 

But we are not in the same boat. The privileged and the propertied travel in luxury liners, many are packed like sardines in fragile boats, while the majority struggle in the water with nothing to hold on to. Like the disciples in Sunday's Gospel Reading from Matthew 14:22-33, we instinctively want to remain inside the boat where it feels safe. 

 

Yet the gospel challenges us with a startling truth: Jesus is not always found where comfort and security reside. He is often out in the storm, among the fearful, the grieving, the hungry, the most vulnerable, and the forgotten.

 

Peter's courage was not that he mastered the waves. It was that he stepped toward Jesus. Let us never forget in defiance of systems and structures of exploitation and extraction, Jesus challenged his followers to be SALT and LIGHT. Jesus's followers are the original AI: Asin at Ilaw.** We are supposed to embody God's alternative to Pax Romana, to Pax Sinica, to Pax Dei, to Pax Britannica, to Pax Americana, to Pax Silica... We are supposed to be God’s material alternative to Pax Imperia!

 

Jeepney faith asks the same of us. Will we leave the safety of our own seat, reach out to a fellow passenger, and help carry another's burden? To experience Immanuel is not only to know that God is with us, but to become God's presence in somebody else's life. In the midst of the AI storm that prioritizes profit over people and planet, that may be the greatest act of faith.

 

My friends, the best way to experience God's presence in one's life is to be God's presence in someone else's life. 

 

Immanuel.

*art, "Walking on Water" by Peter Koenig (from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives).

**Asin (Salt) and Ilaw (Light).

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