THE PARABLE OF THE FIG TREE

For three years the owner of the Fig tree has waited. For three years he longed for one thing, fruit from his tree. Three years pass and there were none. So he orders his gardener to chop it down. Waste of good soil. His gardener pleads, "Give it another year. I will dig around it and put manure." Give it another year.

We call them people with "green thumbs." People who love plants. People who sing and talk to them like they were people. People like the gardener who pleads, "Give it another year." People who know that some Fig trees take up to six years to bear fruit. People who celebrate the inter-connectedness of all life. People who believe in second chances for everyone and everything. People who know the magic properties of manure.

Then there are people who treat everyone and everything as property, as commodity, as disposable. And every single day they
acquire square kilometers of prime agricultural land, ancestral domain, and public lands for profit. There's a term for this insatiable greed: development aggression.

And they chop down everything and everyone blocking their way. Not just Fig trees.

#JusticeForNewBataan5
#IAmWithJesus
#EndTheCultureOfImpunity
#StopTheKillingsPH
#FreePalestine
#JusticeForMyanmar
#NoToMarcosDuterte2022

*image from "what we can learn from the parable of the fig tree" available online at crosswalk.

GOD SPEAKS

Sunday's lection is on the Transfiguration again after two weeks. This time around let us focus on Moses and Elijah, the two key figures in Ancient Israelite faith traditions.

My Jewish teachers taught me that one of the best ways to understand the Hebrew Bible, especially the Law (Genesis to Deuteronomy) and the Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve [Hosea to Malachi]) is to focus on who speaks for God in these traditions.

In the Law, God speaks through Moses. In the Prophets, God speaks through Elijah, Elisha, Deborrah, and the rest of the prophets. For Sunday's lection, God tells Peter, James, and John to listen to Jesus. God speaks through Jesus.

Dear Friends, please take note. None of these spokespersons of the Most High are Christian! Not one! Those of us who take pride in calling ourselves Christian should stop thinking that we have exclusive access to God.

God speaks through anyone God chooses. God especially speaks through those whose lives proclaim good news to the poor, freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, liberation for the oppressed, and God's Jubilee of justice!

God speaks through Teacher Chad and Teacher Jurain!

#JusticeForNewBataan5
#StopTheKillingsPH
#FreePalestine
#JusticeForMyanmar
#NoToMarcosDuterte2022
#IAmWithJesus

*art, "The Transfiguration," JESUS MAFA, 1973 (from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives).

FORTY DAYS WITH SATAN

Sunday's lection from Luke is also found in Mark and Matthew. The Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness in Mark. In Luke and Matthew, the Spirit leads Jesus. Being driven and being led are very different descriptions. The former conjures an image of Jesus going with hesitation, even reluctance. The latter paints a picture of readiness and willingness.

Wilderness conjures up a lot of ambivalent images for us who study scripture. God appeared to a hardheaded Moses through the burning bush in the wilderness. The Israelites wandered almost aimlessly in the wilderness for decades. Many of them died there, including Moses. John the Baptist was a "voice of one calling in the wilderness." The wilderness does not seem like a very hospitable place. Yet, God's surprises abound in the wilderness!

And then there is the number 40, a long time in scripture. It rained 40 days and nights during the time of Noah. Forty years separated the crossing of the Red Sea and the crossing of the Jordan River. Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness. Matthew and Luke add that he fasted. This narrative is the basis for the 40 days of Lent.

Most of us grew up imagining that Jesus was alone in the wilderness during those 40 days. He was not. Jesus had company: wild beasts, angels, and Satan. God's surprises do abound in the wilderness!

My friends, let us never forget. Satan did not betray Jesus. Judas did. Satan did not deny Jesus. Peter did. Satan did not plot to arrest and kill Jesus in secret. The chief priests and scribes did. Satan did not abduct, torture, and murder Jesus. The Romans did.

Satan is also not behind the Anti-Terror Law, the War on the Poor, the War on Drugs, the culture of impunity that pervades our land, the relentless red-tagging of peace activists, or the recent abduction and murder of Teachers Chad and Jurain and the rest of the Bataan 5. We all know who are responsible and should be held accountable for all these.

