The Wheat and the Tares

I’m sure most of us have heard a sermon about this parable. I’m pretty sure most of us heard a metaphorical or allegorical interpretation. I’m also pretty sure that most of us heard an interpretation of this parable that challenged us to be a good wheat.

Incidentally, only the rich could afford wheat bread in Ancient Palestine. The poor ate barley.

I want to focus on the weeds. Masamang damo! Or more appropriately, weeds or tares that look so much like wheat that Palestinians to this day call it “bastard wheat.” You can actually call this narrative the parable of the wheat and the bastard wheat!

The parable is akin to the one about sheep and goats. It's about judgment. God’s judgment. Not ours. There will be time to separate the wheat from the bastard wheat. In God’s time.

Why God? Because wheat and bastard wheat are actually sisters and brothers! God created both. So, God will judge. God will separate. Definitely no one else. Only God.

And since God is a God of surprises, God’s judgment will probably surprise both those who self-righteously think they are the good wheat and those whom the good wheat label as bastard wheat.

Tomorrow

Our youngest turns 21 tomorrow!

I was away when Ian was born. For the first six months of his life I was the voice in the micro cassette recorder his Nanay Gracie kept by his bed, the person on the pictures she posted on the wall by his head, the man who wrote the letters she read to him and his Kuya Lukas everyday.

The first time we met I was so nervous. I was afraid he'd think I was a stranger. I was wrong. When Gracie put him in my arms I sang him the lullaby he's heard me sing on tape. He fell asleep right away.

I will forever be thankful to Gracie, and to Lukas, as well, for making sure Ian knew me before we met each other face to face.

And we've been close ever since. When he was two, he fell in love with "Lay's" potato chips. When he was three he asked me why I hadn't written a song for him. I did one for Lukas when he was a baby. So, I wrote "This Song is about you, O Ian." When he was four, we started watching "To Kill a Mockingbird" almost every day. Like Lukas, Ian learned to read by reading the Bible. And he started writing his own Bible verses! His Lolo Mel used to share these verses at the Church Among the Palms when he was pastor there.

When he started kindergarten, Ian and I started walking to school together every morning. We did this almost daily until he finished high school. 11 years!  Ian calculated that we walked over 400 kilometers!

Lukas left the nest in 2010 when he started teaching at Diliman. He was 20. Gracie worked in South Korea in 2011, then taught in Indonesia from 2012 to 2015. Today, she's the National Coordinator of the UCCP's Christian Education Program and is based in Quezon City.

Ian moved to UP Los Baños in 2013. He's tried very hard to come home every weekend these past few years. And he texts me every single day. Thank you, son! You don't know how much I appreciate what you do.

November 1 is a holiday. It's All Saints Day. Families and clans will be together. Remembering their dearly departed.

Our family will also be together. Gracie is home. And so is Lukas. And, of course, Ian. We'll all be home. Rare these days. Happiness!

But tomorrow is extra special for us. Yes, it's All Saints Day but we'll be celebrating a birthday.

Our youngest turns 21 tomorrow!

The Lost Sheep

Shepherds are very important characters in the Hebrew Bible. Abel was a shepherd. So was Zipporah and her sisters. Moses and David as well. The Prophet Amos. There are more.

Unfortunately in Palestine during the Roman Occupation shepherds were despised and were in the lowest rungs of the social order with dung sweepers. Most of them day laborers, even the Gospel of John portrays them as unworthy hired helpers. The Gospel of Luke, on the other hand, tells us that shepherds were the first who received the good news about the birth of the Messiah. Matthew and Luke have the Parable of the Lost Sheep.

The parable talks about a shepherd. A hired help. The scum of society. He was given the responsibility to care for 100 sheep. And he does take care of each one of them. He searches for one who is lost. He celebrates with friends and neighbors when the lost is found.

He may be poor. He may not be hired tomorrow. But today he was given responsibility for 100 sheep. And 99 do not make 100.

