TOUCHING MOMENTS

 

Like many people, I was nurtured in a "touchy-feely" culture. Many of our pains, physical or otherwise, were soothed and massaged away by the healing touch of our loved ones. Holding, hugging, and kissing were all integral parts of our growing up years. 

Touching helps in making us feel safe, loved, and not alone. We learned the science behind all these touching moments much later. I always have a bottle of Vicki's Vaporub. Its scent alone reminds me of my mother's "haplos ng pagmamahal." 

If we read our Bibles and pray everyday, we will grow, grow, and grow in the realization that many of the healing narratives in the Gospels involve touching. Sunday's Gospel Reading from Matthew has two sections: the first part has a woman suffering for twelve years who touches Jesus's cloak; in the second part, Jesus touches a twelve-year old girl's hand and tells her to rise up.

The pandemic left millions dead and tens of millions disenfranchised. Most of those who died were alone. No last visit. No last rites. No last touch. For millions more, physical touch has been replaced by virtual relationships provided by touch screens and digital environments. Many feel alone. Depressed. Afraid. And in desperate need to touch someone or be touched.

My friends, someone somewhere right now needs a healing touch. Someone somewhere right now needs to experience "Immanuel." Someone somewhere right now needs you! 

*art, "Healing of the Daughter of Jairus," (JESUS MAFA) available at vanderbilt divinity library archives.

**Of course there are many that have the opposite experience about touching and being touched. Topic for another post. 

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IMMANUEL

William Carrey's 87-page pamphlet, "An Inquiry into the Obligation of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen," was an exposition of Matthew 28: 19-20. Published in 1792, it is considered as the first published work on the theology of missions.

Centuries later, interpreters of the passage, which is Sunday's Gospel Reading, still resonate with Carrey's exposition. Many missions dedicated to convert the "heathen" continue to be grounded on Carrey's exposition of "The Great Commission."  

I have always argued that Immanuel, "God-with-Us," serves as the thread that binds the 28 chapters of the Gospel of Matthew. The Gospel, in 1.23, proclaims that Mary's son will be called Immanuel, meaning "God-with-Us" (echoing Isaiah 7.14). At the end of the Gospel, in 28. 20, Jesus proclaims, "I am with you always..." God-with-Us to the end of the age!  The Gospel has one promise. We will never, ever, be alone. 

One can ask, "What does it mean to experience Immanuel, to feel God's presence in our lives?" More often than not, the answer is, "Be God's presence in someone else's life!" Matthew's Jesus was. 

So many people, struggling to live from one day to the next or from one meal to the next, have no time to read the Bible. What they do have is time to "read" us. 

My friends, our great commission is to do what Jesus did. Feed the hungry. Visit the prisoners. Welcome the stranger. Care for the sick. Befriend the lonely. Choose justice always. Let people know for sure that they are not alone, and then they will experience God's presence.  And proclaim, "Immanuel!" 

*art, "The Mission to the World," (JESUS MAFA, 1973, Cameroon), from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives.

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HELEN, MOSES, AND JESUS

Why are so many people having problems with the casting of multi-awarded actress Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy in Christopher Nolan's Odyssey?

Did these same people have problems with the casting of Charleston Heston, Ben Kingsley, Val Kilmer, and Christian Bale? All played an Egyptian Moses.

How about Max von Sydow, Robert Powell, Jeffrey Hunter, and Willem Dafoe? All played a Palestinian Jesus.

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JEEPNEYS AND PENTECOST

John’s Pentecost happens behind locked doors, not in power centers. Not in Rome. Not in the White House or Malacañang. Definitely not in the Philippine Senate! Jesus breathes Spirit into frightened people, not officials. This matters—especially now. This is not a Spirit that descends from above. This is a Spirit that squeezes in.

Read inside a jeepney, sin is never neutral. It is legislated, priced, and enforced. Who is declared colorum? Who is phased out in the name of “modernization?"Who absorbs fare hikes while wages stay frozen? Who is criminalized for surviving?

We know the answer. It is the driver. The commuter. The anawim.

In the Gospels, sinners are almost always those crushed by laws written without them. Jesus breaks Sabbath rules, heals without permits, forgives people the system already condemned. He does not protect order; he exposes it.

So when Jesus says, “If you forgive, they are forgiven. If you bind, they are bound,” this is not a license for church or state to police morality. Read from inside a jeepney, it is a command about movement and restraint.

To forgive is to set free—to protect livelihoods before profits,to loosen policies that choke the poor, to stand with drivers and commuters when they are told their suffering is necessary. To forgive is to set free—to let people disembark without penalty, to unbind the grip of laws that comodify the anawim, to refuse to confuse poverty with guilt.