Lent began last Wednesday. Who among us wants to spend 40 days in the wilderness with Satan? Who among us is ready to respond to the challenges Satan asked Jesus? If we have access to resources, is feeding the hungry enough? If we have glory and authority, for whom will we use these for? If we had angels to command, who will we order them to save and protect?

Who among us is ready to respond to one of the key challenges in the Gospels: if we are rich, are we ready to sell everything we have, give the proceeds to the poor, and follow Jesus?

Maybe we should ask these questions to everyone running for public office.

#IAmWithJesus
#Lent2022
#EndTheCultureOfImpunity
#JusticeForNewBataan5
#StopTheKillingsPH
#FreePalestine
#JusticeForMyanmar
#NoToMarcosDuterte2022
#ChooseJustice

*art, "Jesus is Tempted," (JESUS MAFA) from Vanderbilt Divinity Library digital archives
 

THE TRANSFIGURATION

We love to call this Sunday’s lection as the Transfiguration. It is found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. I like to call it the Metamorphosis.

Moses, Elijah, and Jesus all experience mountain-top encounters with God. All three went through very trying and challenging times in their lives and their encounter with God enabled them to complete the tasks that God called them to do. The three went up caterpillars; they came down butterflies. Metamorphosis.

But not everyone who encounters God comes back as a butterfly. Take Peter. In the mountain, Peter experienced something so special, so unique that we expected him to come out as a butterfly. He does not. He opposes Jesus’s journey to Jerusalem. He eventually denies Jesus. Three times!

Everyone who encounters God in God’s mountain needs to come down. When Moses came down, he led in the birthing of a people whose love for Yahweh was expressed in love for neighbor, especially the poor, the orphans, the widows, and the strangers. When Elijah came down, he continued the struggle against Israel’s oppressive kings and began a prophetic tradition committed to justice that ended with John the Baptizer. When Jesus came down, he followed the path that led to Jerusalem, to his execution in the hands of the Romans, and, eventually, to the Empty Tomb!

To believe in metamorphosis is to believe in God's power to change the world, to transform caterpillars into butterflies, and to, eventually, remold even Peter!

To believe in metamorphosis is to believe that goodness will triumph over evil, that hope is stronger than despair, that faith conquers fear, that love is always greater than indifference, and that life will always, always, conquer death!

#IAmWithJesus
#StopTheKillingsPH
#NeverAgainNeverForget
#NoToMarcosDuterte2022
#FreePalestine
#JusticeForMyanmar

*art, "The Transfiguration," JESUS MAFA, 1973 (from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives).

LOVE YOUR ENEMIES

 

Historical Jesus scholars say that "love your enemies" is an authentic Jesus saying. Even Jewish scholars agree that these statements are unique to this particular first century Jewish rabbi.

Sunday's lection is Luke's version of the aphorism. It is also found in Matthew. New Testament scholars argue that material shared by Matthew and Luke come from a much earlier tradition ("Q" for quelle [German] or source).

This aphorism represents Jesus’s most powerful challenge* to empire's divide-and-conquer strategy. What is the worst situation of enmity between persons or peoples? Their being enemies. Jesus’s call to "love your enemies” subverts enmity.

In the gospel, we have “enemies who love,” who actually serve the least, who actually take the side of those whose only hope is God, who completely subvert expectations. There is Zacchaeus, the rich, chief tax collector who gives back to the poor and pays back four times everyone he had defrauded. There is the centurion, who not only loved the Jewish people and built their synagogue, but loved his slave dearly and sought help from the Jewish community when the latter was ill and close to death. Then, of course, we have the Samaritan who was a neighbor to the Jew who fell into the hands of robbers.

Loving our enemies is very hard. It is not based on emotions nor on relations. Loving our enemies requires a decision. It is agape. The One who calls us every day to follow him, chose to love his enemies to the very end.

#IAmWithJesus
#ChooseJustice
#FreePalestine
#JusticeForMyanmar
#StopTheKillingsPH
#NoToMarcosDuterte2022

+art, "Hands, All Together," Avandale Patillo United Methodist Church, 2007 (from vanderbilt divinity library digital archives).

*The second-most powerful challenge to divide-and-conquer strategies is "Whoever is not against us is for us." But that is a story for another day.

