Jeepney Hermeneutics

"There are examples, however, of critical theory that is distinctly Asian or a modification of Western modes of thought with Asian interests. Using Western theory and method is inescapable and can even be considered a witting tool, used by the colonized when they try to “write back and work against colonial assumptions, representations, and ideologies” (Sugirtharajah, 1998, p. x). The Filipino Jeepney hermeneutics is one such venture, demonstrating the capacity to transform tools of mass destruction into resources for life (as in the writings of Revelation E. Velunta). Thus while cultural studies is not just an Asian American interpretive mode of discourse, it may be utilized by Asian interpreters in a more critical manner."

(Asian/Asian American Interpretation, Source:
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Gender Studies, accessible online at http://www.oxfordbiblicalstudies.com/article/opr/t453/e1)

PAIN HAS NO SABBATH

Luke 13: 10-17 10 Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. 11 And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” 13 When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. 14 But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” 15 But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? 16 And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” 17


When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing. (NRSV) The Gospel of Luke is a favorite among many Filipino Christians. Two of the best loved parables of Jesus are in Luke, the Samaritan in Chapter 10 and the Prodigal Son in Chapter 15. The Roman Catholic Church’s Preferential Option for the Poor is grounded on this gospel. The UCCP particularly loves Luke 4 (and Matthew 25). Lest we forget, the gospel that Jesus was anointed to proclaim is good news to the poor. And Luke is the best source for understanding the challenge of this gospel that takes the side of those whose only hope is God, of those who need God the most.

Critical parts of Jesus’s mission are to proclaim release to the captives and to let the oppressed go free. Both mean the same thing: liberation! Our reading for today is Jesus doing his mission of liberation. In Jesus’s response to the leader of the synagogue (verse 15) he mentions three characters who are all bound and have to be released. The ox and the donkey are both tied. They have to be released in order to get water. If they are not released, if they do not get water, they might get dehydrated or worse, die. The woman, whom Jesus calls a daughter of Abraham—which incidentally is the only time in the whole Bible that the description is used—is also bound. Satan has bound her for 18 long years. Medical experts who have studied this passage say that those were 18 agonizingly painful years. Whether she had tuberculosis of the spine, spondylitis ankylopoietica, osteoarthritis of the spine, or osteoporosis of the spine, she was in terrible pain. Every single day. She had to be released. She had to be set free.

My friends, the exchange between Jesus and the synagogue leader is not about good and bad. It is about good and good. How do we choose? Justly. The synagogue leader was saying: you can heal her any other day except today. He was arguing: what is one more day of suffering to someone who has already endured 18 years of agonizing pain? That’s 6570 days of pain. What is one day more? Jesus, on the other hand, was saying: why do I need to heal her any other day when I can do it today! For Jesus, suffering is suffering. Why wait for tomorrow when we can stop it today! The synagogue leader’s opinion is justice delayed. Jesus’s retort was justice right now! The woman despite her agonizing pain, despite her suffering went to the synagogue regularly. Did you think for one second that her pain rested during those Sabbath days? Did you think her suffering stopped while she sang, chanted, and studied the Torah? Do not forget this, ever: suffering does not have Sabbaths. Oppression has no rest days. Evil does not rest.

Do you think the suffering, humiliation, and discrimination that Palestinians experience as they go through Israeli checkpoints twice a day stop during Sabbath? Do you think the daily average of 45,000 people, half of them children under 5, who die in the Congo, stop because the killers behind the world’s worst genocide have to go to church on Sundays? Do you think our Lumad sisters and brothers get Sundays off from the displacement, dispossession, and militarization they experience from the AFP, CAFGU, and private armies of mining corporations? Do you think the pains, the suffering, and the diseases that afflict close to a billion of the world’s children caused by malnutrition, poverty, and hunger cease every time they attend mass or praise and worship? Suffering does not have sabbaths. Oppression has no rest days. Evil does not rest!

Thus, the struggle for life, for liberation, for wholeness, for abundant life for all has no rest days as well. This is why Jesus always healed on the Sabbath. This is why he proclaimed release to the captives and set the oppressed free on the Sabbath. This is why we are challenged to do the same! My friends, today is the day of liberation. Of course, we can wait for tomorrow but tomorrow might be too late. Proclaim release to the captives! Let the oppressed go free!

