FAITH AND FEAR

Jesus moves through towns and villages like a jeepney on a hard and dusty route. Not above the people, but among them, close enough to see the weary faces, close enough to feel how fear sits inside their bodies.  

In Sunday's Gospel Reading, Jesus sees the crowds as harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd and then sends others into that same wounded world. 

This is not a distant mission for heroes or experts. It is a roadside calling, born in ordinary struggle, read from the margins, and shaped by the lived realities of those who carry fear, poverty, and hope together. Jeepney hermeneutics insists that interpretation begins with local experiences and that even borrowed or imperial tools can be transformed into vehicles of liberation. 

And so this passage speaks sharply to our own fearful time. Fear is real. Fear paralyses. Fear makes people hide, deny, flee, or fall silent. The world of Jesus knew that fear well: empires rule not only by swords and laws, but by terror. To be sent out “as sheep among wolves” is not a romantic image. It is dangerous. It names the cost of discipleship honestly.  

Yet the Gospel does not ask us to pretend we are fearless. It asks us to go anyway. Sometimes our own faith is thin, trembling, and tired. Sometimes it is not enough for the road ahead. But grace also arrives communally: my faith can carry your fear, and your faith can carry mine. Like passengers making room for one another in a crowded jeepney, we are held by a courage that is shared.  

This is why the mission of Jesus is never solitary. Meaning, like travel, is communal. We do not journey alone; we read, hope, and resist together. What seems insufficient becomes enough when everyone brings what they can. 

So my friends, when fear rises and faith falters, let us remember: the harvest is still plentiful, compassion is still holy, and the road is still open. Jesus is still found in the crowded places, among the ordinary, sending fragile people to heal, to proclaim peace, and to freely give what they have freely received. And when our own faith feels too small, there is still mercy in this: someone else’s faith may be enough to carry us until we can stand again.  

*Art, "Christ teaching the Disciples," Painting, Panel (Walters Art Museum), Baltimore, MD, United States (from the vanderbilt divinity library digital collection).

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