The Gospel of Matthew begins with a promise: “They shall name him Immanuel,” which means “God is with us” (Matt. 1:23). It ends with another promise: “I am with you always” (Matt. 28:20). Between these two promises unfolds the story of Jesus, the living presence of God among ordinary people. The question Matthew continually asks is not simply, “Where is God?” but “How can we participate in God's presence in the world?”
Through the lens of jeepney hermeneutics, we see faith not as a private journey but as a shared ride. A jeepney carries the 70% who depend on the cheapest mode of public transportation: peasants and daily wage workers, students and minimum wage earners, the weary but also the hopeful. It is crowded, noisy, and oftentimes uncomfortable, yet it moves because people make space for one another. In many ways, it resembles the church and the human community navigating life's roads together.
The unprecedented expansion and adoption of AI in practically all aspects of life have often been compared to a raging storm. Some say we are all in the same boat in the midst of a storm beyond anyone’s control.
But we are not in the same boat. The privileged and the propertied travel in luxury liners, many are packed like sardines in fragile boats, while the majority struggle in the water with nothing to hold on to. Like the disciples in Sunday's Gospel Reading from Matthew 14:22-33, we instinctively want to remain inside the boat where it feels safe.
Yet the gospel challenges us with a startling truth: Jesus is not always found where comfort and security reside. He is often out in the storm, among the fearful, the grieving, the hungry, the most vulnerable, and the forgotten.
Peter's courage was not that he mastered the waves. It was that he stepped toward Jesus. Let us never forget in defiance of systems and structures of exploitation and extraction, Jesus challenged his followers to be SALT and LIGHT. Jesus's followers are the original AI: Asin at Ilaw.** We are supposed to embody God's alternative to Pax Romana, to Pax Sinica, to Pax Dei, to Pax Britannica, to Pax Americana, to Pax Silica... We are supposed to be God’s material alternative to Pax Imperia!
Jeepney faith asks the same of us. Will we leave the safety of our own seat, reach out to a fellow passenger, and help carry another's burden? To experience Immanuel is not only to know that God is with us, but to become God's presence in somebody else's life. In the midst of the AI storm that prioritizes profit over people and planet, that may be the greatest act of faith.
My friends, the best way to experience God's presence in one's life is to be God's presence in someone else's life.
Immanuel.
*art, "Walking on Water" by Peter Koenig (from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives).
**Asin (Salt) and Ilaw (Light).
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