To bind is to stop greed dressed as policy, to halt corruption dressed as development, and to restrain other-worldly theologies that remain silent while people lose their livelihood, their income, and their dignity.

The question Jesus breathes into us is not abstract. Are we setting free those being pushed off the road? Or are we helping bind them—in God’s name?

Are we binding those who would push us off the road? Or are we leaving them free to do their work--again, in God's name?

My friends, where are we seated when we read this Gospel? Inside a jeepney—or inside our comfortable SUV watching the jeepney disappear?

*art, "Pentecost," JESUS MAFA, 1973 (Cameroon), from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives.

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JESUS'S FAREWELL PRAYER INSIDE A JEEPNEY

Sunday's Gospel Reading is part of John's Farewell Discourse—his parting words before the cross. They are not unlike José Rizal’s Mi Último Adiós, written on the eve of his execution. Jesus speaks before Golgotha. Rizal writes before the firing squad. Both face death not with bitterness, but with love. Both die because of love.

In John 17, Jesus leaves behind not a sermon, but a prayer. He looks up and says, “Father, the hour has come.” He knows the cross is near. He knows his followers will soon feel lost and vulnerable. He knows he will no longer walk with them in the same way. So he entrusts them to God. “Holy Father, keep them… that they may be one.”

Let us hear this prayer from inside a jeepney. A jeepney is a small world on wheels—crowded, sweaty, noisy, diverse. Students, laborers, vendors, elders, children sit side by side. Most are strangers, yet all are traveling together. Fares are passed hand to hand. Bodies adjust. Someone always makes space. Somehow, in a jeepney, there is always room for one more. This is the world Jesus prays for. Not Trump's. Nor the Philippine Senate's. Especially not Duterte's!

He does not ask that his followers be taken out of the world. He asks that they be kept in it—protected, held together, and not torn apart. Unity, in this sense, is not sameness. It is shared life. It is choosing to stay together, even when the road is rough and the ride is uncomfortable. 

The God Jesus trusts is not a God of domination, but a God who keeps—like a mother who protects life, like a womb that shelters what is fragile. A God who makes space for the vulnerable. This is the church Jesus leaves behind: not a building, but people who love, individuals who know how to make room for others, how to carry one another’s burdens, how to love even when the journey is hard. And even dangerous. That is why we still have hope—because love is still experienced, every day, in crowded places, on difficult roads, among people who choose to work for peace based on justice. 

Among people who choose to love.

*Art, "The Ascension, " JESUS MAFA 1973, Cameroon (available from the Vanderbilt Divinity Library digital art collection).

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LABOR PAINS AND ABIDING LOVE

On the night before his death, Jesus speaks to his friends not from a place of safety, but from the edge of loss. Sunday's Gospel Reading  is part of the Farewell Discourse in John’s Gospel. Jesus knows what is coming. Arrest. Execution. Absence. And so he speaks again and again about the Advocate—the Helper, the Holy Spirit—who will come, who will abide, who will remain. But his friends do not seem to hear the promise. 

Fear has a way of drowning out hope. Love sounds abstract when the world is falling apart. Presence feels impossible when separation is near.  John’s Gospel was written for a community living after trauma—after violence, after expulsion, after the slow grind of imperial power. This is not a triumphant church. This is a frightened, grieving community learning how to survive.

And so Jesus does not promise escape from pain. Jesus promises presence.  “I will not leave you orphaned.”

In the ancient world, to be orphaned was to be exposed—to have no protection, no future, no one to stand with you. Jesus is not offering sentiment. He is making a promise of solidarity, of accompaniment. The Spirit will come. The Advocate will abide. God will not withdraw. Jesus later compares this to labor pains. Birth mothers know this is not a romantic image. Labor hurts. It can feel endless. It consumes the whole body. 

Jesus does not say the pain will disappear. He says the pain will not be meaningless. He says you will not be alone. Love, in John’s Gospel, is not a feeling. Love is remaining—staying present when everything else is falling apart. Love is what resists abandonment.

The Spirit, like a mother, comes not with spectacle, not with domination, but with breath—quiet, sustaining, abiding. So hear the good news. Jesus does not promise that storms will cease. Jesus does not promise that grief will be easy.  Jesus promises companionship.

Friends, even now, life is being born where death, destruction, and despair rule. Even now, communities in Negros, in Mindoro, in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Iran are being restored in ways we cannot yet see.  Even now, love is abiding—holding us together long enough for hope to emerge.

Take heart! We are not orphaned.  We are not alone. God abides.

