There was a man with two sons.
He was rich. He had property. He had land. He had slaves. He had two sons. The younger asks for his inheritance and squanders it. He goes back home and is welcomed back by his father. With a feast, a robe, sandals, and a ring. The older is angry, feels slighted, and left out so the father reminds him that “you are always with me and all is mine is yours.”
In the end, everybody lives happily ever after. Father and sons. Still propertied. Still landed. Still slaveholders. Still rich.
My friends, we should stop identifying rich fathers, rich landowners, and rich slaveholders with God. Parables of Jesus were subversive speech. They indicted the status quo. They challenged Pax Romana.
They were the reasons Jesus was executed.
Reading the Bible inside a Jeepney: Celebrating Colonized and Occupied Peoples' capacity to beat swords into ploughshares; to transform weapons of mass destruction into instruments of mass celebration; mortar shells into church bells, teargas canisters to flowerpots; rifle barrels into flutes; U.S. Military Army Jeeps into Filipino Mass Transport Jeepneys.
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