Below is a short homily on Matthew 8:5–13, deliberately centered on the “pais”, the centurion’s slave, and shaped by Jeepney Hermeneutics*—that is, reading the text from below, from inside crowded, precarious spaces where power is felt most sharply and often most painfully.
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“The One Who Never Speaks”:
A Very Short Homily on Matthew 8:5–13
If we read Matthew 8 inside a jeepney, our attention shifts.
Half of the time we focus on Jesus. The other half we focus on the centurion—his humility, his faith, his surprising trust in Jesus. But reading inside the jeepney teaches us to ask: Who is missing? Whose voice is not heard? Who is carried by the story but never allowed to speak?
And here, it is the slave. The slave never asks to be healed. The slave never approaches Jesus. The slave never speaks a word.
Inside empires, slaves do not speak. They are spoken about. Objectified. Commodified.
This slave is sick, and sickness inside empire is dangerous. A sick slave is expendable. Yet the text tells us the slave is “valued”—not because he is free, not because he has rights, but because he is useful. Even compassion, here, is filtered through power.
I have argued for three decades now that reading the Bible inside a jeepney challenges us to read the Bible from the places where bodies are packed tight, where people are carried but not noticed, where survival depends on someone else’s decision. The jeepney is full of people like this slave—workers whose labor matters more than their names, whose pain must wait, whose healing depends on permission. And yet—this is where grace interrupts.
Jesus never meets the slave. Jesus never inspects the body. Jesus never demands proof. From a distance, Jesus speaks life.
This matters. Because distance is often how power operates. But here, distance becomes the space where healing happens without domination, without control, without spectacle. The slave is healed not because empire commands it, but because compassion crosses boundaries empire created.
Inside the jeepney, this sounds like good news. It is good news for the workers who cannot leave the job to seek help. Good news for the sick who cannot afford to be visible. Good news for those whose healing must happen quietly, offstage, without recognition.
When Jesus praises the centurion’s faith, it is not faith in authority—it is faith that releases control. The centurion does not insist on presence. He does not demand inspection. He trusts that life does not need to pass through empire’s checkpoints to arrive. And the slave—the one who never speaks—lives.
So today, the Gospel asks us: Who in our world is being healed quietly, without credit? Who is carried by decisions made far away?
And are we willing to trust a God who heals from below, from the margins, from inside the jeepney?
Because the reign of God often arrives first to those who never get a seat, to those who never get to speak, to those who are too weak to even sit, —and yet are still carried home, are still heard, are still touched by compassion that transgresses both distance and boundaries.
Amen.
+Art by Zee-m Tiempo
*Thirty years ago, eight individuals affirmed and supported my proposal. It is my privilege to name them here. Melinda Grace Aoanan, Melanio Aoanan, Elizabeth Gravador-Dominguez, Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza, Katharine Sakenfeld, Daniel Patte, Renate Rose, and Alberto P. Velunta Jr.
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