*Art, "The Holy Spirit" by Frank Wesley (1923-2002), available at the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives.

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GOD'S HOUSE HAS SPACE FOR EVERYONE

Sunday’s Gospel Reading offers us an alternative vision—one that stands in stark contrast to a world where displacement, dispossession, discrimination, and disenfranchisement are lived realities, especially for the most vulnerable among us. This vision is not sentimental escapism. It is deeply grounded in the Gospel of John, and it is a vision shaped by communities struggling under empire, exclusion, and fear. 

For many of us, this vision finds poetic expression in the song “Mansion Over the Hilltop.” The imagery was comforting, even if imperfect. Most modern translations now speak not of “mansions” but of “rooms” or “dwelling places”. This shift is not merely linguistic—it is theological. "Dwelling" in John is never about luxury or private ownership; it is about abiding presence, shared spaces, and communal belonging.

When Jesus says, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places” (John 14:2), Jesus is not describing real estate in the afterlife. This is the same Gospel that proclaims, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). God’s dwelling is not removed from the world—it is planted firmly within it. God’s house is where God chooses to live, and God chooses to live among people who are vulnerable, displaced, and marginalized. 

My friends, God’s house has space—safe space—for everyone. In a world obsessed with borders, exclusions, and gated communities, John insists on radical hospitality. This vision, then, is God’s vision for the world God loves, not a distant heaven disconnected from present realities. It is a vision that calls us into the hard, unfinished work of making space—real space, safe space, just space—for others. It challenges systems that normalize displacement and invites us to embody God’s dwelling here and now.

The work is not easy. It demands courage, solidarity, accompaniment, and sustained commitment. But as followers of the Risen One, you and I are not spectators. We are participants. We are part of the ongoing realization of God’s household—called to live, build, and resist in ways that make God’s inclusive dwelling visible in our communities, churches, and world.

art, "All Are Welcome," book cover of the New York Times bestselling book by Alexandra Penfold and Suzanne Kaufman.

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SHEEP AND THEIR SHEPHERD

Many of us grew up hearing John 10 through a heavily allegorical lens. The shepherd was never really a shepherd. The gatekeeper was never really a gatekeeper. The sheep were never really sheep. The thieves and bandits were reduced to abstract villains. In the process, the earthy realism of the text—and its social bite—was often lost.

John’s Gospel does not dissolve history into metaphor. It thickens it. The imagery Jesus uses emerges from real pastoral practices in first-century Palestine. Real sheep do recognize the voice of their shepherd. Real shepherds do call sheep by name. Real sheep do follow that voice beyond the safety of the sheepfold and into open land. And real sheep do flee from voices that signal danger or exploitation. This is not romantic symbolism; it is lived knowledge.

The sheepfold, in this passage, is not the site of abundant life. It is a holding space—protective, necessary, but ultimately temporary. No pasture grows there. No springs flow there. Life is sustained there only in the most minimal sense. Fullness of life lies elsewhere.

This is why the shepherd does not remain inside the fold. The shepherd calls the sheep out. The direction of movement matters. Jesus leads outward—into fields that are exposed, contested, and uncertain. Into what Scripture dares to call wilderness. In John, salvation is not withdrawal from the world but engagement with it, even at great risk. The shepherd goes ahead, not to guarantee comfort, but to embody trustworthiness in dangerous terrain.

“Life in all its fullness” is therefore not a promise of enclosure, certainty, or control. It is a promise of "relationship on the move." It is accompaniment. Solidarity. The shepherd’s voice does not eliminate risk; it makes faithful movement possible. The wilderness is not romanticized, but neither is it feared. It is where grass grows, where water flows, where life—precarious yet real—can flourish.

Friends, this challenges our tendency to confuse the sheepfold with the Kingdom of God. Again and again, we construct religious, institutional, and even theological enclosures and mistake them for life itself. We protect them. We defend them. We refuse to leave them. And yet, the Gospel insists that what truly gives life is often waiting beyond the walls we have learned to trust.

The Risen One does not call us deeper into confinement but forward into shared vulnerability. Already ahead of us. Already in the open land. Already where life, in all its fullness, can be found—if we are willing to listen, to recognize the voice, and to follow.

*art, "The Good Shepherd," Julien Dupre (1851-1910), from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives.

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THE RISEN ONE AS STRANGER

Friends, reading Luke 24 inside a jeepney draws attention to how revelation often arrives quietly, from the margins, and through the ordinary rhythms of the road. Revelation is not forced upon the believer but unfolds in lived experiences, especially in moments of disorientation and desperation. 