TODAY!

Fish and Bread

Context: Antiquity. Roman Empire. Colony. Palestine. Puppet government. Caesarea. Tiberias. Cities in honor of emperors. Dispossessed farmers. Dislocated fisherfolk. Taxes and more taxes. Debts and mounting debts. Text: The Gospels. Fishing all night. No catch. Tending nets. No catch. Parables of Workers and Tenants in Vineyards. Daily wages. Subsistence pay. No work. Dispossessed farmers. Dislocated fisherfolk. The Gospels: Thousands fed with bread and fish. A child offers five loaves and two fish. A ritual of bread and fish. Taking sides with farmers and fisherfolk. Then and now: Taking sides with those who need God the most. Taking sides with those whose only hope is God. Taking sides with farmers and fisherfolk.

BORDER CROSSING...

Going outside boxes is hard. Leaving our comfort zones? Equally hard. The Magi’s quest took over two years, border-crossing, in search of a child, a complete stranger; a stranger they believed would liberate his people from oppression. Crossing boundaries, discarding prejudices, tearing down walls: very, very hard. And very, very scary! And taking another road back is hard and scary, as well. The Magi went against the orders of Herod the King and innocent children were massacred. More often than not, then and now, when the Powerful are threatened, the most powerless get hurt. Who among us have flown on airplanes? Who among us have looked out the windows of those airplanes and seen the land masses below? What did you see? Did you see the lines, the borders that separated one nation from another? Did you see the markers that identified each country's territory apart from another? Like in our maps? The boxes we make, our comfort zones, our prejudices, the thick and high walls around our homes and even our churches, our accurate maps, even that Apartheid Wall in Israel, the borders that separate us are all man-made. We put them up, which means we can tear them down!

When Typhoon Yolanda devastated the Visayas, we saw the borders created by the political lines: the Cojuangcos and Roxases, and the Romualdezes and Marcoses; the national and local government; international relief organizations and the DSWD; the survivors who have no choice but to remain in Tacloban and the survivors who were able to leave immediately because they had homes elsewhere. But we have also seen how volunteers from different sectors, of different ages, and from different races cross boundaries and go where many of them, where many of us, have never gone before. The international community have crossed the lines and broken the walls to express compassion for and solidarity with our Filipino sisters and brothers, more than what our government has done. In the verses that we have been reflecting on from the first chapters of Matthew and of Luke since December 16, one element is crystal clear. Except for Mary and Joseph, all the characters who come together to celebrate the birth of the Messiah are strangers. Complete Strangers. Empires and Kingdoms create systems and lifestyles that create strangers, that divide, that pit one against the other, whether the division is based on class, race, creed, gender, religion… The birth of the Messiah, the fulfilment of the promise of Immanuel, the coming of Yeshua—which means Yahweh Liberates—brings complete strangers together, births community! The birth of the Messiah, my dear friends, can tear down walls. If you read your Bible and pray every day you will grow, grow, grow in the realization that the Gospel of Matthew starts and ends with Immanuel, God-with-us. And today’s lectionary reading, Matthew 25: 31-46, is Immanuel in Action… Feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, visiting the sick and the imprisoned, clothing the naked, welcoming the stranger. How many times have we spent waiting for God’s presence, Immanuel, in our lives… The key is not to wait for Immanuel but to be Immanuel to those who need God the most, to those whose only hope is God! Today, as people struggle for life in places like Tacloban and many towns in the Visayas, each of us is invited to be active participants in the quest for a just and lasting peace, to be agents of love and faith and hope in the healing of our world, to tear down the walls that divide the fed and the hungry, the healthy and the sick, the rich and the poor… Despite the tragedies that have befallen our country, many of us here tonight have much to be thankful for. God has been good to us. But thanksgiving unless shared and celebrated with those whose only hope is God is not really thanksgiving, it is investing, waiting for returns. The Magi gave their very best. They did not go to Bethlehem to have an exchange gift or monito-monita. To be thankful is to share, to take risks, to cross borders, to tear down walls and thus encounter the stranger. Scary? Yes. Hard? Yes. Dangerous? Yes. But this is what the incarnation is all about. No one deserves to be alone so God took the first step. God crossed borders. God left heaven to be with us. God chose to be one of us. God took sides. And God took the side of the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized… those who are totally different from us. And we, those who confess to follow God, should do the same. My friends, as we welcome 2014, I invite us all to cross borders like the Magi, to tear down walls that divide, to be God’s presence in others’ lives, to change our ways and take another road. And like the Magi, by taking another road, the road less traveled, let us participate in the healing of our world and in our own healing. Happy New Year! [NEW YEAR'S EVE HOMILY,PCCL UNIVERSITY CHURCH]

