Of Gardens and Weeds

Voice 1:

Almost 30 years ago, the whole UTS community—those who believed in what the “school of the prophets” stood for—rose up and resisted the planned merger of the seminary and PCU. Dr. Levi Oracion cautioned that the merger cannot vouchsafe the kind of autonomy and integrity that UTS has enjoyed since 1907. He added: “The administration, the faculty, the staff, and the entire student body of UTS are opposed to the merger.” Unfortunately, their collective voices were set aside.

Within ten years of the merger’s implementation, the graduating class of Union Theological Seminary held, what I would like to call, a commencement exercise of protest. They marched with placards, streamers, and a coffin, and with their black armbands, they mourned the death of theological education.

In December 12, 2002, seminarians, staff, faculty, and administrators challenged church leaders to remember that “God gave UTS stewardship of this land. This covenant constrains us to be faithful caretakers of this land. In the name of Christian unity, justice, and sanctity of theological education and ministry, we request and pray the return of the land to its rightful steward.”

Today, UTS continues to be trapped within a system that has robbed it of control over the land and other resources it was entrusted to use for ministry, a system that has turned it into a colony, subject to the whims and caprices of the powers-that-be based in Manila, a system that operates with utmost disregard for transparency and basic decency, a system that has turned it into a willing accomplice to a host of unjust and oppressive labor practices.

The merger did not work then. It does not work now.

If the once great UTS died with the implementation of the merger in 1978, what do we have now? A ghost of the past? PCU’s divinity school or department of religion? Or an executed seminary being raised back to life?

Voice 2:

Gaius Plinius Secundus (or more popularly known as Pliny the Elder) in his Natural History 19.170-171 wrote that “mustard [sinapi kokkos] …grows entirely wild… and when it is sown, it is scarcely possible to get the place free of it, as the seed when it falls germinates at once.”

The mustard in the parable was a wild weed shrub that grew to about five feet or even higher. Even in their domesticated form they were a lot to handle. Mustard in a well-kept garden not only spread beyond expectations but also attracted birds of all forms thus disturbing the natural balance of a well-manicured garden, with the birds’ unpredictable feeding habits, and worse, their droppings. St. Francis of Assisi, who, as legend has it, was very close to wild creatures, and who, as the story goes, would not even hurt a fly, was also against the pulling out of weeds.

Gardeners, of course, did not want weeds in their gardens. They did not want wild mustard at all cost. They spend time creating the perfect balance in their gardens: putting in the best, throwing out the worst. A well-manicured garden has no room for wild mustard so they cut mustard young and at the roots. The mustard weed though have a way of coming back. They always do.

The parable likens God’s reign, God’s empire to a weed. It grows where it is not wanted and eventually takes over the place.

Voice 1:

Jesus, who advocated an alternative culture of radical egalitarianism, an open commensality of free healing and eating, of miracle and meal among the peasant and marginalized communities of Galilee was executed at age 30 when his vision clashed with that of the urban religious and political structures of power in Jerusalem.

The wild mustard that sprung in the domesticated garden of Judea, that attracted all kinds of birds gardeners despised, was swiftly cut down. Do not forget this—The God we worship is an executed God. He was executed by the empire for the life he lived in solidarity with the poor and the stories of compassion he told.

Many scholars of first century Palestine now agree, enemies of Rome who were executed by crucifixion had their naked bodies left hanging on crosses for the vultures and wild dogs to feast on, thrown into mass graves, or hastily buried in borrowed tombs.

Nobody really knows where lie the bodies of scores of students, church workers, comrades who disappeared during the Marcos Regime. And the countless more who have disappeared during the Aquino, Ramos, Estrada, and especially the Arroyo regimes. Philippine soil from the Cordilleras to Mount Apo is nourished by the blood of fallen sisters and brothers in unmarked, mass, shallow graves. Just like Andres Bonifacio who at 34 was shot with his brother and whose bodies were robbed of garments and then thrown naked into a hastily dug grave.

All were wild mustard that had to be cut down lest they disturb the domesticity of the gardens tended by the rich, the powerful, and the religious the majority of whom take pride in calling themselves, their institutions, and their structures “Christian.”

Voice 2:

But Jesus’s vision lives on. And those of the others live on—Noli Capulong, Eden Marcellana, Joel Baclao, Raul Domingo, Edison Lapuz, and countless others—in the collective experience of communities who struggle and strive in the everyday living out God’s empire of compassion and solidarity.

And weeds have a way of coming back when you least expect them. Ask any gardener. You can never completely eradicate wild weeds like mustard. They have a way of sprouting in places where they disturb the status quo.

If UTS’s vision died when the merger was effected in 1978, what and whose vision sustains it now as it nears its 100^th birthday? Is it a new vision from God, the wild weed returneth? Or a vision from PCU’s Board of Gardeners—or rather Trustees? Or even a vision from the master development planners who want to transform the Dasmarinas campus into a profit-generating enterprise?

Of course, a vision from God can get you killed and fast like a weed, but better a short life lived in solidarity with others ensuring immortality in humanity’s collective memory than a long life of greed that eventually sends one into oblivion even before one is dead.

Do not forget—wild mustard have a way of coming back.

Voice 2: The empire killed Jesus.

Voice 1: But within three days God raised Jesus up from the dead.

Voice 2: The merger buried UTS in a tomb. UTS has been in that tomb for almost three decades.

Voice 1: The Day of Resurrection is at hand.

People say that Union Theological Seminary is a seedbed: a seedbed of what—garden variety plants or wild mustard?

[This entry is based on the sermon I co-preached with Melinda Grace Aoanan, Program Secretary of the NCCP's Christian Education and Nurture Unit, my spouse, at Union Theological Seminary, 20 July 2006.]

Easter Surprise

Most of us love stories with surprises. The women in Mark 16: 1-8 were in for a few surprises themselves. They went to the tomb that early Sunday morning bringing spices to anoint Jesus’ body worrying about the stone blocking the tomb. Unlike many doors here in Sweden—with its specific locks and numeric codes—the women had no key to unlock the door.