The Emmaus disciples embody this: grief-stricken, confused, depressed, and walking away from Jerusalem, they encounter the Risen One not as a triumphant figure, but as a stranger who listens before speaking.

Jeepney Hermeneutics sharpens this insight. Like passengers sharing a cramped, uncomfortable, moving vehicle, the disciples and the stranger share a journey marked by vulnerability, storytelling, and unplanned companionship. Meaning is negotiated along the way. The Risen One does not immediately reveal an identity but joins the conversation, interprets Scripture in transit, and becomes recognizable only in the shared act of breaking bread.

This lens invites a searching question: how often is Christ encountered today as an unrecognised companion—in strangers, disrupted plans, and shared journeys? Sunday's Gospel Reading suggests that resurrection faith is born not in certainty, but in walking, listening, solidarity, and hospitality, where hearts begin to burn before eyes are fully opened.

art, "Jesus appears at Emmaus," JESUS MAFA, 1973 (Cameroon), from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives.

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RISING UP TOGETHER

Friends, fear has a way of locking doors.  Fear locks the mind, the heart, the future.  The disciples were not cowards—they were wounded. They had hoped, trusted, and loved, and now they were afraid that death might come knocking for them too. Like it did with Jesus. 

Scripture must be read where people actually live—not only in temples or classrooms, but in homes, streets, and everyday struggles. The resurrection does not happen in a palace. Not in the White House nor in Malacanang. It happens inside a locked room, among people who are confused, scared, and unsure.

This is important: Jesus does not scold them for their fear. Jesus enters it. “Peace be with you.” Not peace as an idea—but peace that walks through locked doors.

A jeepney is never private. It is crowded, noisy, unpredictable. Right now, it's on survival mode. You ride it not because it is comfortable, but because it remains the struggling masses' way to get somewhere. You hold on, even when the ride is rough.

The disciples wanted safety behind closed doors.  But resurrection faith is not a locked room faith.  It is "a jeepney faith"—shared, risky, communal. Jesus does not tell them, “Stay where you are and be safe.” Jesus says, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

Too often, Thomas is called “the doubter.”  I think Thomas refuses a secondhand resurrection. He wants a faith that touches wounds, not rumors. For many among us, doubt is often treated as disrespect. But the Gospel today tells us something radical: Jesus does not reject Thomas. Jesus returns for Thomas. He does not shame him.  He shows him the wounds. Resurrection does not erase pain. It transforms it.

Notice this: The risen Jesus still has scars. This speaks directly to our fear and doubt today: fear of failure, fear of the future , fear that faith might not be enough, fear that God is not present in suffering, injustice, or loss. 

Jeepney hermeneutics teaches us that faith is not about a smooth ride. It is about staying on the journey together, even when the road is broken, even when we do not see the road. As long as we can still see each other. 

Thomas believes not because everything is explained—but because Jesus stays long enough to be encountered, long enough to be experienced. You and I believe without seeing, not because we are certain, but because we have encountered, we have experienced enough grace to keep on riding.

Friends, fear has a way of locking doors. Doubt asks hard questions.  But resurrection opens roads. Jesus enters our fear.  Jesus welcomes our doubt.  Then Jesus sends us—not alone, but together.

Community always births uprisings. We rise up together! 

*Art, "Jesus appears to Thomas," JESUS MAFA 

1973, Cameroon (from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives). 

MEETING JESUS ON THE ROAD

 

For the Gospel of Matthew, Easter does not begin with alleluias. It begins with women walking—quietly, fearfully—toward a tomb.

Sunday's Gospel Reading tells us that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary go at dawn carrying grief, unanswered questions, and love that refuses to stay home. They are not celebrating yet. They are simply faithful enough to keep moving.

I have argued for thirty years that a jeepney is a place where ordinary people with different stories, struggles, pains, and hopes are brought into conversation. Theology happens not in perfect silence or comfortable spaces, but in ordinary, crowded, sweaty, uncertain spaces—on the road.

That is exactly where the resurrection happens. An earthquake shakes the ground. An angel speaks. Fear rises. And yet the message is simple: “Do not be afraid.” God does not remove fear first. God speaks into it. Easter begins with the concrete, everyday realities of the people. Especially among those whose only hope is God. Easter is not God ignoring fear; Easter is God entering it. And then comes the most beautiful detail: Jesus meets the women on the road.

Not at the tomb where the women went looking for him. Not in the heavens where most of us are looking for him. But on the road.

The Risen One does not wait for us to arrive at perfect faith, perfect courage, or perfect understanding. The Risen One walks with us while we are still figuring things out.

The women fall down and worship—but Jesus does not let them stay there. He says, “Go and tell.” Resurrection always sends us back—to family, to community, to wounded spaces and hurting places—with hope we did not manufacture ourselves.

