RICH FOOLS

I read somewhere that Rockefeller was asked how much money would satisfy him. His answer? More. In the part of the Philippines where I reside, there are vast tracts of land, thousands of hectares, owned by one family. Ibon Foundation has reported that the net worth of the richest Filipinos rose during the pandemic as millions faced joblessness, homelessness, and hopelessness.

Historians tell us that in First Century Palestine, practically all the land was either owned or controlled by the ruling elite: the one percent. And, yes, this group included the religious leaders.

In Sunday's parable, the rich man had a problem. His harvest was so plentiful his barns were not enough to contain them. His solution? Bring down his old barns and build bigger ones. Half of the population then was slowly starving to death. How about sharing his over-abundance? Never crossed his mind.

God calls him a fool and strikes him dead that night. Lesson? We should stop associating wealth and wisdom. God does not.

Scientists tell us that 666 billion dollars can address the world's biggest problems: poverty, hunger, illiteracy, health and sanitation. And Oxfam reports that one-seventh of last year's income of the world's richest can address all these. Tragically, the world spends more and more and more each year on weapons of mass destruction. Last year, close to two trillion dollars were spent on weapons!

How about sharing their over-abundance? How about sharing the fabled "Marcos Gold" now to address the devastation to lives, livelihood, and infrastructure from the magnitude 7.3 earthquake that hit the Ilocos and Cordillera Regions yesterday? Or just return billions of ill-gotten wealth to the toiling Filipino masses? Never even crosses their minds.

Tragically-- like what happened yesterday, and the days before, and what will happen tomorrow-- about 25,000 children from the poorest countries, aged 5 and younger, will die from starvation today.

Warning to rich fools: unless you change, God will strike you dead. Probably tonight.

#IAmWithJesus

#25percentrevolution

#EndTheCultureOfImpunity

#FreePalestine

#JusticeForMyanmar

#JusticeForNewBataan5

#ReadingTheParablesOfJesusInsideAJeepney

*image from Crosswalk (What Can We Learn from the Parable of the Rich Fool?), 6 July 2021.

THE FRIEND AT MIDNIGHT

 

Sunday's parable, like the one about the widow and the judge, is not about prayer.

It is midnight. Everyone, humans and animals, are indoors and asleep. A neighbor, a friend, gets a surprise visitor on a journey. Since everyone in the peasant village shares an outdoor oven, your friend knows you still have fresh barley loaves. He bangs on your door. Everyone in your house wakes up. Humans and animals. Probably everyone else in the village as well. He asks for bread. The bread you saved for your family. He imposes on your friendship in order to feed his visitor: a complete stranger to you. He shamelessly takes advantage of your friendship in order to fulfill everyone's obligation to welcome strangers. With a simple meal.

You respond. Giving him the three loaves he asked for and, actually, more than he asked for. And you don't do it because of your friendship. You do it because he would have done the same thing for you.

This is not a parable about prayer. It is a story behind a simple meal prepared to welcome a stranger in a peasant village. To this day, each and every meal that is offered to welcome a stranger in villages, in barrios, in far-flung sitios has a story to tell. This parable happens every single day. You know this. I know this.

This is why we have hope.

#IAMWITHJESUS

#25percentrevolution

#JusticeForMyanmar

#FreePalestine

#JusticeForNewBataan5

#readingtheparablesofjesusinsideajeepney

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

MARTHA AND MARY

Sunday's gospel reading is about a warm welcome and one very simple meal.

I would argue that we can find historical memory in the Lukan passage. Martha and Mary’s home was a house church, open to everyone: a sanctuary. Martha and Mary were involved in the diakonia of the open table. There are scholars who argue that the sisters were once wealthy, and the lack of servants in the narrative and Martha doing all the preparations by herself, showed that they had followed what Jesus required from the rich.

Jesus’s admonition to her that “there is need for only one” is a reminder to us that, one dish was enough, “tama na ang isang ulam,” especially for the poorest of the poor who were most welcome in these house churches. Maybe Martha, so used to feasts and banquets, momentarily forgot that--for those whose only hope is God-- there is need for only one.

That Jesus is referred to as LORD three times in the passage reminds us of the Basileia movement’s most fundamental, subversive affirmation: JESUS IS LORD AND NOT CAESAR! And to proclaim that Jesus is Lord is to proclaim the good news for the poor.

What about Mary choosing the better part? But what is the better part? Martha and Mary’s sanctuary was a home, not a cathedral most churches today want their worship places to be. Jesus admonished Martha that the open table needed just one dish for everyone, not a feast or a banquet most of us believe are expressions of hospitality, prosperity, and fullness today. And he praised Mary for focusing on the guest: the neighbor. [In the Lukan narrtive, the neighbor includes strangers and enemies!]

And because most of us are not poor, we forget that for millions of people in the world who gargle water for breakfast, drink hot water for lunch, and cry themselves to sleep for supper, a welcoming home and a simple meal is God’s shalom!

#IAmWithJesus
#25percentrevolution
#JusticeForMyanmar
#FreePalestine
#JusticeForNewBataan5
#EndTheCultureOfImpunity

*art, "Martha and Mary," JESUS MAFA, 1973 (from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives).

THE "BAD" SAMARITAN

Yes, we love the parable. It is one of the two favorites among Christians: the other being the Prodigal Son.