The women expected a locked tomb, they expected a dead body inside, and they expected to use the spices they brought to anoint that dead body. But, and we all know this already, when they got there the stone had already been rolled away, the tomb was empty, there was no dead body to anoint—Jesus was not where they expected him to be.

Like the women at the tomb, we want Jesus in a box, with a lock, where we could do whatever we want to do with him. Moreover, like the women we expect Jesus to be in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is supposed to be a holy place. It is where God is supposed to be. It is a monument to faith and the faithful. Do not forget this—the women went to the tomb expecting a dead Jesus. Over and over in the Markan story, especially in chapters 8, 9 and 10, Jesus told his followers that he will rise to life. Jesus’ followers did not believe him. They went to the tomb to visit a dead person.

Dead people have no power over us. Sure we visit their graves once or twice a year. For many Christians, churches have become tombs—where they visit Jesus an hour or two once a week. A dead Jesus has no power over us; he cannot make demands on our lives, on our work, on our time, our talents, our treasures, our plans and commitments. A dead Jesus is a safe Jesus.

But alas, Jesus is not dead and he is not where we want him to be. He is risen. And he is not in heaven nor is he in Jerusalem. He is back in Galilee—where we don’t want him to be, among the sick, the poor, the demon-possessed, the marginalized. He is back in Galilee along the path that ultimately led to his crucifixion, along the path that ultimately led to the offering of his life.

And he is already there waiting for us.

Do we have the faith and the heart to go and meet Jesus in Galilee. Do we?

(Based on Meditation shared 19 April 2006 at Teologiska Högskolan Stockholm, Sweden)

Anumang Hiram, Kung Hindi Masikip ay Maluwang

Seminaries and divinity schools have, for years, been described as
marketplaces of ideas. Unfortunately, many such institutions have been
marketplaces, or more appropriately, malls of Western ideas. In other
words, if one were to go “shopping” in these “malls” of theological
education, one will be amazed by the number of stalls, stores and shops
offering “imported” goods: from theologies, to liturgies, to libraries, to
models of hermeneutics.

Romy del Rosario, President of Union Theological Seminary in the Philippines, laments: “I cringe at the thought that the more we train our students, the further they are drawn away form the poetry and the arts, the thought forms and patterns, the hermeneutics, the sentiments and feelings, and the imaginative and visioning processes of their own people.”

Anumang hiram, kung hindi masikip ay maluwang. Anything borrowed is
either too tight or too loose. The saying is true with clothes. It is equally
true with theology. Carlos Abesamis, author of A Third Look at Jesus, points out: “Panahon na upang iguhit ang sariling palad. Panahon na upang lilukin ang sariling hugis. Ihabi ang sariling talambuhay.” I agree. We need more “shops” that proudly offer the depth and the breadth of diverse Filipino articulations and constructions of theology.

Anumang hiram, kayang iwasto para ‘sakto. Nevertheless, the Filipino has
the ability to transform anything borrowed to fit him or her perfectly. We
also need more “stores” that showcase the Filipinos’ religious imagination
that empowers them to beat swords into plougshares, to turn weapons of
mass destruction into instruments for mass celebration, and to transform
jeeps into jeepneys.

A long time ago in a barrio far away came a very old woman. She was
probably just passing by because she took the dusty road that bordered the
small community. Because it was almost dark, she stopped by the roadside
and began to build a fire. She took out an earthen pot from the bag she
lugged around and, after filling it with water, set it over the fire. Out of the
same bag she brought out a small river stone and a pinch of rock salt and
put these in the pot.

An old woman alone by the road is hard to miss. Soon children were upon
her. “Lola (Grandma),” they asked, “what are you doing?” “I’m cooking
soup,” she answered, “why don’t you join me?” They sure did and after a
while there was a huge circle of children gathered around the fire as the old
lady narrated stories about elves and fairies and dragons.
It was late. It was dark and the children were still out so their parents
began looking for them. They eventually found them with the old lady.
“Lola,” they asked, “what are you doing?” “I’m cooking soup,” she
answered, “why don’t you join me?” They sure did and after a while there
was a huge circle of children with their parents gathered around the fire as
the old lady continued telling stories of elves and fairies and dragons.
“Lola, “ a mother volunteered, “I still have leftover meat at home. We can
put it in the pot.” “We have vegetables we can add to the pot too!” another
remarked. And so everyone brought back what they could and put these in
the pot. Eventually, the whole community shared not just stories but a hot
pot of soup that began with a cold river stone and a pinch of rock salt.3

As one member of a community of about 85 million Filipinos scattered across 7,107 islands, where scores of languages are spoken, I don’t have the soup. Nor does Union Theological Seminary where I teach. What we all have are ingredients to share and these are ingredients we should always be ready to offer.

In a country whose traditions are both pluri-form and multi-vocal, we are among the many who have faith stories to share. And there are many, many more whose stories of faith are yet to be shared.

[From Anumang Hiram, Kung Hindi Masikip ay Maluwang: Iba't-Ibang Anyo ng Teolohiyang Pumipiglas (Cavite: Union Theological Seminary, 2006)

Reading Readers of the Gospel of Mark

To argue for a ONE, correct, true interpretation of a text is to force a single truth on a plural world. Interpretation is always perspectival and particular. There is no one, correct, true reading of Mark. There are legion of readers and readings of Mark.

Making Sense of Mark's Ending 3

Two of the more popular attempts at making sense of Mark’s ending come from feminist interpreters. The first one, a historical reconstructionist perspective, argues that the women did not remain silent and afraid. How could the gospel ever spread if the first witnesses remained fearful and quiet? The second one comes from the literary perspective. Jesus’s followers drop the ball. The men drop it first. And then the women. The Markan Jesus tells his disciples God will raise him up several times in the narrative. The men don’t believe him. The women came to the tomb to anoint a dead body. They did not go there to welcome a Risen Lord. How about us—the text’s present readers—will we also drop the ball?