NO ROOM...

The first Christmas. We re-enact it almost every December in our school plays and in our church pageants. St. Francis started the tradition in the 1200s. In our re-enactments, Joseph and a very pregnant Mary find no room in any inn. No one is ready and willing to welcome the couple. Eventually, they find shelter among animals, in a manger, where Jesus is born. Soon, visitors arrive: angels, shepherds, even the Little Drummer Boy in some of our plays, and then the magi bringing gifts. Incidentally, in one TV spot I saw abroad, one of the magi brings the Baby Jesus the newest Android Smartphone. In an artwork going around in our social networks, the magi cannot visit Jesus because an apartheid wall blocks their path. In the image above, Mary and Joseph experience an IDF checkpoint. Our plays usually end on a happy note because we either end it with everyone singing carols or with a rendition of Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus, sang by the choir or blasted through our sound systems. And we forget that the play ended the way it began: there was no room in the inn. In rare occasions we do find people going against the script. Sometimes, someone from the audience, someone from our congregations would volunteer to welcome Joseph, Mary, and Joseph to their homes. Sometimes, we hear someone crying out: “There is a place for them in our home.” Today is one of those times when we are challenged to affirm that “there is a place in our homes.” Today, more than ever, we need to go against the script. We cannot afford to close our doors. We cannot afford to put up walls. We cannot afford to be inhospitable. We cannot afford to spend Christmas without opening our homes to the Christ who confronts us through the least among the least: the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, the prisoners, the unclothed, the complete stranger, the orphan, the widow... the thousands left homeless and devastated in the Visayas by the tragedy we call Yolanda; the thousands victimized by years of unabated mining, logging, militarization, and the culture of impunity. Today, we are called to have open hearts, open minds, open homes, open tables, open doors... ------ *[image from cifwatch.com]

Matthew's "Tabernacle"

The Tabernacle motif, though implicit, plays a critical role in the Matthean narrative. The Tent of Meeting or Tabernacle symbolized, literally, God’s presence among God’s people (Exodus 35-40). In the 40-year sojourn of the Israelites in the wilderness, God was always with them via the Tabernacle, a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night. In other words, where the Tabernacle was, there was God. Matthew begins and ends with Immanuel, God-with-us (1.23, 28:20). Thus, the Gospel effectively sets the boundaries of its own “tabernacle.” Matthew creates a world of insiders and outsiders relative to this “tabernacle.” 1 And right at the middle of this “tent” is the greatest symbol of faith in the gospel—the centurion (Matthew 8:10).

The encounter between the centurion and Jesus, according to Musa Dube (in Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible), particularly highlights Matthew’s stance toward the Empire. Both men are presented as having authority to effect things simply by the power of their words (Matt. 8:8-9). The comparison of Jesus’ authority with that of the centurion’s has the effect of sanctifying the imperial power. Jesus pronounces the centurion’s faith greater than the faith of everyone in Israel (Matt. 8:10), a statement that contrasts the imperial agent with the colonized and exalts his righteousness above theirs. The passage casts imperial officials as holier and predicts that they, and other groups, will have more power (in the kingdom of God). Such characterization not only disguises what imperial agents represent—institutions of exploitation and oppression—but also pronounces imperialism holy and acceptable. A quick survey of the history of the interpretation of Matthew and centuries of Western colonization—euphemistically called “civilizing missions”—in Asia, Africa, and Latin America shows that most interpreters followed the Gospel’s imperial rhetoric. In Matthew’s “tabernacle,” God’s presence is most evident in a military officer, in an imperial agent. The first one thousand years of Christianity was one millennium of war and destruction in the name of Jesus Christ. And those “civilizing missions” have not stopped. Even today, the most oppressive and dehumanizing societies are led by “Christian” centurions who have no qualms maiming and destroying those who are not “one of them.”

