The Wedding Banquet

Why do we identify the King in the parable with God?

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 is benevolent. He hosts a banquet. His invitation 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.

We should stop identifying kings in the parables of Jesus with God.

The Wheat and the Tares

I’m sure most of us have heard a sermon about this parable. I’m pretty sure most of us heard a metaphorical or allegorical interpretation. I’m also pretty sure that most of us heard an interpretation of this parable that challenged us to be a good wheat.

Incidentally, only the rich could afford wheat bread in Ancient Palestine. The poor ate barley.

I want to focus on the weeds. Masamang damo! Or more appropriately, weeds or tares that look so much like wheat that Palestinians to this day call it “bastard wheat.” You can actually call this narrative the parable of the wheat and the bastard wheat!

The parable is akin to the one about sheep and goats. It's about judgment. God’s judgment. Not ours. There will be time to separate the wheat from the bastard wheat. In God’s time.

Why God? Because wheat and bastard wheat are actually sisters and brothers! God created both. So, God will judge. God will separate. Definitely no one else. Only God.

And since God is a God of surprises, God’s judgment will probably surprise both those who self-righteously think they are the good wheat and those whom the good wheat label as bastard wheat.

Tomorrow

Our youngest turns 21 tomorrow!

I was away when Ian was born. For the first six months of his life I was the voice in the micro cassette recorder his Nanay Gracie kept by his bed, the person on the pictures she posted on the wall by his head, the man who wrote the letters she read to him and his Kuya Lukas everyday.

The first time we met I was so nervous. I was afraid he'd think I was a stranger. I was wrong. When Gracie put him in my arms I sang him the lullaby he's heard me sing on tape. He fell asleep right away.

I will forever be thankful to Gracie, and to Lukas, as well, for making sure Ian knew me before we met each other face to face.

And we've been close ever since. When he was two, he fell in love with "Lay's" potato chips. When he was three he asked me why I hadn't written a song for him. I did one for Lukas when he was a baby. So, I wrote "This Song is about you, O Ian." When he was four, we started watching "To Kill a Mockingbird" almost every day. Like Lukas, Ian learned to read by reading the Bible. And he started writing his own Bible verses! His Lolo Mel used to share these verses at the Church Among the Palms when he was pastor there.

When he started kindergarten, Ian and I started walking to school together every morning. We did this almost daily until he finished high school. 11 years!  Ian calculated that we walked over 400 kilometers!

Lukas left the nest in 2010 when he started teaching at Diliman. He was 20. Gracie worked in South Korea in 2011, then taught in Indonesia from 2012 to 2015. Today, she's the National Coordinator of the UCCP's Christian Education Program and is based in Quezon City.

Ian moved to UP Los Baños in 2013. He's tried very hard to come home every weekend these past few years. And he texts me every single day. Thank you, son! You don't know how much I appreciate what you do.

November 1 is a holiday. It's All Saints Day. Families and clans will be together. Remembering their dearly departed.

Our family will also be together. Gracie is home. And so is Lukas. And, of course, Ian. We'll all be home. Rare these days. Happiness!

But tomorrow is extra special for us. Yes, it's All Saints Day but we'll be celebrating a birthday.

Our youngest turns 21 tomorrow!

The Lost Sheep

Shepherds are very important characters in the Hebrew Bible. Abel was a shepherd. So was Zipporah and her sisters. Moses and David as well. The Prophet Amos. There are more.

Unfortunately in Palestine during the Roman Occupation shepherds were despised and were in the lowest rungs of the social order with dung sweepers. Most of them day laborers, even the Gospel of John portrays them as unworthy hired helpers. The Gospel of Luke, on the other hand, tells us that shepherds were the first who received the good news about the birth of the Messiah. Matthew and Luke have the Parable of the Lost Sheep.

The parable talks about a shepherd. A hired help. The scum of society. He was given the responsibility to care for 100 sheep. And he does take care of each one of them. He searches for one who is lost. He celebrates with friends and neighbors when the lost is found.

He may be poor. He may not be hired tomorrow. But today he was given responsibility for 100 sheep. And 99 do not make 100.