If Mark were a movie, it definitely does not end like a Walt Disney movie. It’s open-ended, much like the book of Jonah. The narrative ends at 16:8 with women silent and afraid. I propose the following readings that try to make sense of that ending.

“Watch” the “movie” we call Mark. One can argue that its major theme is suffering-- vicarious suffering to be exact. Its lead character inaugurates a mass movement that begins in Galilee. When the movement eventually reaches the power center of Jerusalem, its leader is executed. Then the young man at the tomb tells the woman that their leader has been raised, and is waiting for them in Galilee, where everything started. And the cycle begins again. His followers are to follow the same path as their leader—the path of vicarious suffering. Wouldn’t you be afraid and silent?

“Watch” the movie we call Mark again. If one focuses on its major characters, one discovers quite fast that most of them are men. Jesus’s disciples are all men until you get to the crucifixion scene, almost at the end, where, like an afterthought, the narrator tells the audience that Jesus had women disciples. Listen to the young man’s pronouncement at the empty tomb—it’s for the men. The risen Christ is supposed to meet the men in Galilee. The women has had enough of this “all men program.” Tama na. Sobra na. Palitan na. Wouldn’t you be afraid and silent when you realize the repercussions of saying “enough” to patriarchy and androcentrism?

If one puts “the vicarious suffering cycle” reading with the “all-men-program” reading together, you’ll have women—by their collective act of disobeying the young man at the tomb-- saying “enough” to the cycles of violence that ultimately always victimize women and children. Now, wouldn’t you be afraid and silent?

A reading of Mark focused on the disciples would soon show that, more often than not, they cannot understand what Jesus does and what he says. Over and over Jesus has to explain his words and his acts. In chapters 8, 9, and 10, Jesus tells them about his suffering and his resurrection, and they misunderstand him. The narrative ends with women coming to the tomb to anoint a dead body. No one among Jesus’s named disciples believed that he will rise again. But one woman in the whole narrative does believe. Read Mark 14. There an unnamed woman gatecrashes a party for Jesus and anoints him with expensive oil. And Jesus says that what she has done will be told in remembrance of her. What did she do? She did an act of faith. She believed Jesus. She anointed Jesus’s body for burial because there would be no body to anoint later. There would only be an empty tomb—as the named women disciples discover when they came with their anointing oils.

Now, if you are one of the many who did not believe Jesus and suddenly the one you thought was dead is actually alive and waiting for you, wouldn’t you be afraid and silent?

How does one do Jeepney Hermeneutics?

Canaan Banana posits that the Bible is an important book of the church and that it includes liberating messages; nevertheless, there remains the sense in which, unless one embraces the Christian concept of God, one is not fully a person of God. Mary John Mananzan points out that the Bible in spite of all the reinterpretations, remains a book written from a patriarchal, dominator, imperial perspective and thus must be used to inform and not define Filipino life and struggles. How then does one do a decolonizing reading of an imperializing text? In other words, as Musa Dube puts it, “how does one read the Bible without perpetuating the self-serving paradigm of constructing one group as superior to another?” How does one do jeepney hermeneutics?

It begins with one’s view of scripture. As Daniel Patte points out in conversation, “Traditional roles of scripture are problematic, when they involve submission to the text, or more exactly, defining the authority of the text in terms of moral prescriptions or vision (ideology, religious views, etc.) that it posits or carries.” Many interpreters of Scripture begin with the theological affirmation, explicit or not, that the Bible is “God’s Word” and that it offers access to the Complete and Final Revelation of the One True God, Jesus Christ. Jeepney hermeneutics presupposes that the Bible is a “jeep,” a sword, an imperializing text – a dangerous text, as demonstrated throughout history by the many horrendous crimes committed in its name (see for instance, Susanne Scholtz, ed. Biblical Studies Alternatively: An Introductory Reader [2002]).

Imperializing texts, according to Musa Dube, take many forms and are written by a variety of people, even by the colonized, either collaborating with the dominant forces or yearning for the same power. She adds, “Regardless of who writes imperializing texts, they are characterized by literary constructions, representations, and uses that authorize taking possession of foreign spaces and peoples… Reproduction of imperial strategies of subjugation is also evident among many interpreters.” I draw heavily from Dube’s work with the following questions in explaining why many biblical texts are imperializing and why many of their interpretations are the same. (1) Does the text have an explicit stance for or against the political imperialism of its time? (2) Does it encourage travel to distant and inhabited lands and how does it justify itself? (3) How does the text construct difference: is there dialogue and liberating interdependence, or is there condemnation and replacement of all that is foreign? Is there celebration of difference authentic or mere tokenism? (4) Does the text employ representations (gender, ethnicity, sexuality, divine, etc.) to construct relationships of subordination and domination?

Next comes a proposal on how to transform a jeep into a jeepney, on how to beat a sword into a plougshare. Jeepney readings have at least three distinct characteristics, three explicit choices—textual, theological, and contextual—made by the reader. First, as far as textual choices are concerned, it involves reading texts by disregarding, setting aside, or resisting imperial rhetoric, its agents and those who mimic them (getting rid of the jeep's machine gun mount). This means privileging what Renita Weems calls “random aberrant outbursts in a world otherwise rigidly held together by its patriarchal attitudes and androcentric perspective.” This means privileging the subaltern in texts, not just the “voices from the margins” but also the “voiceless from the margins,” what Leela Gandhi describes as “the ones who disappear because we never hear them speak. They only serve as medium for competing discourses to represent their claims,” like the pais in Matthew 8:5-13 and Onesimus in Paul’s letter to Philemon. This fundamental choice, this switch of focus from center to periphery allows the marginalized in the text to “mirror” the plight of the marginalized in front of it. This is akin to Delores Williams’ argument about the power of Hagar’s story to inform and inspire the continuing struggle of many African-American women.

