ONE CHILD'S OFFERING

There are many people who imagine this story-- which we find in all four canonical gospels--as an actual event in Jesus's ministry. Then there are those who argue that it is a parable. All the parables we have looked at so far are stories that Jesus told. This one is different. It's a parable from the early church. Jesus is a character in the parable.

He sees the multitude hungry and, following the teachings of the Law and the Prophets, he tells his disciples to feed them. In the Synoptics, his disciples make up excuses. Send the crowd away. Let them feed themselves. In Sunday's lection from John 6, they tell him: we don't have enough funds to address the situation.

The excuses then sound so much like our excuses today.

Then a young child, possibly 12 years old or younger, offers what he has. Five barley loaves and two fish. And the miracle of feeding of the 5000 begins. There is a tradition that says barley tastes good... to cows, sheep, and horses! The poor, the anawim, ate barley. It was all they could afford. The rich had storehouses of wheat, and fattened themselves with it.

Do not forget this. Ever. The barley loaves and the fish that led to the feeding of the poor and hungry multitudes were offered by a POOR AND HUNGRY child. Many times we forget that the answer to our prayers is already among us. Many times, God's liberating acts begin when one--just one we usually do not expect--takes that step forward, that leap of faith, that offering of bread and fish.


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

SLEEPING IN CHURCH

Many people sleep during Sunday services. Many people find such behavior unacceptable. Many other people understand the reasons why many people sleep during Sunday services.

In Genesis 1, God works for six days and rests on the seventh. Even God needs a break. Even God needs to take a nap.

Sunday's lection offers us a glimpse of Jesus declaring a break for himself and his discples. Mark 6:31 reads: Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”

They did go away to a quiet place and got some rest.

My friends, almost everyone needs a break. I say "almost everyone" because one-third of the world's wealthiest people are born wealthy and they will die wealthier without ever working one minute in their entire lives. This post is not about them.

This post is about people who live from payday to the next; those who do not even get the minimum wage; those who have never had a restful sleep in years; those dead-tired people in the pews who take naps during the pastor's sermon.

Please rest. Even God needs a break. Even God needs a nap.


*image: Rowan Atkinson as "Mr Bean" sleeping in church

PRINCESS AND PROPHET

Kakay Pamaran's work on Salome is a brilliant thesis using Historical Jesus Research methods. She argues that the "princess's dance which led to the prophet's death" tradition is part of a much bigger extra-canonical Salome Corpus that is still waiting to be collected, catalogued, and celebrated.

Salome and Mary Magdalene are two of the most attested interlocutors of Jesus in extra-canonical Christian literature. There are scholars whose research have shown how Mary Magdalene has been systematically erased from orthodox traditions. Kakay's research pursues a similar trajectory. There are copies of Mark where Salome completely disappears from the list of the women who discovers the empty tomb. Matthew’s and Luke's accounts do not mention Salome.

Many people today would call Magdalene a prostitute or adulteress and Salome a temptress or seductress. All these are false. Fake news. Kakay's work calls the church to repent of its violent sins of systematic erasuring and institutional forgetting.

More importantly, Kakay's work challenges the church to open the canon and discover the diverse, pluriform, and multivocal Christian traditions that make up the 99% that orthodoxy have marginalized.

Friends, please read Sunday's lection. Please read it in Greek if you are able. Salome, in the passage, was a GIRL. A LITTLE GIRL.

*Kakay Pamaran, Salvae Salome: Corpus, Myth, Canon, and the Quest for Salome (Union Theological Seminary, Philippines Master of Theology thesis, 2021). 

THE BASTARD FROM NAZARETH

Homecomings conjure up positive images for a lot of people, especially graduation and vacation days. For many, homecoming is almost synonymous with reunion.

But Sunday's lection on Jesus's homecoming paints a different picture. His townmates ask, "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?" Mark's 'The carpenter from Nazareth, the son of Mary' (read, bastard) was a hard sell. It was certainly a hard sell for the other Nazarenes; in the Lukan version of this story, they tried to throw Jesus off a cliff.

I always ask my co-learners to imagine a daughter or sister or friend--who is barely out of her teens--being pregnant and telling everyone that the father of her child is the Holy Spirit. Mark's 'The carpenter from Nazareth, the son of Mary' (read, bastard) was a very hard sell. Then and now.

To this day, the bastard from Nazareth who lived his life with and for those whose only hope was God; who preached good news to the poor; who challenged the rich to sell everything they have and give the proceeds to the destitute; who defied empire and its life-negating systems; and who commanded everyone who followed him to offer one's life for a friend; remains an extremely hard sell.

You can't exactly sell a way of life that carries a high risk of being executed by the state, can you?

*art, "Jesus as a child in Nazareth," (JESUS MAFA) available at the Vanderbilt Divinity Library digital archives.