WHEAT AND BASTARD WHEAT

Most of us have heard this parable interpreted as a challenge to become good wheat. But for Sunday's Gospel Reading, let us focus on the weeds—masamang damo—the tares that look so much like wheat that some still call them "bastard wheat."

Like the parable of the sheep and goats, it is about judgment. And the central message is simple: God is the judge, not us.

The servants want to pull out the weeds immediately. They want a clean field. They want certainty about who belongs and who does not. But the landowner says, "No." Why? Because wheat and weeds look so much alike that pulling up one may destroy the other.

Reading this parable through Jeepney Hermeneutics, we are reminded that the kingdom of God looks less like a gated community and more like a crowded jeepney. The construction worker sits beside the student. The vendor sits beside the office employee. The grandmother sits beside the teenage parent. The churchgoer sits beside the person everyone else has already judged.

That is our problem. We are often eager to separate people into categories: good and bad, worthy and unworthy, us and them, wheat and weeds. Yet Jesus refuses to hand us the sickle.

Friends, history shows that whenever people become too certain that they are the wheat, they quickly label others as bastard wheat.

But God is a God of surprises. The people we dismiss may turn out to be God's beloved. The people who think themselves righteous will discover that judgment belongs to God alone.

And perhaps we should remember: Jesus himself was treated as unwanted, rejected, and illegitimate—the bastard son of Mary, according to his critics.

So let the field be. Let God be God.

The harvest will come in God's time.

In the name of the Crucified and Risen One, whom we call Lord and Savior. 

Amen.

*Image from Bernat Casero.

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THE SOWERS OF LUPANG RAMOS

When we hear the Parable of the Sower, we are often taught to focus on the soil of our hearts. Are we receptive? Are we faithful? Do we bear fruit?

But what if we listened to this parable from a jeepney crowded with farmers, workers, vendors, students, and day laborers en route to another day of survival? What if we listened not from the perspective of those who own the land, but from those who have spent generations struggling to live on and off it?

Jeepney hermeneutics begins on the road. It begins with ordinary people navigating potholes, traffic, uncertainty, and the daily labor of making a life. It asks not only, "What does this text mean?" but also, "Who is telling the story, and who among us is living it today?

In  Sunday's Gospel Reading, the sower scatters seed everywhere. Along the path. On rocky ground. Among thorns. Only some reaches good soil.  Conventional readings often portray the sower as careless or the soil as a metaphor for individual spirituality.

Yet for the peasants who first heard Jesus, the image may have been painfully concrete. The problem was not the farmer. The problem was access to land. The problem was a world where those who worked the soil often did not own it.

The people of Lupang Ramos--and peasant communities like it--know something about such realities. They know what it means to live under the shadow of displacement, to worry whether the place one calls home today will still be home tomorrow. They know the exhausting labor of building a community while powerful interests decide the value of land in terms of profit rather than people.

Friends, maybe the seed falling on the path is like the dreams of families constantly pushed aside by circumstances beyond their control. Their hopes are consumed before they can take root. The seed among rocks resembles communities trying to flourish despite insecurity and instability. Life appears for a moment, but the harsh realities of poverty, rising costs, and uncertainty scorch what little growth emerges. The seed among thorns is choked by systems that suffocate life: debt, precarious work, development aggression, and policies that favor wealth over human dignity. And what of the good soil?

Too often, we imagine good soil as a reward for virtue. But in Jesus' world, good soil was frequently controlled by those with power. The harvest was abundant, but abundance did not always mean justice. A hundredfold, sixtyfold, thirtyfold—these are staggering yields. The question is: who benefits from them? Who gets to eat this bountiful harvest?

Yet Jesus' story is not a surrender to despair.

The sower keeps sowing. Not because the conditions are ideal, but because hope is an act of resistance. God is not standing with the owners of the land and its harvest counting their profits. God is with the sowers, with the tenants, with the displaced, with the communities struggling to remain rooted. God is present wherever people refuse to abandon one another.

The good news of Matthew 13, then, is not that some individuals become better soil. The good news is that despite the rocks, despite the thorns, despite the systems that deny life, the seeds of God's future continue to be scattered among the poor. And whenever communities like Lupang Ramos struggle together for land, dignity, justice, and belonging, those seeds are already beginning to grow.

Art, "Parable of the Sower," JESUS MAFA, 1973 (Cameroon), from the Vanderbilt Divinity Library digital collection.

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GRACE IS ON THE MOVE

Jeepney Hermeneutics imagines scripture not from a place of comfort, but from the cramped, noisy, everyday journey of ordinary people — especially the poor. The jeepney becomes a moving space of survival, negotiation, and shared struggle. It is there, among passengers holding coins not bills, bodies pressed together, and destinations diverse, that the Word of God speaks in a particular way.

In Sunday's Gospel from Matthew 11, Jesus describes a generation that cannot be satisfied:  

“We played the flute for you, but you did not dance; we sang a dirge, but you did not mourn.”  

Seen from the jeepney, this sounds familiar. The poor are often criticized no matter what they do. If they protest, they are called unruly. Troublemakers. Even red-tagged. If they endure silently, they are ignored. Like passengers blamed for the system’s failures, they carry burdens not of their own making.