A second characteristic of jeepney hermeneutics involves a fundamental theological claim that the insights, stories, and answers the Bible provide (like the three-seater jeep) are not enough and may even be wrong or hurtful for the questions being asked by many communities, thus the need to create space for other texts that help inform—not define—peoples’ lives and struggles (therefore, the necessity of the sixteen, or more, passenger jeepney). Jeepney hermeneutics creates space for other voices, for Filipino “traditions, myths, legends, to harness insights, values and inspiration towards the full flowering of communities and persons” (Mananzan:176-177). Jeepney hermeneutics then takes seriously the affirmation that God and God’s activity is bigger than the Bible, bigger than Christianity, and even bigger than Jesus Christ. God did not arrive in the Philippines in 1521. God was already here. According to Mark Taylor: “The Bible, once the “sword” of the imperial spirit, will have to find its new possibilities amid many other spirits that its Christian bearers often spurned.”

Third, jeepney hermeneutics as an example of “reading like a Canaanite” (Donaldson, Weaver), “re-invading the land” (Guardiola-Saenz), re-claiming stolen spaces, and building houses (jeepneys as Filipino homes on wheels) addresses contextual issues, concrete life settings among Filipinos. “The Canaanites are, of course, the much vilified people who occupied the ‘promised land’ before the arrival of the wandering Israelites. Yet they also stand in for all peoples whose lands have been conquered and expropriated” (Donaldson: 12). Filipinos, as one of the most colonized peoples in the world (Fernandez), are modern-day Canaanites. Reading the Bible inside a jeepney simply means creating space, offering a home for Filipino “Canaanites” to think, to speak, to sing, to commune in Canaanite languages.

Window, Story, Mirror

Most interpretations can be summarized into three categories: those that locate meaning “behind texts,” those that locate meaning “in the texts,” and those that locate meaning “in front of the texts.” Those interpretations that fall under the first category presuppose that scripture serves a referential function, the text is a “window” to a privileged past—to Israel, to the historical Jesus, to the gospel writers and their intentions, to the early Christian communities, etc.—that could be recovered. Interpretation is therefore aimed at first establishing what the text meant in order to arrive at what it means for today. The task of the interpreter is to recover meaning from behind the text to the historical setting from which it came. Traditional historical-critical methods like form, source, redaction criticism, and contemporary Historical Jesus research would fall under this category.

The second category of interpretations employ “closed reading” focused on plot, characters, setting, discourse, structure, implied authors and implied readers in order to get at “what is in the text.” If the first category privileged the past that the text referred to as the source of meaning, the second category privileges the text itself. This category would include most literary methods like narrative, structural, and rhetorical criticism. In such cases interpreters presuppose scripture as “story,” a text that “has life all its own.” And this “living” text is able to create or conjure up communities of readers/hearers.

The third category would include readings that privilege social location. Meaning, in this category, is not located in the past or in the text, but in parts of the text that point “beyond the text” or “in front of the text”: its rhetorical features as well as all the signs of ideological tensions, whether these are socio-economic, political, cultural, religious tensions that are recognizable, despite the fact that the text seeks to suppress them, for instance by marginalizing characters, institutions, or events that would manifest these tensions. These rhetorical features and ideological tensions are textual features that point “beyond the text,” in the sense that they are recognizable by the ways in which they powerfully affect readers in situations similar to those suppressed by the text. Thus, these “in front of the text” textual features are most directly recognizable when they are activated by present-day readers. After all, interpretations are, as Mark Taylor puts it, “constructs of socially located flesh-and-blood readers.” Scripture then serves as a “mirror” that helps inform--not define--concrete life settings. Most advocacy approaches—feminist, liberationist, womanist, reader-response criticism, cultural studies, and post-colonial studies—would fall under this category.

Salamat, Fr. Carl...

Sequels are usually less exciting than the originals. In the case of Backpack of a Jesus Seeker: Book Two, it is not. In A Third Look at Jesus, Fr. Carlos Abesamis offered us his construction of Jesus that does not look anything like the blue-eyed blond, liberal messiah most contemporary researchers' works portray. Through nineteen chapters, which he calls "stop-overs," he "travels" through Jesus' life, death, resurrection, and promise of return. But he does not take this journey alone. He walks with companions: fisherfolk, laborers at the picketlines, mothers, daughters, farmers… maraming kasama. In Backpack… Book One, Fr. Carl—as one voice among a community, a symphony of voices—articulated the essence of Jesus and Jesus’s proclamation of God’s reign. Through a series of dialogical vignettes, readers encounter a Jesus who had a bias for the poor; a Jesus who was a rebel, a heretic, and an apostate; a Jesus who did not just die but was executed; a Jesus whom God raised from the dead and thus Immanuel—God-with-us. This time around in Backpack… Book Two, Carl, the Seeker, and the Backpack welcome a host of God’s wonderful creatures (a butterfly, heavenly bodies, mud, gold, jeepney drivers, indigenous peoples, and others) in dialogue. This bigger symphony of voices challenges us to address concrete, earthy issues; issues most armchair theologians can’t even dare imagine: corporate globalization and its disastrous effects; Clarissa Ocampo, Emma Lim and Erap; the Church of the Poor and Good News to the Poor; the evils of human suffering… As in his two previous “Jesus” books, we are not alone in this journey. Jesus is risen. We are never alone.

The Spirit blows wherever it wills, and what Fr. Carl has done in these three books is locate the Spirit at work among the Filipino ochlos (masses) and ptochos (wretched poor); those whom Conrado De Quiros calls the pango, pandak, at negro in the peripheries of many narratives, the voices from the margins. Fr. Carl locates the locus of God’s liberating activity among fisherfolk, farmers, laborers in the picketlines; with those who rejoice in thanksgiving over tuyo, kamatis, kanin and among mothers who want durian for pasalubong; with the religious who offer their lives protecting their students, and among country doctors whose lives teach preferential option for the poor. Through them we get God’s surprises of grace. Sila ay nagsisilbing mga patikim ng kaharian ng Dios.