BLESSED ARE THE POOR

The Greek word we translate as "blessed" is makarioi. Makarioi refers to those whom God favors. It is an affirmation that God takes sides; that God plays favorites. And God’s favorites are the last, the least, the lost, and the left out. A beatitude, or declaration of God's favor, is makarismos. We transliterate beatitudes as makarisms. Sunday's lection is the Lukan version. Most of us know Mathew's version.

Blessed are you who are poor...

The Greek word for poor is ptochos, people who are destitute, people who are so poor that begging and stealing become options for them to survive. They are drowning in misery.

One way to become destitute in the first century was to lose land and one's place in their family. For most people, land was not just property; land was life. Family identity was exceptionally important in the ancient world. People were known as the "son of" or "daughter of" their father, or mother, or clan. War, slavery, and indebtedness left people widows and orphans and strangers. War, slavery, and indebtedness left people destitute, displaced, and dispossessed.

The Hebrew Bible, over and over and over, challenges the Israelites to care for widows, orphans, and strangers. War, slavery, and indebtedness were all part of the structures and systems of evil that made the rich richer and the poor miserable.

During the time of Jesus, the 1% owned and controlled the land and practically everything else. Half of the population was slowly starving to death. Life expectancy was 28 years.

When the gospel of Luke talks about the poor, it does not mean the rich who are spiritually poor. It does not include the wealthy who live in poor relationships nor the powerful who feel poor. It does not include the rich who think they are poor compared to other rich people.

The poor that Luke talks about are people who have to beg God in prayer to give them today the food they need because that's how they get to tomorrow.

There are people who love to pray this prayer while they have cupboards--or even storehouses--of food enough for a week, a month, a year, or longer. These people are not poor.

#ChooseJustice

#IAmWithJesus

#JunkTerrorLawNow

#StopTheKillingsPH

#FreePalestine

#JusticeForMyanmar

#NoToMarcosDuterte2022

*art, "The Sermon on the Mount," JESUS MAFA (from the vanderbilt diviniyt library digital archives). 

FISHING FOR PEOPLE

When we were growing up we used to sing a song in Sunday School that went, "I will make you fishers of men, fishers of men, fishers of men. I will make you fishers of men if you follow me."

Life during the time of Jesus was extremely difficult. Historians paint a Roman-occupied Palestine where the average life expectancy was under 30, the majority was suffocating in debt, and half of the population was slowly starving to death.

At the bottom of the social structure were farmers and fisherfolk. Nothing has changed. Farmers and fisherfolk remain at the bottom of the social structure today. Approximately 1.5 million families in the Philippines are fisherfolk. The poorest two out of every five poor people in the country are fisherfolk.

In Sunday's lection Jesus calls fisherfolk to follow him in order to fish for people. A carpenter calls fisherfolk to fish. Jesus does not call anyone to worship him. Or to believe in him. Or to accept him as their Personal Savior and Lord. Or even to be a carpenter. Jesus calls us to follow him. To do what? To fish for people.

Many ancient peoples were afraid of the seas. They feared drowning; they feared the turbulent waves; they feared the ancient, eldritch leviathans they imagined lurked beneath the surface. But Jesus does not call us to fish people out of their fear of the deep.

During Jesus's time, the Empire owned and controlled the seas and the fishing industry! Taxes were imposed on fishing, on boats, on nets, on fishing areas, on everything! In our lection, Simon tells Jesus that they were fishing all night and caught nothing.

Jesus's call to fish for people is a call for us to follow him in taking out people from systems and structures that oppress, that dehumanize, that subjugate, that murder.

And who are the people who experience the evil of these systems and structures every single moment of their lives? Fisherfolk. Genuine transformation always comes from below, from among those at greatest risk of drowning, from among those whose only hope is God. The call has not changed.

People, especially the most vulnerable, are drowning in imperial waters. And the situation has gone from bad to worse with COVID-19. Jesus is calling us right now to follow him and fish for people.

#IAmWithJesus

#EndTheCultureOfImpunity

#ChooseJustice

#StopTheKillingsPH

#FreePalestine

#JusticeForMyanmar

*image, "Fishing and Fishermen," Life in the Holy Land (www.lifeintheholyland.com/fishing_fishermen