Jesus thanks the Father for revealing truth not to the “wise and learned,” but to the “little ones.” In the jeepney, the little ones are not abstract—they are the workers, vendors, mothers, students, drivers. Those who know hunger, long queues, and uncertainty. They may not have power, but they have a deeper knowledge of life’s weight. They understand what it means to trust, to hope, and to survive together.

And then comes the heart of the message:  

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened… and I will give you rest.”

From a jeepney lens, this is not simply spiritual comfort—it is an invitation spoken directly to those already carrying too much:  

- The fare that is barely enough  

- The long work hours without security  

- The daily struggle to be seen and heard  

Jesus does not deny their burden. He recognizes it. And he offers not escape, but companionship: “Take my yoke upon you… for I am gentle and humble of heart.” Solidarity. 

In the jeepney, a yoke might feel like another load added—but Jesus’ yoke is different. It is shared. It is light because it is carried together. It is a call to a community where suffering is not ignored, and where dignity is restored.

Friends, this Gospel invites us to ask:  

- Who are the “little ones” riding beside us whom society overlooks?  

- How do we, as followers of Christ, make their burdens lighter—not heavier?  

- Can we become part of that gentle, humble presence that Christ offers?

The kingdom of God is not revealed from above—but experienced from within the crowded, struggling journey of the poor. Like a jeepney ride, it may be uncomfortable and unpredictable—but it is there, in shared humanity, in the daily quest for peace based on justice, that grace is already moving.

*Art by Zee-m Tiempo (2017). Cover for Reading the Parables of Jesus inside a Jeepney. 

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THE ECONOMY OF A GLASS OF WATER

Friends, we often look for God in the grand, catastrophic, and spectacular moments of life. We look for a booming voice from the heavens or a massive, history-altering miracle. 

But as Jesus closes his great missionary instructions in the Gospel of Matthew, he redirects our gaze entirely. He pulls our attention away from the grand stages of the world and points it toward the ground. He points it toward the details.

In first-century Palestine, the "little ones" Jesus speaks of were the absolute nobodies of society. They were the orphaned children, the passing strangers, and the desperately poor. They possessed zero social status, zero legal protection, and no safety net. Their only hope was God. And Jesus, revealing his fierce bias for the vulnerable, makes these exact people the gatekeepers of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Jesus reminds us today that caring for others does not require grand, performative acts of generosity. The Kingdom of God is built on a different economy—the economy of a cup of cold water. A cup of water costs nothing to the wealthy, but it means survival to a parched stranger. It is a micro-act of compassion. A piece of barley loaf. A listening ear. A door held open. Love, in the economy of Christ, is always found in the smallest details.

This text strikes a beautiful, resonant chord in the great hymn of Immanuel—God-with-us—that permeates the entire Gospel of Matthew. We often complain that we cannot feel God’s presence, or we wonder where God is in a broken world. But we forget a fundamental truth: the best way to experience God’s presence in our own lives is to be God’s presence in someone else’s life.

When you extend welcome to the stranger, you welcome Christ. When you offer a cup of water to the vulnerable, the divine presence becomes tangible. God is not hiding; God is waiting to be discovered in our simple, everyday transactions of human and non-human compassion. Go out today and look for the details. Be the presence of Immanuel to a world parched for love.

*Art, "Jesus welcomes All" mural in Sudan. Artist, anonymous. From the vanderbilt divinity library digital collection. 

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NOT ALL PEACE IS REAL PEACE

 

In Sunday's Gospel Reading, Jesus says something unsettling: “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” At first, it sounds wrong. Is not Jesus the Prince of Peace? But here, he reveals a deeper truth—not all peace is real peace.

There is a kind of peace that is only quiet because the weak have been silenced. A peace that exists because injustice is tolerated. A peace that keeps everything “in order,” but only for those already comfortable. It was Pax Romana then; it is Pax Americana now. This is the false peace Jesus refuses to bless.

Think of our daily life—like riding a crowded jeepney. Everyone adjusts, squeezes in, keeps moving. It works, but not always fairly. Some are burdened more, others benefit more, yet we call it normal. We learn to live with it. We keep the ride smooth, even if it is unjust. Jesus interrupts that ride.

His “sword” is not violence—it is truth that cuts through illusions. It exposes what we have grown used to: inequality, silence, fear. It challenges even our closest relationships when they are built on domination or control. “I have come to set a man against his father,” he says—not to destroy families, but to break patterns of injustice that hide within them.

To follow Jesus, then, is not simply to keep the peace. It is to seek true peace—a peace rooted in justice, dignity, and truth. A peace that empires can never birth. And that kind of peace often begins with disturbance.

Friends, the question for us today is simple but challenging: Will we settle for a quiet life that ignores injustice, or will we allow Christ to disturb us—so that a deeper, truer peace may be born?

Because oftentimes, the way to real peace is through holy disruption.

*Image, "The Time Jesus Started a Riot," copyright, Brendan Powell Smith, from Reboot (WordPress).

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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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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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