My friends, Easter tells us this: Christ is risen—and still riding with the people. Still present in crowded roads. Still meeting us between fear and faith. Still turning ordinary journeys into holy ground.

So, wherever we are today—tired, uncertain, lost, grieving, or hopeful—never, ever, forget we are not traveling alone. Christ is risen. And Christ meets us on the way.

Amen.

EMPIRE ALWAYS CRUCIFIES

Today, we ride in silence. Good Friday is the day the Church stops pretending.  No alleluias.  No shortcuts to the resurrection. Only the long, heavy road to the cross.

Jeepney hermeneutics teaches us that faith is never a private journey.  Today, as you and I climb into the jeepney of Good Friday, we discover it is already full—full of the crucified of our time. We sit beside: families in Gaza who have lost everything, children who no longer have parents, parents who no longer have children, civilians trapped between bombs and blockades, communities grieving mass death with nowhere left to flee. Good Friday does not allow us to look away.  It forces us to sit with those who bleed.

Many among us in Roman Catholic countries imagine the Stations of the Cross as distant history.  But jeepney hermeneutics insists: the Way of the Cross is happening now. Jesus falls under the weight of the cross as families fall under collapsing buildings in Iran and Lebanon. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem as mothers in Gaza wail in anguish over the bodies of their children. Jesus is stripped as entire neighborhoods are stripped of shelter, safety, and dignity. Jesus cries out, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” as peoples and communities cry out under the horrors of siege and displacement.

Good Friday is not a reenactment.  It is recognition.

Empire always crucifies. Always has. Always will.  The cross was not an accident.  It was a tool of empire—a public warning, a political message, a method of control. Empire always crucifies. Always has. Always will. It crucifies through smart bombs labeled as “defense,” armed blockades justified as “security,” religious narratives that dehumanize entire peoples, benevolent policies that treat civilian deaths as acceptable losses.

The cross is not a symbol of private piety.  It is a public indictment of systems that kill the innocent. And so today, inside a jeepney, as we remember the crucifixion of Jesus, we remember all who are crucified by the machinery of modern empire.

On Good Friday, God does not look away.  God does not spiritualize suffering. God does not offer easy answers. God enters the wound. The crucified Christ is not distant from Gaza.  He is buried under the rubble. He is carried in the arms of grieving Iranian parents. He is the young girls pulled from bombed children's schools. He is the family escaping toward a border that will not open.  Good Friday tells us:  God is found where most of the Christian world refuses to look.

The God we follow is not in the White House nor in Malacanang. The God we follow is not a God of palaces, but the God of the bleeding and the wounded. The God of the displaced and disenfranchised. The God of the crucified.

And never, ever forget: the God of the crucified is the God who rises.

Amen.

*art by Zee-m Tiempo

https://a.co/d/099VE7Ak

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THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY IN THE SHADOW OF WAR

Matthew 21:1–11 tells the story of Jesus entering Jerusalem not on a warhorse but on a borrowed donkey—an act of deliberate, disruptive symbolism. Through a jeepney hermeneutic, this moment becomes a moving tableau of how God chooses to ride into the centers of power: not armed, not armored, not triumphant, but woven into the life of ordinary people.

A jeepney is loud, colorful, communal, and defiantly public. It carries the stories of drivers, workers, students, vendors, peasants, migrants—those who rarely get a seat at the tables where empires make decisions. Reading the Triumphal Entry through this lens, Jesus becomes the One who refuses the vehicles of domination and instead climbs aboard the vehicle of the struggling masses.

In the context of the senseless U.S.–Israeli war of aggression, this contrast becomes painfully sharp. The machinery of empire—AI-guided weapons of mass destruction, surveillance systems, political alliances—moves with crushing force. Civilians bear the weight. Families flee. Children die. The world watches as power rides in on armored vehicles, attack drones, gunships, and bomber planes, not donkeys.

A jeepney hermeneutic asks: If Jesus were to enter this moment, whose vehicle would he ride? Not the armored convoy. Not the diplomatic motorcade. He would ride with the displaced, the grieving, the silenced. He would ride with those whose homes have become rubble and whose prayers have become cries.

And like the crowds in Jerusalem, these communities would still find a way to shout Hosanna—not as praise for a victorious king, but as a desperate plea: “Save us.” Not from Rome, but from the machinery of modern empire. The United States of America. And the State of Israel. 

My friends, the Triumphal Entry is not a parade; it is a protest. It is a subversion of militarized power. It is a declaration that God’s reign does not arrive through domination but through solidarity.

