HANDWASHING

 

Medical science linked the connections among handwashing, community health, and hygiene in the 19th century by observing discrepancies in mortality rates between two hospital wards. Of course, handwashing has always been part of diverse peoples' minimum community health protocols. Who among us remember our childhood when our elders repeatedly told us to wash our hands before meals, after using the toilet, when we come home from work?

The ritual described in Sunday's lection requires using a cup to wash each hand three times. It is a ritual that is founded on God's commandment--being each other's keepers-- that has become something else by Jesus's time: a sign of division.

When handwashing becomes nothing more than a sign that defines who are insiders and who are outsiders, who are pure and who are impure, who are clean and who are defiled, then we have a problem. Jesus calls it hypocrisy.

It is especially hypocritical and heartless, given that the people in Jesus's time who had access to clean water to begin with were also the ones who defined who was unclean, denied honor to the defiled, shut their doors to outsiders, and never lifted a finger to help them be clean.

Handwashing is a concrete expression of being each other's keepers. Every time we wash our hands, we protect not only ourselves but everyone around us.

But let us never forget that handwashing requires water. There are 2.2 billion people on earth who have no access to water. And children, mostly girls worldwide, spend 200 million hours each day collecting water.

*photograph from Medium's Epidemiology and Infectious Diseases.

DO YOU ALSO WISH TO GO AWAY?

Sunday's Johannine lection resonates with a theme that permeates the Gospels: discipleship. It reminds those of us who call ourselves Christian that following Jesus of Nazareth has never been--and will never be--a picnic nor a walk in the park. The cost of discipleship is very high.

The cross that Jesus talks about does not refer to the challenge of being married to your spouse, nor the responsibility of taking care of elderly relatives, nor the burden of pastoring a metropolitan church, nor to any of the other metaphorical "crosses" we have come up with.

The cost of discipleship is very high. It's completing the tower. It's winning the battle. We don't go build without finishing. We don't wage war in order to lose.

Thus, upon realizing the difficulties involved in following Jesus, many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. Prompting Jesus to ask the Twelve, "Do you also wish to go away?"

Many among us want to go to heaven, but are afraid to die. Many among us want to be resurrected, but are afraid to be crucified. Many among us want to see a new day, but are afraid of the night. We cannot have one without the other.

My friends, we cannot trully follow Jesus unless we are ready to carry our cross. Salt melts away. Light burns out. A grain of wheat dies... When Jesus calls us, he bids us, "come and die."



*art, "The Cost of Discipleship," from maplecreekchurchcom.

FLESH AND BLOOD

The Four Gospels begin their narratives in four different ways. Mark begins with an adult Jesus who is baptized by John in the Jordan. Matthew has a birth narrative that features Magi who spent about two years searching for the child. Luke's has shepherds who visit Jesus as a baby. John's origin story begins in "The Beginning." The Word became Flesh and lived among us. God has stopped watching from a distance.

Stories of Gods taking on human form abound in many of the world's mythologies. Many of the heroes of ancient peoples were demigods or super humans. For the Gospel of John, when the Word became Flesh and Blood, the Word was totally and fully Flesh and Blood. In other words, God was not Superman disguised as Clark Kent--God was Clark Kent.

For the Gospel of John, God Incarnate gets tired and thirsty; eats and drinks with family and friends; experiences love and loss, and cries, like all of us. God Incarnate takes the side of the poor, feeds the multitudes, experiences betrayal, and suffers torture and crucifixion by empire. Like many among us.

And then God dies. Like all of us will. Like all of us who are Flesh and Blood.

My Friends, to believe in the incarnation is to embody justice, accompaniment, solidarity, and life-giving, like Jesus did. The incarnation always requires warm bodies, flesh and blood: yours and mine.


*art: Christ Child, also known as In the Beginning or the Millennium Sculpture, is an outdoor sculpture by Michael "Mike" Chapman, located under the portico of St Martins-in-the-Fields at Trafalgar Square in London, United Kingdom.

WE ARE THE ANSWER TO OUR PRAYERS

There is a virus that has killed more people than any pandemic. It is hunger. And the "vaccine" has always been available. It is food. Historians tell us that up to half of the population during Jesus’s time was slowly starving to death. This deadly virus has only ever affected the poor. The rich are immune to it.