The Parable of the Great Surprise

Sheep and goats is a collective term. Most people cannot tell them apart. Especially sheep and goats in Asia and Africa. But shepherds know.

Blessed and cursed is a collective term. People, especially those who are so sure they are blessed, claim they know how to tell them apart. And they have Bible verses to prove it! Especially the blessed and the cursed in a world where 25000 children starve to death every day; where close to 6 billion people survive on 2 dollars a day; and where some people have 7 Mercedes Benzes because "God loves them so much God does not want them to experience vehicle coding."

But the Shepherd in the parable knows. Who are the real blessed ones and who are not. Not me. Nor you. Only the Shepherd knows how to separate them.

Those who were blessed did not expect to be blessed. And those who were not did not expect to be cursed. Their Bible verses did not help.

Every. One. Was. Surprised!

Don't forget this. Ever. God is a God of surprises!

The Parable of the Sower

The parable is not about soil. Nor is it a multiple choice question. Have you seen soil deciding to be either soil along the path, rocky, thorny or good soil?

The parable is about a sower. Then, like now, farmers were among the poorest of the poor. They had no land to call their own. Life was so hard half of the population was slowly starving to death. Life was so hard the average life expectancy was 28!

So they had to sow where it would take a miracle for the seed to actually grow. Along the path, among rocks, among thorns. And the seed that fall on good soil? The good soil owned by the rich, the powerful, and the privileged. They all grow, bringing a yield of thirty, sixty, a hundred fold. A bountiful harvest indeed. For the rich, the powerful, and the privileged.

Do not forget this. Ever. Parables are subversive speech. Parables got Jesus executed.

The Master’s House

Most of us know it by heart. Using the master's tools to dismantle the master’s house. That's why we learn the ways of the empire. That why we we are experts in imperial mimicry. That's why our institutions, systems, and structures seem to mirror the establishment's.

But we also know that the master's tools will never dismantle the master’s house; that many of his tools force a single truth upon a plural world; and that most of his tools are swords and spears which bring about peace. Peace based on victory in war.

This is why we turn his tools into our tools, beating swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks; why we tell both parables and myths; why we try to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves; why we preach good news to the poor and not to the rich; why we continue to drink from our own wells; and why we struggle with the masses to bring about peace. Peace based on justice.

If the only tool we use is a hammer, everything will look like a nail. This is why we sing, if I had a hammer, if I had a bell, if I had a song...

Difference is our strength. Diversity is our gift. It takes a village to raise a child. It also takes a village to tear down the master’s house.

The Parable of the "Wicked" Tenants

Once upon a time there was an absentee landlord who planted a vineyard. He leased it to tenants and left for another country. When harvest came he sent slaves to collect his share of the produce. The tenants beat one, stoned one, and killed another. The landlord sends more slaves. The tenants treat them the same way as they did the first wave. Finally, the landlord sends his son. The tenants, seeing the son, said to themselves, “This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.” So they seized the son and killed him.

Now, when the absentee landlord comes, what will he do to the tenants? He will put those wretches to a miserable death and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at harvest time.

The rich absentee landlord had every right to do what he did. He owned the land. He probably had the titles to prove that. He had a valid contract with the tenants. They broke the terms of the contract. And worse, killed his heir. The rich landlord had every right to kill each and every one who had a hand in his heir’s death. Everyone! At the end of the parable, the landlord was still rich. He still has slaves. He has new tenants. He has lost a son. But he has avenged his heir by destroying all the “wicked” tenants who had actually tried to seize his land for their own.

The rich, absentee, landlord is not God. The heir is not Jesus. The rich, absentee, landlord is a rich, absentee, landlord. Like the Cojuancos. The Consunjis. The Enriles. The heir is a landlord in training. He will eventually get the land. Then after him, his heir. Anyone who tries to seize the landlord’s property will be eliminated. 

Dispossessed farmers, peasants, tenants beware: if you collectively try to seize lands that belong to the rich, you and your kin will have a miserable death.