The Parable of the Great Surprise

Sheep and goats is a collective term. Most people cannot tell them apart. Especially sheep and goats in Asia and Africa. But shepherds know.

Blessed and cursed is a collective term. People, especially those who are so sure they are blessed, claim they know how to tell them apart. And they have Bible verses to prove it! Especially the blessed and the cursed in a world where 25000 children starve to death every day; where close to 6 billion people survive on 2 dollars a day; and where some people have 7 Mercedes Benzes because "God loves them so much God does not want them to experience vehicle coding."

But the Shepherd in the parable knows. Who are the real blessed ones and who are not. Not me. Nor you. Only the Shepherd knows how to separate them.

Those who were blessed did not expect to be blessed. And those who were not did not expect to be cursed. Their Bible verses did not help.

Every. One. Was. Surprised!

Don't forget this. Ever. God is a God of surprises!

The Parable of the Sower

The parable is not about soil. Nor is it a multiple choice question. Have you seen soil deciding to be either soil along the path, rocky, thorny or good soil?

The parable is about a sower. Then, like now, farmers were among the poorest of the poor. They had no land to call their own. Life was so hard half of the population was slowly starving to death. Life was so hard the average life expectancy was 28!

So they had to sow where it would take a miracle for the seed to actually grow. Along the path, among rocks, among thorns. And the seed that fall on good soil? The good soil owned by the rich, the powerful, and the privileged. They all grow, bringing a yield of thirty, sixty, a hundred fold. A bountiful harvest indeed. For the rich, the powerful, and the privileged.

Do not forget this. Ever. Parables are subversive speech. Parables got Jesus executed.

The Master’s House

Most of us know it by heart. Using the master's tools to dismantle the master’s house. That's why we learn the ways of the empire. That why we we are experts in imperial mimicry. That's why our institutions, systems, and structures seem to mirror the establishment's.

But we also know that the master's tools will never dismantle the master’s house; that many of his tools force a single truth upon a plural world; and that most of his tools are swords and spears which bring about peace. Peace based on victory in war.

This is why we turn his tools into our tools, beating swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks; why we tell both parables and myths; why we try to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves; why we preach good news to the poor and not to the rich; why we continue to drink from our own wells; and why we struggle with the masses to bring about peace. Peace based on justice.

If the only tool we use is a hammer, everything will look like a nail. This is why we sing, if I had a hammer, if I had a bell, if I had a song...

Difference is our strength. Diversity is our gift. It takes a village to raise a child. It also takes a village to tear down the master’s house.

The Parable of the "Wicked" Tenants

Once upon a time there was an absentee landlord who planted a vineyard. He leased it to tenants and left for another country. When harvest came he sent slaves to collect his share of the produce. The tenants beat one, stoned one, and killed another. The landlord sends more slaves. The tenants treat them the same way as they did the first wave. Finally, the landlord sends his son. The tenants, seeing the son, said to themselves, “This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.” So they seized the son and killed him.

Now, when the absentee landlord comes, what will he do to the tenants? He will put those wretches to a miserable death and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at harvest time.

The rich absentee landlord had every right to do what he did. He owned the land. He probably had the titles to prove that. He had a valid contract with the tenants. They broke the terms of the contract. And worse, killed his heir. The rich landlord had every right to kill each and every one who had a hand in his heir’s death. Everyone! At the end of the parable, the landlord was still rich. He still has slaves. He has new tenants. He has lost a son. But he has avenged his heir by destroying all the “wicked” tenants who had actually tried to seize his land for their own.

The rich, absentee, landlord is not God. The heir is not Jesus. The rich, absentee, landlord is a rich, absentee, landlord. Like the Cojuancos. The Consunjis. The Enriles. The heir is a landlord in training. He will eventually get the land. Then after him, his heir. Anyone who tries to seize the landlord’s property will be eliminated. 

Dispossessed farmers, peasants, tenants beware: if you collectively try to seize lands that belong to the rich, you and your kin will have a miserable death.

Render unto Caesar

Render unto Caesar what he owns. What bears his image. His property.
But never, ever, render unto Caesar what he does not own. People. Each one bears God's image. People are not property.