The centurion is to Matthew as the 30-caliber machine gun mount is to the military jeep. To read Matthew inside a jeepney is to celebrate the fact that the first thing Filipinos did in their transformation of the military jeep was to rid it of that machine gun mount. To read Matthew inside a jeepney is to remove our gaze from the centurion—and, yes, even Jesus, who mimics the centurion—and focus it on someone else. I suggest focusing our attention on the servant (pais in Greek) of 8:5-13. The pais, whether translated son, daughter, girl, boy, servant, slave, or sex slave, is a child. He or she serves to remind flesh and blood readers that the reality of empire—in varying forms and degrees—is experienced by children and by those who are treated as children. Political sociologist Ashis Nandy draws attention to the way the colonized are viewed as children by the colonizers.2 The pais reminds flesh and blood readers that children’s oppression—of varying forms and degrees—is written in the text because, despite the rhetoric that God’s reign is for children (Matt. 19:14), no child is ever named—except Jesus—or is given a voice in the gospel—except Herodias’s daughter, who says what her mother tells her to say. Like the Canaanite woman’s daughter (15:21-28) and the pais, Herodias’s daughter serves only as a medium through which competing discourses present their claims. The girl falls prey to manipulation by her mother and by Herod. We don’t even get to hear the cries of the children who are massacred in 2:18, only their mothers’ cries. Children are the primary victims of Matthew’s “culture of silence.” Look at how the pais is described in Greek: ho pais mou, “the servant who is mine.” That child’s body is under somebody else’s control—whether it’s his father, his owner, or, as I have argued elsewhere, his pedophile. The centurion’s act on the pais’s behalf emphasizes the latter’s marginalization. As far as Matthew is concerned, the pais cannot speak or seek his own healing. Yet, because that child is “paralyzed,” albeit momentarily, he also paralyzes his owner, who must seek help from Jesus. The child also interrupts the goings and the comings of the centurion’s soldiers, since the centurion is not with them to give them orders (Matt. 8:9). Thus, with his paralysis, the child also interrupts the imperial expansion. Throughout the Gospel, characters come and go, borders are crossed: magi from the East come seeking the king of the Jews (2:1-12); Joseph and his family flee into Egypt (2:13-15); Herod sends his death squads to Bethlehem to murder children (2:16-18); Joseph and his family go to Nazareth, from Egypt (2:19-23); Jesus goes to John the baptizer and is led by the Spirit into the wilderness (3:1–4:11); Jesus leaves Nazareth and makes his home in Capernaum (4:12); the centurion comes to Jesus and the latter is convinced of the imperial authority that effects goings and comings, travel to distant lands, and control at a distance (8:5-13). The disciples are systematically prepared for their commissioning (10:1-42); the Canaanite woman comes to Jesus (15:21-28); the heavy-laden come to Jesus (11:28). Jesus eventually sends out his disciples (28:16-20). Everyone in the story moves, except the pais in Matthew 8:5-13. Yes, even for a brief moment, the pais revels in the space her paralysis brings. For about eight short verses in the very long 28 chapters of the Gospel of Matthew, the pais is free of the centurion. The colonized is free of her colonizer.

Notes: 1. The Gospel of Matthew is a narrative discourse constructed against the backdrop of Roman imperial occupation. In other words, it is a story of people in this imperialistic situation. 2. See Leela Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory (New York: 1998), 32.

Reading the Gospel of 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. Third World theologians have argued for decades that 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.” Simply put, the Bible was and is the key tool in the “textual takeover of the non-Western world” (Boehmer). 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 dependent 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). Musa 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. Many interpretations that ignore or even perpetuate John’s imperial rhetoric are products of the hermeneutics of consent. Many 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.” TO BE CONTINUED