Salamat, Fr. Carl. I can’t wait for Episode III

FPJ, Asedillo, and Aguila

Most Filipinos love stories, telling them, listening to them, or watching them. Filipinos who do not enjoy movie watching are quite rare. I remember the moviehouses in the barrios where we used to go during summer vacations. Most of these had double programs. Your ticket bought you two movies to watch. A few had triple programs. We saved up for those triples, especially if they starred Fernando Poe Jr. (FPJ). We came in before lunch and came out six or so hours later. My kuya (older brother) and I are FPJ fans. In grade school I saw my kuya, on two occasions, apply the FPJ rapid-punching technique on two bullies bigger and taller than him. The technique worked. I was 7 when I first went to see a movie by myself. It was FPJ’s Asedillo. It was the first movie I saw that painted a totally different picture of America, and Manuel Quezon, and the period of American occupation many among our elders, even today, longingly call “peacetime.” It was the movie that introduced me to the Sakdal uprising of the 1930s.

I was in high school when I saw Aguila. I consider it one of the best movies Philippine cinema has ever produced. Aside from FPJ, it had Christopher de Leon, Jay Ilagan, Sandy Andolong, Eddie Garcia, Johnny Delgado, Charo Santos, Amalia Fuentes, and a host of top caliber artists. Basil Valdez sung the theme song. The 3 ½ hour movie presents a stark portrait of Philippine society and offers at least four ways of dealing with its reality: join the underground, go to America, learn to deal with it, or live with the indigenous communities.

If you haven’t watched Aguila and Asedillo. Go and do so. Then you will know why those who call FPJ the Arnold Swarzenegger or the John Wayne of the Philippines don't know what they're talking about.

Making Sense of Mark's Ending 2

Take a single verse in the Bible, say John 11:35 (“Jesus wept”). Take five biblical scholars using the same method for interpreting scripture, say redaction criticism. And what do you have? Five different readings. There’s no such thing as a disinterested reading or reader. Interpretation is always perspectival and particular. Interpretation always involves choices. Take a popular telenovela, say Darna. Take five faithful followers of the show, including my 8-year-old son Ian, and ask them why nobody in the narrative recognizes Narda as Darna, and vice-versa. And what do you have? Five different reasons.

Take Mark’s ending, 16:8 which reads, “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” Check out your Bible. Most have a footnote on verse 8 that says ancient manuscripts end on this verse. Verses 9 to 20 are later additions—attempts of ancient communities to make sense of Mark’s ending. If you subscribe to the argument in synoptics studies that Mark was written first and both Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source document, then Matthew and Luke also provide endings that try to make sense of Mark’s. You find in your Bible then at least four or five different attempts at making sense of Mark 16:8.

Making Sense of Mark's Ending

Imagine you are part of the original audience of the Gospel of Mark. Christianity is about 30 or so years old. You are a second-generation believer. You believe, like many in your community, that Jesus is risen. You believe, like many in your community, that he appeared to Peter, and then to many others, and then to Paul. Then, this short gospel comes along. It's disturbing. It does not have any stories of the risen Christ appearing to his disciples. Moreover, it ends with women at the empty tomb silent and afraid.

You don't even shake the hands of the one who read the gospel. No one did in the whole congregation. Actually, even today, most people don't care about Mark. They'd rather read Matthew, Luke, and John. These gospels end right--like Walt Disney movies. Matthew ends with the Great Commission and the Risen Christ's promise of Immanuel. John has the "Do you love me" cycle, and a beach scene to boot. Luke has special effects, Jesus ascending to the heavens. Mark's ending sucks. It's worse than the ending of FPJ's Sigaw ng Digmaan. He dies. FPJ is not supposed to die in any of his movies. If he does, he's supposed to resurrect (like in Panday III), or be shot after the credits (like in Sierra Madre), or have a twin brother somewhere (like in Probinsiyano). Some fans reportedly almost tear down a moviehouse where Sigaw... was showing. Mark's ending: women at the empty tomb, silent and afraid...Crap!

Reading John inside a Jeepney

Jeepney hermeneutics is but one among many “Canaanite” readings. And it is a reading that (1) presupposes that the Bible is a “jeep,” an imperializing text, and that said jeep can be (2) transformed into a “jeepney.”

Let me offer a brief example using the Gospel of John. The connection of the Bible, its readers, and its institutions to Western imperialism do not call for special pleading. As Alan Lawson and Chris Tiffin insist: “Imperial relations may have been initially established by guns, guile, and disease, but they were maintained largely by textuality” (Lawson and Tiffin: 3). Simply put, the Bible was and is the key tool in the “textual takeover of the non-Western world” (Boehmer: 94). Yet, most commentaries and expositions on John available in Philippine seminaries take for granted or do not find problematic the gospel’s imperial rhetoric.

Spivey and Smith’s popular introductory text (Anatomy of the New Testament. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1995) describes the Gospel as reminding its readers that faith is “walking by the light of Christ, and walking the way he walked… it is dependence on the source of life, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent” (203). Both argue that Christians have tended to read the other Gospels, indeed the whole New Testament, in the light of John’s christological and theological constructions (203). Dube points out that “Mission studies indicate that John’s Gospel has been the most influential text” (1998b: 132). Bart Ehrman’s The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), another popular textbook, applies five methods in its analysis of John: literary-historical, redaction, comparative, thematic, and socio-historical. All five approaches lead to one major conclusion: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life now.” Adele Reinhartz (Befriending the Beloved Disciple: A Jewish Reading of the Gospel of John. New York: Continuum, 2001) resists John’s rhetoric because of its anti-Semitism. James Charlesworth (The Beloved Disciple: Whose Witness Validates the Gospel of John? Valley Forge: Trinity Press, 1995) using contemporary historical Jesus methodologies argues that Jesus’ beloved disciple was really Thomas and, contrary to feminist arguments, could never have been a woman.