JEEPNEYS AND REVOLUTIONS

Jeepneys, according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, best represent the Filipinos’ on-the-spot survival instincts conditioned by centuries of desperate situations. Lest we forget, the “people” in People Power are the millions who face the violence of hunger every day, those who barely get the minimum wage. They are the “bakya” crowd, the “masa,” the “ochlos” in the Gospel of Mark. The late Luis Beltran, popular radio political commentator, called them “bubwit.” These are the millions who are underpaid, who are overworked, and who will never get a bank loan approved for a small house, a second-hand car, and yes, a 1.6 million electric jeepney!

These are the masses who patronize the 600,000+ drivers who drive over 200,000 jeepneys throughout the country every single day. Yet, these are the masses who overthrew Marcos and “Erap.” According to Teodoro Agoncillo, Renato Constantino, and Reynaldo Ileto, the “Revolt of the Masses” that overthrew Spain was exactly that—a revolt of the masses!

“No uprising fails. Each one is a step in the right direction.” Ileto memorializes this famous saying of peasant leader Salud Algabre in his Pasyon and Revolution. Algabre was one of the leaders of the anti-American Sakdal uprising in 1935. For me, what Salud Algabre ultimately does with that short yet profound statement is memorialize all those unnamed legions of freedom fighters that have been victimized by the violence of institutionalized forgetting. These include the indigenous communities of Igorots and Lumads, forcibly driven out of their ancestral domain, in the name of development, that now find themselves displaced in their own homeland. These include rural “messiahs,” like Hermano Pule and Macario Sakay, who led anti-colonial movements against Spain and America yet are marked as bandits and thieves in Filipino and American history books. (Incidentally, if you know your Greek, the “lestes”—rebels or freedom fighters—crucified with Jesus are called bandits and thieves in the English translations.)

And these would include jeepney riders—farmers, fisher-folk, students, women, those whose only hope is God—collectively struggling to dismantle structures of exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and systemic violence in all its forms.

Since the late 40s, jeepneys have been integral to the lives of many Filipinos who are not full participants in the economic system. Albert Ravenholt’s case study notes that jeepneys “relate so intimately to the daily life of Filipinos throughout the archipelago” yet government and financial institutions do not provide support of any kind to their manufacture and/or sale. Jeepneys are the masses’ response to the ravages of war.  They are the most concrete expressions of a people's capacity to beat swords into plowshares. Unfortunately, the Philippine Government has basically left public mass transportation systems in the hands of the private sector. Jeepneys, tricycles, pedicabs are the masses’ response to the government’s impotence and indifference.

Why is it that there’s practically no traffic in Metro Manila during Holy Week? Because public roads are free of private vehicles that cause all the traffic in the Metropolis. Heck, 80-90% of public roads are used by private vehicles, most of which have one passenger. Why was there heavy traffic during the October 16-17 Nationwide Strike against the jeepney phaseout? Again, because jeepneys do not cause traffic. Private vehicles do. And everyone in the LTO, DOTC, and LTFRB know this as true.

Raveholt continues, without establishment support, manufacturers, which are usually family operations, work on the kumpadre/kumadre system and seal deals with a handshake and palabra de honor. Young people who learn how to drive on jeepneys see jeepney driving as the best option for livelihood, given their very limited opportunities to find work elsewhere. With no credit schemes available from banks, these young Filipinos have no choice but to approach private money lenders who eventually, because of exorbitant interest rates, get to own the jeepneys themselves. Many work as OFWs and, after saving enough, come home to get their own jeepneys.

Ravenholt notes: “Jeepney drivers are so influential as molders of public opinion that successive attempts seeking to bar them from Manila’s main streets have been thwarted…In the twenty years or so that I have been involved in social activism in the Philippines, I have observed that the only thing that can paralyze the country’s business and government infrastructure, literally bringing everything to a halt is a jeepney strike.” 

No. Actually, there are two: a jeepney strike and a “People Power” uprising from the masses that ride jeepneys.

No other public vehicle is better equipped to navigate the Philippines’ narrow and dimly lit streets at night. No other person is better equipped to drive a jeepney at night than a Filipino. The people’s revolt that overthrew the US-supported Marcos dictatorship in 1986 began and ended at night. I was there, with about two million other folks, most of whom ride jeepneys.  Clifford Geertz reminds us: “Some of the greatest revolutions occur in the dark.”