In this light, Matthew 21 becomes a call to discern where Jesus is riding today—and to ask whether we are standing with the crowds who cry for genuine liberation or with evil systems that maintain occupation and justify violence.

A jeepney hermeneutic invites us to imagine Jesus stepping off the donkey and onto a battered jeepney weaving through a war‑torn street, carrying the wounded, the hungry, the terrified. It invites us to see that the kingdom of God always--always--enters history from below, never from above.

And it challenges us to respond—not with passive sympathy, but with active, embodied solidarity that echoes the ancient cry: Hosanna. Save us. Save them. Save all of us from the culture of impunity we have normalized. 🍉

Art, "Entry into the City," John August Swanson, 1990 (from the vanderbilt divinity library art collection).

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EPIC FURY? EPIC FAIL!

When my father died, two people-- two pastors, on two separate occasions-- congratulated me for his death. 

When Lazarus died, his two sisters Martha and Mary, on separate occasions, spoke with Jesus. 

Martha told Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died!" Mary, weeping, told Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died!"

NO ONE, NOT ONE CONGRATULATED MARTHA AND MARY FOR THE DEATH OF THEIR BROTHER.

Yes, not even Jesus!

When Jesus saw Mary and everyone else weeping for his dearest friend, he was overwhelmed with sorrow and deeply moved. Jesus wept. 

When a loved one dies, we don't pretend that everything is okay. When a loved one dies, congratulations are never in order. When a loved one dies, we are allowed to mourn. 

With thousands dead and millions displaced by the senseless US-Israeli war of aggression, congratulations, in any form or shape, are beyond cruel. Trump's Epic Fury is an Epic Fail. 

Today, Jesus weeps. With Palestinians, Lebanese, Iranians, and with everyone at the receiving end of Trump and Netanyahu's insatiable lust for power, profit, and domination.

Today, we weep. 

We weep until our tears reach heaven's gate. We weep until our cries and wails shake the foundations of the earth. 

We weep until God's righteous fury is unleashed. 

Like rain on a world set ablaze. 

*photograph of Palestinian women in Gaza (from abc Australia). 

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LAZARUS, LIBERATION, AND THE CRY FOR LIFE

John 11 is a story of suffocating grief, communal lament, and a God who refuses to let death have the final word. Reading the passage inside a jeepney invites us to a journey not of private spirituality but of public, embodied solidarity—God riding with the people whose lives are cramped, crowded, and crushed by evil forces beyond their control.

A jeepney is a space where strangers become companions, where stories mingle, where suffering is heard and shared. Reading the raising of Lazarus through this lens, we see Jesus not as a distant miracle worker but as someone who climbs into the cramped interior of human pain. He listens to Mary and Martha’s accusations. He weeps with the mourners. He walks toward the tomb with the community, not apart from them.

In the context of the current US-Israeli war of aggression, this story feels unbearably contemporary. Entire neighborhoods have become tombs. Families dig through rubble searching for their beloved. Over six million people--Palestinians, Lebanese, and Iranians--are now homeless! The world watches as death multiplies through the machinery of empire—funded, armed, and justified by powerful nations and their homicidal leaders. 

Jeepney hermeneutics asks: Where is Jesus riding in this moment? Not in the war rooms. Not in the diplomatic convoys. Not in the sanitized narratives of “security” and “self‑defense.”  

He is riding with the displaced families packed into makeshift shelters. He is riding with the mothers carrying their children’s names like wounds. He is riding with the communities who cry, like Mary and Martha, “Lord, if you had been here…”

And Jesus weeps. Not because he is powerless, but because he refuses to look away.

In John 11, the miracle does not begin at the tomb. It begins when Jesus commands the community: “Roll away the stone.” And later: “Unbind him, and let him go.”

Liberation is never a solo act. Never has been. Never will be. It is always communal. It requires people willing to touch death, to confront what empire has sealed shut, to participate in God’s work of giving life back to those whom violence has taken.

In light of the senseless US-Israeli war of aggression, this text becomes a call to resist narratives that normalize death. It becomes a summons to join the work of unbinding—unbinding truth from propaganda, unbinding compassion from apathy, unbinding justice from political convenience.

My friends, resurrection is not abstract hope. It is God insisting that life—Palestinian life, Iranian life, every life—is sacred, grievable, and worth defending.

And so we pray with the crowds at Lazarus’s tomb: Roll away the stone. Unbind the people. Let them live! 🍉

*Art, "Jesus wept," by Tissot available online at fine art america.