“Imperializing texts take many forms and are written by a variety of people, even by the colonized, either collaborating with the dominant forces or yearning for the same power. Regardless of who writes imperializing texts, they are characterized by literary constructions, representations, and uses that authorize taking possession of foreign spaces and peoples” (Dube, 1996:41-42). The Gospel of John, according to Dube, may have been written by an oppressed minority group and among the colonized Jews. This setting does not automatically guarantee that it is an anti-imperial text. Post-colonial studies indicate that the colonized do not always resist their oppressors: they also collaborate and imitate the imperial power at various stages of their oppression (1998b: 119).

Why is John a “jeep”? Dube brings the following questions to the text (2000:57-58): Does the Gospel have an explicit stance for or against the political imperialism of its time? Does it encourage travel to distant and inhabited lands and how does it justify itself? How does the Gospel construct difference: is there dialogue and liberating interdependence, or is there condemnation and replacement of all that is foreign? Is the celebration of difference authentic or mere tokenism? Does the text employ representations to construct relationships of subordination and domination? Dube points out that the problem of reproducing imperial strategies of subjugation is also evident among interpreters (2000:26). As Kwok Pui-lan posits, “They operate more from a hermeneutics of consent than a hermeneutics of suspicion. They have not dealt adequately with the harsh reality that the Bible discloses a hierarchical social order in which slavery and male domination are seldom challenged” (42).

John’s imperial discourse pervades the whole gospel. The “Word” that became flesh (1.14) was with God and is, actually, God (1.1). All things came into being through him (1.3) and in him was life and the life was the light of all people (1.4). This “Word made flesh,” the one who came from heaven is above all (3:31) and thus greater than John the Baptist (1.20,3.30), Moses (1.17-18,3.13-15), Jacob (4.12), and even Abraham (8:58). This “Word made flesh” goes into Samaria and tells the woman by the well, “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews” (4.22). This “Word made flesh” is “The Bread of Life” (6.35), “The Light of the World” (8.12), “The Resurrection and the Life” (11.25), and “The Way, the Truth, and the Life” (14.6). And if every one of the things that this “Word made flesh” did were written down, “the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (21.24).

Dube points out that John’s Jesus, as savior of the world who is not of this world, shows a colonizing ideology that claims power over all other places and peoples of the earth (1998b: 132). Moreover Jesus’ followers receive a transference of power. Jesus tells them that they do not belong to the world because he has chosen them out of the world (15.19), and then he sends them out saying, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (20.21). In other worlds, Christians are not of this world yet they are sent into the world with the power to devalue and subordinate differences like John’s Jesus (Dube, 1998b: 130).

With rhetoric like this it is not surprising, as Ali Mazrui points out, that Christianity, the religion of the underdog, became an imperial religion (Dube, 2000:11). More than this, the gospel’s reception history is, on the whole, an expected response to its imperializing rhetoric. Back to my metaphor, the gospel is a jeep. And most of its interpretations, especially those available in seminary libraries in the Philippines, are jeeps.

All of the interpreters I have quoted above present legitimate readings. They are relevant to communities that find them relevant. But Good news is always relative. Interpretations that ignore or even perpetuate John’s imperial rhetoric are products of the hermeneutics of consent. Interpretations that challenge the gospel’s discourse are products of the hermeneutics of suspicion.

It is tempting to classify Reinhartz’ reading as an example of jeepney hermeneutics. She has problems with compliant readings of John. Hers is a resistant reading to the gospel’s constructions of representations and structures of relationships. Ehrman too raises the problem of anti-Semitism in his discussion. Both then find problematic the anti-Jewish sections of the narrative and argue for alternative, liberating readings. On the other hand, both completely ignore the imperial ideology of the gospel. Jeepney hermeneutics, as decolonizing interpretations, suspects both text and interpretation. Ehrman employs a hermeneutics of suspicion as far as John’s reception history is concerned. Unfortunately, he employs a hermeneutics of consent as far as the “source text” is concerned. The Bible remains authoritative, normative, archetypal, God’s special revelation, blameless. Those responsible for Christianity’s sins are the Bible’s interpreters.

Gomang Seratwa Ntloedibe-Kuswani cautions that an imperial ideology—that Christianity is the superior religion over all others and its God the real God—underpins the colonialist communication theory of “source text and receptor languages.” The Bible is the given and cannot be changed, languages, cultures, and peoples can and must be changed to make room for the Bible. Thus, even in translation work, there exists the colonizing ideology that renders receptors into slaves of the “source text” (80-81). Ntloedibe-Kuswani quotes Aloo Mojola who argues that translation is never neutral. It is an instrument of ideological and theological formation grounded on fidelity and faithfulness to the source text (81).

Spivey and Smith are faithful to the “source text.” And so is Charlesworth. He is totally indifferent to the inherent problems of the Johannine rhetoric and instead uses the narrative as a window to a historical past, a privileged past, in order to find a historical beloved disciple. Kwok Pui-lan, I might add, classifies past and contemporary historical Jesus quests as imperialistic in nature: the West’s need for the “noble savage.” Sugirtharajah’s comments are more pointed: “The whole enterprise serves as an example of how the dominant discourse holds on to its deep-rooted Eurocentric bias, namely the assertion that anything theologically worthwhile can only emanate from Greco-Judeo traditions… Eurocentrism works on a double premise. It looks to Greece for its intellectual and philosophical roots, and dips into its Judaic heritage for its religious origins” (1998b: 113).

Reading John inside a jeepney requires privileging Filipinos and their plight as modern-day “Canaanites,” insisting that the Bible informs, it does not define, life, and engaging the biblical text in search of the marginalized, the subaltern, the “Canaanite” characters—those whom Gandhi describes as “the ones who disappear because we never hear them speak. Those who only serve as medium for competing discourses to represent their claims.”