The story of the Feeding of the 5000 reminded us that one poor and hungry child's offering of five barley loaves and two fish brought about the miracle that fed the multitudes.

This Sunday's lection reminds us not to focus on the manna, nor on the bread and fish, but on the source of the offering: The poor child; God; and Jesus who says, "I Am the Bread of Life."

My friends, it is time we realize that, like the child with five barley loaves and two fish, like Jesus, we are the answer to many of the world's pleas. And the gifts we can offer today, right now, are more life-giving than the ones we plan to give tomorrow.

We often forget that we play the primary role in the realization of our dreams, that we are the change that we desperately need, that we are the answer to many of our prayers, and that the tomorrow we always look forward to is already here, since today is the tomorrow we prayed for yesterday!

*image from Christ Episcopal Church at Eagle Lake. 

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT

Sunday’s lection from John is about eating Jesus’s flesh and drinking his blood. This passage has been interpreted in so many different ways throughout the centuries. It serves as a basis for the Roman Catholic church’s theology of transubstantiation. Others call this John’s version of the Last Supper or Eucharistic ritual found in the latter part of the Synoptic Gospels. Others locate this as a part of the “I Am” discourses of the Johannine Jesus.

The Gospel of John declares: the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. God became human. In the fullness of time, God decided to become one of us. Oftentimes we say that the Gospel of John is the most spiritual of the gospels. It is, since spirit (which is ruach in Hebrew, pneuma in Greek, and anima in Latin) actually means breath. “Hininga."

Simply put, spirit is oxygen for people and carbon dioxide for plants. Spirit, in other words, is matter. Thus, the Gospel of John abounds with powerful metaphors which are material, physical, and earthy: water; bread and fish; shepherds, sheep, and lambs; tears and death; wombs, births, and rebirths. Now, we are commanded to eat the Word made flesh and drink his blood. And we will live.

There are people whose daily lives revolve around coffee. There are those who cannot function well without rice. Then, there are those who share an intimate relationship with pan de sal and Reno liver spread, with mami and siopao, with San Miguel Beer and adobo peanuts. Finally, there are those who are addicted to Jesus.

Loving, craving, eating Jesus on a daily basis, like manna, is dangerous. It is life-changing, transformative, and very, very risky! It requires giving up one’s life for another.

It means eventually becoming what you eat, being like Jesus—love in the flesh, food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, clothing for the naked, a friend to the stranger and the sick, freedom to the captives, salt of the earth, light in the darkness, bread for the world.

To offer one’s “flesh and blood” is to offer the whole self. Jesus did. This is the path to abundant life for all. Self-giving. Offering “flesh and blood” so that others may live. Jesus said, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” And he did. And we are invited to do the same.

Sisters and brothers, people say, you are what you eat. For those of us who call ourselves friends of Jesus, I pray we really are!

*art, "The Last Supper," painting from Cathedral of Sancti Spiritus, Cuba (from vanderbilt divinity library archives).

 

ONE CHILD'S OFFERING

There are many people who imagine this story-- which we find in all four canonical gospels--as an actual event in Jesus's ministry. Then there are those who argue that it is a parable. All the parables we have looked at so far are stories that Jesus told. This one is different. It's a parable from the early church. Jesus is a character in the parable.

He sees the multitude hungry and, following the teachings of the Law and the Prophets, he tells his disciples to feed them. In the Synoptics, his disciples make up excuses. Send the crowd away. Let them feed themselves. In Sunday's lection from John 6, they tell him: we don't have enough funds to address the situation.

The excuses then sound so much like our excuses today.

Then a young child, possibly 12 years old or younger, offers what he has. Five barley loaves and two fish. And the miracle of feeding of the 5000 begins. There is a tradition that says barley tastes good... to cows, sheep, and horses! The poor, the anawim, ate barley. It was all they could afford. The rich had storehouses of wheat, and fattened themselves with it.

Do not forget this. Ever. The barley loaves and the fish that led to the feeding of the poor and hungry multitudes were offered by a POOR AND HUNGRY child. Many times we forget that the answer to our prayers is already among us. Many times, God's liberating acts begin when one--just one we usually do not expect--takes that step forward, that leap of faith, that offering of bread and fish.