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SEEING IN A TIME OF UNSEEING Reading John 9 inside a Jeepney

In Sunday's Gospel Reading from John 9, Jesus meets a man who has been blind from birth. The disciples want a theological explanation—“Who sinned?”—but Jesus refuses to let suffering become a debate topic. He turns their gaze from blame to healing, from theory to solidarity.

In our world today, many communities live like the man born blind—spoken about, judged, displaced, and silenced, while others debate their worth from a safe distance.

Among them are people caught in the current U.S.–Israeli war of aggression, especially civilians in Gaza, in Iran, and surrounding regions. UNHCR reports and humanitarian organizations describe widespread deaths, displacement, loss of homes, and severe restrictions on basic necessities. 

These accounts highlight the immense suffering of families—children, women, elders, and entire communities—who are simply trying to survive amid violence and instability.

We are challenged to see them not as statistics or headlines, but as "kapwa", as sisters and brothers, fellow travelers on the same crowded road of humanity.

Jesus does not merely see the man born blind. He approaches, touches, sends, and restores.

In the same spirit, Sunday's Gospel Reading calls us to see clearly. To refuse the comfort of distance. To recognize the humanity of those suffering in war, displacement, and fear.

Just as Jesus rejected the disciples’ search for fault, we reject explanations, especially religious propaganda, that justify the senseless suffering of the most vulnerable. 

The healed man spoke truth even when powerful people tried to silence him. So too must we listen to the voices of those pleading for life, dignity, and freedom.

My friends, a jeepney is never a private ride. Faith is never a solo journey. Compassion is never abstract.

At the end of John 9, Jesus says,  

“I came so that those who do not see may see.”

To see as Jesus sees is to recognize that:

- Every child deserves a future.  

- Every family deserves a home.  

- Every people deserves land and liberation.  

- Every life is precious. And sacred. 

This is not politics.  

This is Gospel.

And in the jeepney of God’s kingdom, there is always room for those the world tries to push out. There will always be room.

Art, "Jesus cures the Man born Blind," JESUS MAFA, Cameroon 1973 (from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives).

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30 YEARS OF READING THE BIBLE INSIDE A JEEPNEY

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.

SIT, DRINK, AND TALK

In Sunday's Gospel Reading from John 4, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman—someone doubly marginalized: ethnically suspect, religiously “other,” and socially vulnerable. Many readings treat her as the first missionary and this encounter as an evangelistic crusade template. I see two empire-wounded people meeting at a well, both shaped by histories larger than themselves. 

I love this narrative. It is the longest pericope in the gospels where Jesus is in conversation with another person. This might be the one moment in the Gospels that Jesus meets his match. They speak as equals. They talk about their own faith traditions. They talk about their differences. Both are truthful. And they talk about their people's hopes. Not one moment do they treat each other as estranged. 

The narrative challenges us to recognize ourselves not as neutral observers but as active conversation partners. Like the woman at the well, we bring our histories into the encounter. And Jesus meets us there—not demanding sameness, but celebrating difference as divine gift. 

My friends, I love this narrative. I pray you do too. God's miracles happen when people take time to sit, drink, and talk. 

P.S. Let us not forget the that a well was the setting for the unions of Rebekah and Isaac, Rachel and Jacob, and Zipporah and Moses. 

P. S. S. Today, close to one billion women, many of whom are girls, spend hours each day just fetching safe water. I've always argued that the Samaritan woman was in a similar situation. 

*art, "Jesus’s and the Samaritan Woman," JESUS MAFA, Cameroon 1973, from the Vanderbilt Divinity Library digital archive.

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BEAT PLOWSHARES INTO SWORDS (Reading Joel 3:10 inside a Jeepney)

 

The Prophet Joel’s words—“Beat your plowshares into swords”—sound strange to those of us trained to work for peace. We know the more famous reversal: beat swords into plowshares found in Isaiah 2:4 and Micah 4:3. But Joel speaks to a people who have been trampled, displaced, and humiliated by invading powers. One empire after another. This is not a call to aggression. It is a cry from the margins; a scream from under the rubble: “The little ones must no longer be crushed.”

My friends, for thirty years I have invited you to read the Bible like we ride a jeepney: close to the bodies of the masses, alert to the stories of strangers beside us, aware that many roads we travel are unpaved and uneven, and always resisting the routes dictated by empire.

From the jeepney, Joel 3:10 is not a divine command to wage war. It is the voice of a people who have run out of options. When institutions fail, when the powerful negotiate “peace” only for themselves, when the small nations are treated as expendable—the oppressed cry out for dignity. Not domination. Not destruction. 

Across the Middle East, ordinary people are caught in the crossfire of decisions made far above their heads. Babies, children, mothers, elders, migrant workers, refugees: these are the ones who fill the jeepney of history.