The paidarion, the lad of John 6:9, like the pais of Matthew 8:5-13 that I have argued as symbolic of Filipinos (2000:25-32; 2003), can also represent the continuing plight of Filipinos. Fred Atkinson, the first American General Superintendent of Education in the Philippines inaugurated over a century of racist public education in the islands when he remarked: "The Filipino people, taken as a body, are children and childlike, do not know what is best for them ... by the very fact of our superiority of civilization and our greater capacity for industrial activity we are bound to exercise over them a profound social influence"(Schirmer, 1987: 43-44). The child who offers the five loaves and two fish is absent from the Synoptics. Only in John is the source of the food identified. In the midst of a crisis involving adults, a child’s food is appropriated. The crisis is averted. Jesus is praised. The child disappears into the background from whence he came. He is never thanked. He is never mentioned again. The child gets one verse in the entire 21 chapters of the gospel. Filipinos, numbering over seven million, offer “loaves and fish” to countless peoples throughout the world as overseas contract workers. Many do not even get “one verse.” As De Quiros points out, “They do not figure in the narrative.”

The Samaritan woman is another character that can represent Filipinos. Dube, going against the traditional feminist reading of John 4, presents the woman at the well as illustrative of control-at-a-distance strategies of empire (1996: 37-60). I agree. Spain and America domesticated the mujer indigena for over four centuries and turned her into their most effective subject. Yet like the woman at the well, despite being told that her worship was wrong and she did not have to fetch anymore water because of what Jesus was offering her in terms of “correct worship” and “eternal springs of water,” still left her jar by the well.

Fernandez points out, “Though subjected to the most sophisticated political machinations and cultural genocide, the Filipino soul has never been totally crushed.”

“Useless” is a relative term. The tens of thousands of rusted military jeeps the US Army thought useless at the end of World War II in the Philippines, Filipinos found useful as raw materials for what was to become the most popular mode of public transportation in the islands, the jeepney. Paul’s letter to Philemon is explicit--that for a while, Onesimus was “useless.” I read that to mean that for a while he ceased being a tool to either Paul or to Philemon or even to Christ. For a while, Onesimus was not Paul’s child, not a part of Philemon’s household, nor Christ’s slave. For a while, Onesimus was free.

Dube’s reading complements mine. She explains why John is a “jeep” (to use my metaphor) by comparing and contrasting the Gospel with other imperializing texts like Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and the epic, Aeneid (1998b: 119). Dube refuses to read the biblical text in isolation from other works of literature and is thus able to argue that John’s colonizing ideology that claims power over other peoples and places on earth is not so different from other constructions in secular literature (1998b: 132). I, on the other hand, “fished” for characters that formed a totally different narrative. In other words, I took the “jeep” and transformed it into a “jeepney.”

(from Jeepney Hermeneutics: Beating Swords into Ploughshares)

Si Lazaro at ang Mayaman

Mula sa mga Igorot ng Cordillera hanggang sa mga Lumad sa Mindanao, hitik ang ating kasaysayan at kolektibong karanasan sa mga taong nag-alay ng buhay dahil sa pag-ibig sa kapwa, sa bayan, at sa Dios. Marami sa kanila ay mananampalataya-- mayroong humawak ng sandata upang ipagtanggol ang bayan, ang mga anak, ang buhay laban sa mga puwersang mapang-api at sakim; mayroong namang hindi. Si Andres Bonifacio ang pangunahing halimbawa ng unang grupo, si Jose Rizal naman ang sa pangalawa.

Maliwanag ang koneksyon ng mga kuwento ni Rizal sa kanyang pagkakabaril sa Bagumbayan bilang kaaway ng imperyong Kastila. Ang hindi maliwanag sa maraming Kristiyano ay ang koneksyon ng mga kuwento ni Jesus sa kanyang pagkakapako sa krus bilang kaaway ng imperyo ng Roma. Lumaki tayo sa mga parabola ni Jesus subalit ang nakagisnang interpretasyon ng karamihan sa atin, na galling sa mga paborito nating Amerikano at Europeong iskolar at komentaryo, ay makalangit ang mga kuwentong ito at walang koneksyon sa pang-araw-araw na buhay at pakikibaka ng mga tao. Hindi kasi tayo mahilig magbasa ng bibliya. Ang binabasa natin mga libro tungkol sa bibliya. Sa halip na basahin natin ang Lumang Tipan, ang alam na alam natin ang interpretasyon ni Bernhard Anderson. Sa halip na basahin natin ang Bagong Tipan, ang halos memorize na natin ang komentaryo ni Raymond Brown. Marami sa ating mga simbahan, Purpose Driven Life ang textbook!

Now if we read our bible and prayed everyday, unti-unti nating mapapansin na tuwing nagku-kuwento si Jesus, nagpupuyos sa galit ang mga lider ng relihiyon at politika. Kagaya ng mga prayle noong panahon ni Rizal. Sabi nga ng maraming eksperto sa kuwento, “myths are stories that create order, parables, on the otherhand, are stories that subvert order.” Parables are subversive speech. Ang parabola ay nagbabaligtad ng status quo. Ang mga kuwento ni Jesus, hindi tungkol sa langit, kundi tungkol sa kaharian ng Dios dito sa lupa. Ang mga kuwento ni Jesus ang mga bida yung mga kontrabida sa mata ng mga lider ng relihiyon at politika. Ang mga kuwento ni Jesus nangangako ng bagong umaga sa mga kapus-palad at inaapi, nagbibigay ng babala sa mga nasa-posisyon at sakim sa kapangyarihan. Ang mga kuwento ni Jesus ang dahilan kaya siya pinapatay.

Bakit ba napunta sa Hades ang mayaman na may mataas na tarangkahan sa parabola sa Lukas 16? Kung babasahin natin ang buong ebanghelyo, maliwanag ang sagot: hindi puwedeng maging bahagi ng kaharian ng Dios ang mayaman. Mula pa lang sa unang sermon ni Jesus sa sinagoga sa Nazareth sa Lukas 4 sinabi niya na siya ay sinugo para dalhin ang mabuting balita ng pagkalinga ng Dios sa mga mahihirap, sa mga inaalipin, sa mga bulag, at mga api. Unang sermon pa lang ni Jesus muntik na siyang mapatay, muntik na siyang ihulog sa bangin ng mga tinamaan niya.