*art, "Jesus multiplies the loaves and fish," (JESUS MAFA, 1973) from vanderbilt divinity library digital archives.

SLEEPING IN CHURCH

Many people sleep during Sunday services. Many people find such behavior unacceptable. Many other people understand the reasons why many people sleep during Sunday services.

In Genesis 1, God works for six days and rests on the seventh. Even God needs a break. Even God needs to take a nap.

Sunday's lection offers us a glimpse of Jesus declaring a break for himself and his discples. Mark 6:31 reads: Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”

They did go away to a quiet place and got some rest.

My friends, almost everyone needs a break. I say "almost everyone" because one-third of the world's wealthiest people are born wealthy and they will die wealthier without ever working one minute in their entire lives. This post is not about them.

This post is about people who live from payday to the next; those who do not even get the minimum wage; those who have never had a restful sleep in years; those dead-tired people in the pews who take naps during the pastor's sermon.

Please rest. Even God needs a break. Even God needs a nap.


*image: Rowan Atkinson as "Mr Bean" sleeping in church

PRINCESS AND PROPHET

Kakay Pamaran's work on Salome is a brilliant thesis using Historical Jesus Research methods. She argues that the "princess's dance which led to the prophet's death" tradition is part of a much bigger extra-canonical Salome Corpus that is still waiting to be collected, catalogued, and celebrated.

Salome and Mary Magdalene are two of the most attested interlocutors of Jesus in extra-canonical Christian literature. There are scholars whose research have shown how Mary Magdalene has been systematically erased from orthodox traditions. Kakay's research pursues a similar trajectory. There are copies of Mark where Salome completely disappears from the list of the women who discovers the empty tomb. Matthew’s and Luke's accounts do not mention Salome.

Many people today would call Magdalene a prostitute or adulteress and Salome a temptress or seductress. All these are false. Fake news. Kakay's work calls the church to repent of its violent sins of systematic erasuring and institutional forgetting.

More importantly, Kakay's work challenges the church to open the canon and discover the diverse, pluriform, and multivocal Christian traditions that make up the 99% that orthodoxy have marginalized.

Friends, please read Sunday's lection. Please read it in Greek if you are able. Salome, in the passage, was a GIRL. A LITTLE GIRL.

*Kakay Pamaran, Salvae Salome: Corpus, Myth, Canon, and the Quest for Salome (Union Theological Seminary, Philippines Master of Theology thesis, 2021). 

THE BASTARD FROM NAZARETH

Homecomings conjure up positive images for a lot of people, especially graduation and vacation days. For many, homecoming is almost synonymous with reunion.

But Sunday's lection on Jesus's homecoming paints a different picture. His townmates ask, "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?" Mark's 'The carpenter from Nazareth, the son of Mary' (read, bastard) was a hard sell. It was certainly a hard sell for the other Nazarenes; in the Lukan version of this story, they tried to throw Jesus off a cliff.

I always ask my co-learners to imagine a daughter or sister or friend--who is barely out of her teens--being pregnant and telling everyone that the father of her child is the Holy Spirit. Mark's 'The carpenter from Nazareth, the son of Mary' (read, bastard) was a very hard sell. Then and now.

To this day, the bastard from Nazareth who lived his life with and for those whose only hope was God; who preached good news to the poor; who challenged the rich to sell everything they have and give the proceeds to the destitute; who defied empire and its life-negating systems; and who commanded everyone who followed him to offer one's life for a friend; remains an extremely hard sell.

You can't exactly sell a way of life that carries a high risk of being executed by the state, can you?

*art, "Jesus as a child in Nazareth," (JESUS MAFA) available at the Vanderbilt Divinity Library digital archives. 

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 Nanay'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 lection 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 has left millions dead and tens of millions disenfranchised. Most of those who died were alone. No last visit. No last rites. No last touch. Years of physical distancing has made so many of the living socially distant. Alone. Depressed. Afraid. And in desperate need to touch someone or be touched.

Friends, someone somewhere right now needs a healing touch. Someone somewhere right now needs to experience "Immanuel."


*art, "Healing of the Daughter of Jairus," (JESUS MAFA) available at vanderbilt divinity library archives.
**read How to Hug During a Pandemic (The New York Times)
***Of course there are many that have the opposite experience about touching and being touched. Topic for another post.