The prophet’s cry echoes in them: “How long will our lives be treated as bargaining chips?” “How long will our land be someone else’s battlefield?” “How long will our grief be ignored?”

When Joel says, “Let the weak say, ‘I am strong,’” he is not glorifying violence. He is restoring voice. He is insisting that the weak are not voiceless, not invisible, not disposable.

God stands with those who have been pushed to the edge of the road. God always has. God always will. Joel’s prophecy is not about sharpening weapons; it is about sharpening agency. It is about a people refusing to be erased.

In the Middle East today, the prophetic call is not to escalate war but to refuse the narratives that justify the suffering of the powerless. It is to insist that every life—Palestinian, Arab, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, migrant, refugee—is sacred.

The Bible holds both movements: plowshares into swords (Joel 3:10), and swords into plowshares (Isaiah 2:4, Micah 4:3). The goal is always the same: a world where plowshares are enough, because swords are no longer needed.

A PRAYER FROM INSIDE A JEEPNEY

God of the crowded, the displaced, and the wounded, hear the cries of those who sit beside us on the long, uneven road. Strengthen the weak without hardening their hearts. Break the swords without breaking the people. And lead us toward a future where every child— in Gaza, in the Philippines, in Iran, in every land— can grow up holding a plowshare, not a weapon.

Amen.

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*Art by Zee-m Tiempo

READING ISAIAH 2:4 INSIDE A JEEPNEY

Isaiah 2:4 imagines a world where nations “beat their swords into plowshares” and “learn war no more.” Inside a jeepney, we read this not from palaces or war rooms but from the crowded, noisy, wounded spaces where the masses struggle to survive. The jeepney is a theology classroom on wheels—full of stories, fears, jokes, prayers, and the stubborn hope of commuters who know what it means to live under systems bigger than them.

From that vantage point, Isaiah’s prophecy is not abstract. It is a cry from the ground. Or from under the rubble.

A jeepney is built from the leftovers of war—U.S. military jeeps repurposed by Filipino need and creativity into vehicles of community. It is a reminder that people who suffer the consequences of empire can still transform implements of violence into instruments of life.

But a jeepney is also vulnerable. The Philippine Government has been trying to remove it from the streets for over 60 years. When global powers clash, it is the jeepney riders—the workers, the mothers, the students, the 70%—who feel the shockwaves first: rising prices, fear of escalation, the anxiety of watching powerful nations trade threats while ordinary people pray simply to get home safely.

Isaiah echoes the fear many feel when powerful states use military force in ways, more often tragic, that ripple across the region and the world. The human cost is undeniable: families and communities are displaced, cities crumble, innocents are killed, and multitudes are caught in cycles of retaliation. Isaiah speaks precisely into this kind of world.

The prophet does not pretend that nations will suddenly become compassionate. He knows the logic of empire: security through domination, peace through superior firepower, change through overwhelming force.

But Isaiah interrupts that logic with a different imagination: weapons become tools for feeding people; training for war becomes training for community empowerment; national pride gives way to shared pilgrimage toward God’s ways.

Reading Isaiah 2:4 inside a jeepney is like watching a jeepney driver refuse to honk in anger, choosing instead to wave another driver through. It is experiencing community where there is always space for one more rider. Always space for one more.  It is small, stubborn resistance to the culture of aggression. It is the belief that peace begins with ordinary people refusing to mirror the violence of the powerful, the propertied, and the privileged.

Isaiah’s vision is not naïve. It is defiant.

When nations escalate conflict, when missiles fly, when leaders speak of “deterrence” while civilians brace for impact, Isaiah stands in the middle of the road—like a traffic enforcer with nothing but a whistle—and says: “This is not the only way the world can be.”

The jeepney teaches us three things Isaiah would recognize: peace is communal. You cannot ride a jeepney alone; you share space, breath, and destiny. Peace is creative. It takes imagination to turn a war jeep into a vehicle of life. Peace is courageous. Every jeepney ride is an act of trust in strangers.

For those grieving the senseless deaths in the Middle East, for those afraid of escalation, for those who feel powerless as nations posture and retaliate—Isaiah’s promise is not escapism. It is a call to resist despair. God’s dream is larger than the ambitions of any empire.

And every act of compassion, every refusal to dehumanize, every insistence on truth, every prayer for peace based on justice is a hammer striking metal—slowly beating swords into plowshares.

My friends, war teaches us to expect the worst of one another. Isaiah teaches us to expect more from God and the best from each other.

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*Art by Zee-m Tiempo

Reading the Parables of Jesus inside a Jeepney