Sa Lukas 6, mas matalim ang sermon niya—ang kaharian ng Dios ay para sa mahihirap, para sa mga nagugutom at mga umiiyak—hindi para sa mayayaman at mga busog. Sa Lukas 11, may parabola—tungkol sa mayamang hangal. Sa Lukas 18, may mayamang gustong sumunod kay Jesus pero umaatras. Alam na natin kung bakit. Kung susundin niya si Jesus ay mawawala lahat ng kayamanan niya. Ang kaisa-isang mayaman na sumunod kay Jesus sa Lukas, si Zakeyo sa kabanatang 19, pinamigay lahat ng kayamanan—kalahati para sa mahihirap at apat na ulit, 400% kabayaran sa lahat na kanyang niloko at ninakawan.

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.

Ang pinakamayaman sa panahon ni Jesus ay ang mga puno ng relihiyon at politika. Sila ang proud na tawaging ama si Abraham. Sila ang mga love ni God. Sila na mamahalin ang suotin. Sila na nagpi-pista araw-araw. Sila yung siguradong-siguradong ligtas sila at pupunta sila sa kanlungan ni Amang Abraham. Sila na nakalimot na hindi mo puwedeng mahalin ang Dios kung hindi mo mahal ang kapwa mo. Sila na nakalimot na hindi ka puwedeng yumaman kung talagang mahal mo ang kapwa mo. Sila na kayang-kayang magpista araw-araw sa loob ng naggagandahang mga bahay, mga opisina, mga templo na protektado ng nagtataasang mga trangkahan at bakod, habang ang mga pulubi’y naghihintay ng mumo sa labas, habang nagugutom ang mas nakararami... Sa kuwento ni Jesus, sila ang pupunta sa impiyerno.

Sigurado akong maraming tumangis, maraming umiyak ng mamatay ang mayaman sa parabola ni Jesus. Mga kamag-anak, mga kaibigan, mga kasosyo sa relihiyon at politika, mga binayaran para umiyak… marami. Sigurado rin akong magarbo ang libing niya. Si Lazaro namatay sa kadukhaan. Ni walang karamay. Malamang mga asong kalye ang mga huling saksi sa mga huling hininga niya. Si Lazaro namatay, ni hindi nailibing, kagaya ng hindi mabilang na Lazaro sa mundo, mga Lazaro dito sa Pilipinas... namamatay dahil sa gutom, dahil sa malnutrition, dahil sa simpleng sakit na hindi malunasan dahil sa sobrang mahal na gamot…

Alam na natin kung bakit inihatid ng mga angel si Lazaro sa kanlungan ni Abraham. Basahing nating muli ang ebanghelyo ni Lukas: ang mabuting balita ng pag-ibig at pagkalinga ng Maykapal ay para sa mga dukha, para sa mga Lazaro. Lahat ng Lazaro sa mundo ihahatid ng mga angel sa kanlungan ni Abraham.

Ang pangalang Lazaro ay Griyego ng Hebreong Eliezer. Ang sabi ng kasulatan, si Lazaro ay dukha, pulubing nakahandusay sa may tarangkahan ng mayaman, umaasa sa mga mumo, kasama ang mga asong kalye na dinidilaan ang kanyang mga sugat. Maraming Lazaro sa mundo—walang maaasahan kundi ang Dios, walang matatawagan kundi ang Dios, walang karamay kundi ang Dios, walang tutulong kundi ang Dios. Iyan, mga kapatid, ang ibig sabihin ng Lazarus o Eliezer—siya na tutulungan ng Maykapal; siya na ang Dios lang ang pag-asa.

Kaya nga sa takdang panahon, nagkatawang tao ang Dios upang dinggin ang iyak nila na siya lang ang tanging pag-asa. Ang buong buhay ng ating Panginoong Jesus ay inihandog para sa kanila. Tayo naman ay tinawag at patuloy na hinahamon ng ating panginoon upang sundan ang kanyang mga yapak—sa paglilingkod, sa pakiki-isa, at sa pag-aalay ng buhay para sa mga Lazaro.

Ang hamon sa atin ay gumawa ng mga tulay ng kalayaan, ng pag-asa, ng hustiya, ng ginhawa, ng pagkakapantay-pantay. Subalit hindi madaling gumawa ng tulay. Lalong-lalo na, hindi maaaring gumawa ng tulay mula sa gitna—“no one builds a bridge from the middle.” Sinusuka ng Dios ang nasa gitna. We need to take sides. Alam natin yan. Napag-aralan na natin iyan—“preferential option for the poor.” Pero marami sa atin hindi natin yan ginagawa. Kailangan tayong pumili, sa mga Lazaro ba ng mundo o sa mga mayayaman?

Kilala ng mga mayayamang puno ng relihiyon at politika sa panahon ni Jesus kung sino si Lazaro o Eliezer. Maliwanag ang kuwento sa aklat ng Henesis. Siya ang tapat na katiwalang dayuhan ni Abraham; katiwalang muntik nang maging tagapagmana. Subalit para sa mayayaman sa panahon ni Jesus, sila lang ang mahal ng Dios, sila lang ang tagapagmana, sila lang ang puro ang dugo--silang mga anak ni Isaac. Hindi puwede ang mga anak ni Ishmael—mga bastardo sila; lalong hindi puwede ang mga anak ni Lazaro, anak sila sa labas, banyaga, hindi karapat-dapat. Maliwanag ang nasa parabola ni Jesus—dinala ng mga anghel sa kanlungan ni Amang Abraham si Lazaro.

Ang buong buhay at ministeryo ni Jesus ay tanging alay para sa mga Lazaro ng mundo--ang totoong tagapagmana ng kaharian ng Dios. Sana tayo rin. Dapat tayo rin.