THE MUSTARD SEED

Gaius Plinius Secundus--aka Pliny the Elder--in his Natural History 19.170-171, argues that the mustard in Sunday's parable from Jesus was a wild weed. He said, "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.”

John Dominic Crossan tells us that the "smallest of all seeds" 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.

Much to the chagrin of gardeners, the birds would go on to wreck the natural balance of a well-manicured garden with thesir unpredictable feeding habits, their nesting, and worse, their droppings.

Gardeners, of course, did not want weeds in their gardens. They especially 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-tended garden has no room for wild mustard so they cut mustard young and at the roots.

But mustard weed have ways of coming back. They always do.

The parable likens God’s reign, God’s kingdom to a weed. It grows where it is not wanted and eventually takes over the place. The wild mustard from Galilee that sprung in the domesticated garden of Judea, that attracted all kinds of birds that gardeners despised, was swiftly cut down.

Always remember 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 hundreds of students, church workers, community leaders, farmers, fisher-folk, laborers, and activists who disappeared during the Marcos Regime. And the countless more who have disappeared during the Aquino, Ramos, Estrada, Arroyo, Aquino, Duterte, and the BBM administrations. Philippine soil is nourished by the blood of fallen sisters and brothers in unmarked, mass, shallow graves, just like Andres Bonifacio--who, at 34, was murdered 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 elite, the majority of whom take pride in calling themselves, their institutions, and their structures “Christian.” But Jesus’s vision lives on. And those of many others live on.

Mustard weed have ways of coming back. When you least expect them. Ask any gardener. You can never completely eradicate wild weeds. They have a way of sprouting in places where they disturb, disrupt, and dismantle.

They always do! And when they do, birds, all sorts, start arriving!


*art, "A Parable - The Mustard Seed" by Cara B. Hochhalter (2019), available from the vanderbilt divinity library art collection.

BINDING THE STRONG MAN

Parables are subversive speech. Subversion is often considered a crime. A crime warrants punishment. A punishment's severity depends on the magnitude of the crime. If a crime is considered severe, like insurrection, then it warrants execution. Therefore, parables can get one dead.

With that logic in mind, consider this: Sunday's lection is one of Jesus's most subversive.

"If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first binding the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered."

This parable can be summed up in one word: insurrection.

Many scholars say the kingdom refers to the State, more specifically, Rome and its puppet government in Palestine. The house refers to the Temple, more specifically, the religious elite beholden to empire. Satan, of course, refers to Rome.

As a side note: Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor of Judea, and Joseph Caiphas, the High Priest, the two people directly responsible for Jesus's execution, were close friends. Both were removed from power in 36 CE. Many historians agree that the "cleansing of the temple" was Jesus and his followers' attempt to "bind the strong man and plunder his house."

Lest we forget, Jesus led 5,000 in that "cleansing" and was executed as an enemy of the State, as an insurrectionist. The charge, "King of the Jews," supports that. He was crucified with two other insurrectionists or rebels, not thieves or robbers.

We do not like this Jesus.

This Jesus is so unlike the one we grew up with, so unlike the one our colonial masters taught us to obey without question, so unlike the one whose portraits and paintings--usually blond and blue-eyed--adorn our places of worship.

This Jesus will not be welcomed in many of our churches today.

*art, "Binding the Strong Man, " [Arrest of St. Patrick] available from vanderbilt divinity library archives. 

DAY OFF

One of the more fascinating characteristics of God in Genesis 1 is one many of us miss. God rests on the seventh day.

In other words, God takes a day off.

Sunday's lection is one of so many passages in the Gospels on the observance of the Sabbath Day. So many sermons have been preached and will be preached on this topic. (Sunday's passage reminds me of one of Albert Einstein's famous quotes: If you can't explain it to a six-year-old, then you don't understand it.)

Friends, God needs a day off. =)

All of us need a break. Actually, almost all of us. There are people who are born wealthy and who will die wealthier without ever working one minute of their entire lives. They represent one third of the world's richest people. This post is not about them.

There are Church Workers whose official day off falls on Mondays. But they have never, ever, had a single day off. Even the land needs a Sabbath. And so does Mother Earth.

Please, take a day off! If God needs one, then so do God's children.

*art, "Is Jesus Sleeping?" from the blogspot godwantsmore.