#NoToJeepneyPhaseout

The Parable of the Talents

A rich man entrusts his property to three of his slaves. To one he gives five talents; to the second, two; to the third, one. The one with five traded with them and earns five more. The one with two, doing the same, earns two more. The third, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money.

After a long time, the master returns and settles accounts with them. The first and second slaves are found trustworthy and put in charge of more things and invited to enter into the joy of their master. The third who returns the one talent he received is thrown out into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Why?

Because he was not willing to become a party to the ways of his master who was harsh, reaping where he did not sow, and gathering where he did not scatter seed. Moreover, his master expected 100% returns on his property which the other two slaves did.

Lest we forget, a talent is 15 years' wages. At minimum rates, in Philippine pesos that is about 3 million pesos. The first got 15 million and earned 15 million. The second, 6 million and earned 6 million. 

The third slave was brave enough to say no to a system that was built on profit, greed, and violence. And he was punished for doing so.

My friends, this parable is not about one's talents in singing, dancing, leading Bible Studies, teaching Sunday School, and other "talents." It has never been about these.

His parables got Jesus executed.

The Prodigal Son

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.

The Centurion and his Beloved

Palestine had been under Roman Occupation for almost a century during the time of Jesus. With the death of Herod the Great, direct control was put in effect. Thus, a Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, run Judea by the time of Jesus’s ministry.

Historians tell us that most Jews hated the Romans. They hated Roman Centurions more. And the feeling was mutual. Hatred for centurions was especially pronounced because the centurion, not the emperor nor the Roman senators, served as the face of the empire for majority of the occupied peoples. In other words, centurions were the enemies; the concrete presence of the occupying forces; the oppressor; the colonizer. Moreover, a centurion led the detachment that executed Jesus.

If we agree with the historical argument that Matthew and Luke shared a source that predates both gospels, then we have a Jesus tradition that celebrates inclusivity at its finest. 

The narrative, especially Luke's version, introduces Jewish leaders that defy our stereotype. They love the centurion. It also presents a centurion that defies our stereotype. This centurion loves the Jewish people, even building a synagogue for them. Finally, it presents a Jesus who makes many uncomfortable. He heals the centurion’s younger male lover or boyfriend who was very ill and close to death.

Many of you here know that two words play important functions in the narrative. Doulos and pais. Doulos is always translated slave. While pais is usually translated servant. But we also know that pais can be translated servant, son, daughter, child, child servant, or younger male lover or boyfriend. Or beloved.

Caesar Augustus, probably because of the debacle the Legions experienced in Germany because there were so many wives, children, and slaves with the soldiers decreed a ban on heterosexual marriages for members of the Roman Imperial Forces. The ban was still in force during Jesus’s time. The ban lasted until 197 CE. Thus, it was not uncommon for Roman soldiers to have same sex relationships, especially with younger men.

The Occupied Jews knew this meaning of pais, Matthew, Luke, and their source knew this meaning of pais, Greek writers and philosophers spoke of pais this way, I’m pretty sure Jesus did as well. And when the centurion came to him, most probably at his wits end looking for healing for his ill and dying beloved, Jesus healed him.

Jesus did not heal him because he loved the sinner but hated the sin. He healed him because he was sick and close to death. Lest we forget, the Jewish elders, the centurion, and Jesus were united by one objective, the healing of the Centurion's younger partner; his beloved. 

Jesus did not care whether the centurion was a Gentile, an enemy of his people, and uncircumcised. He did not care if he had the right religion, the right creed, the right skin color, the right sexual orientation and gender identity …

What Jesus saw instead was this enemy who loved the Jews so dearly that the Jews loved him back. He only saw the love of the centurion for his ill and dying boyfriend, a love that transgressed borders in order to seek healing and restoration for the beloved.

This love is akin to the love that feeds the hungry, gives drink to the thirsty, welcomes the stranger, visits the sick, proclaims good news to the poor, liberates the captives, clothes the naked, and sets the oppressed free!

This is the love that believes that hope is greater than despair; that faith is stronger than fear; and that life will always conquer death. This is the love that transforms the world.