We identify with the Samaritan. We name our institutions after him. I know of a Good Samaritan Hospital, a Good Samaritan Church, and a Good Samaritan Multi Purpose Credit Cooperative. But before we continue patting each other's backs and celebrating, let us remember what Samaritan meant during Jesus’s time.

There were at least three groups of people that were most hated and despised during Jesus’s time. Centurions, tax collectors, and Samaritans. These were the bad guys. Jesus's enemies pejoratively call him a Samaritan.

Priests and Levites were the good guys. They were models of society in word and deed. They were expected to help the wounded, their fellow Jew, on that "bloody way" connecting Jerusalem to Jericho. But they did not.

The bad guy did. Ironically, to this day, the bad guys still do. They continue to help the wounded, rescue the dying, save the half-dead. But we don't call them Samaritans anymore. We call ourselves that now. We even added a qualifier, the "Good" Samaritan.

But, tragically, we still do not stop and help. We have even come up with the best excuses for our inaction, apathy, and indifference: especially if the wounded is Indigenous, Black, Palestinian, Rohingya, LGBTI+, PLHA, communist, or, simply, different from us.

The bad guys do not care about labels. They are red-tagged, vilified, harassed, and demonized. Yet, they continue helping the wounded along the world's bloody ways.

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

I HAVE DECIDED TO FOLLOW JESUS

Sunday's lection is about choices. More importantly, it is about choosing God’s Kingdom over the Kingdom of Rome. It is--at its most fundamental--about taking sides with those whose only hope is God and rejecting Pax Romana, its pater familias, its peace based on war, its systems of patronage.

Foxes having holes and birds having nests allude to the imperial family and its domain-- the basic hierarchical unit of society--that provided food, clothing, shelter, safety, security, and honor. Those who follow the "homeless" Son of Man are members of a different oikos, God’s oikos where widows, orphans, and strangers are the most privileged and where even the most unwelcome is always welcome. Yes, even beggars.

Burial rites are again part of the rituals and obligations of the imperial family. Going and proclaiming good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, God's jubilee of justice, takes priority.

Anyone who has put a hand to the plow knows that looking back is unacceptable. The one who has decided to become a farmer in the Kingdom of God but yearns to go back to farming for the Kingdom of Rome, the complete opposite direction, is not fit to follow Jesus.

The song we learned in Sunday School is true. There is no turning back.

Those who think that following Jesus of Nazareth is easy, rewarding, and will bring us closer to heaven are following the wrong Jesus.


#25percentrevolution
#JusticeForMyanmar
#JusticeForNewBataan5
#FreePalestine
#EndTheCultureOfImpunity
#IAmWithJesus

*art, "Homeless Jesus," sculpture by Timothy Schamlz (at King's University College, Ontario), image from vanderbilt divinity library digital archives. 

FATHER'S DAY

Sunday is Father's Day.

We learned early in school that the family is the basic unit of society. The familia, with the father as its head, go back to the Ancient Romans. The father had absolute power over everyone in his family. Absolute meant exactly that: the father can disown, sell, even kill his children. For many fathers in antiquity, children were property. Possessions.

For the Ancient Romans, the emperor was the father of all fathers. For the emperor, occupied peoples and nations were property. Possessions.

Sunday's lection from Luke (which is also found in Mark and Matthew) possibly echoes the Roman army's massacre of Jewish rebels in Gerasa by Vespacian's general, Lucius Annius, around 67 CE. The "occupying forces" who possessed the Gerasene in the narrative is named Legion (which was the largest military unit of the Roman Army).

Jesus's exorcism reminds us, especially those among us who are fathers, that people are not property nor posessions. Especially not our children. And if we think they are, then we need an exorcism.

Sunday is Father's Day. It can also be Exorcism Day.

#EndTheCultureOfImpunity
#JusticeForNewBataan5
#JusticeForMyanmar
#FreePalestine
#25percentrevolution

*art, "Jesus, the Gerasene, and the Unclean Spirits," James Tissot, Brooklyn Museum (available at vanderbilt divinity library digital archives).

JUNE 12TH

June 12th is Trinity Sunday and many homilies will focus on explaining a mystery. (Of course, a lot of us know that this "mystery" was discussed, debated, formulated, and eventually enforced around the 4th century by privileged, propertied, and powerful Christian men.)

Many of us grew up with these centuries-old doctrines that made our heads hurt. Many of us grew up with doctrines that did not make sense, that created walls instead of bridges, that separated peoples instead of bringing them together, that made our faiths, our beliefs, our skin color, our sexual orientation, our class, our way of life sinful, less human, and, outright wrong!

There are still so many people who are convinced that the hardships they face every single day are tests and trials from God. There are more who believe that God has a grand plan just waiting to be disclosed in the future, if not on earth then in the hereafter. There are those, quoting scripture no less, who sincerely proclaim that every elected official, including tyrants, dictators, and children of tyrants and dictators, are God's chosen.

Then there are those who ask, in the midst of so much senseless suffering, sickness, hunger, poverty, greed, death, and destruction, how God chooses whom God heals, rescues, and saves.

June 12th is Trinity Sunday and many homilies will focus on explaining a mystery. June 12th is also Independence Day in the Philippines. Maybe some homilies will focus on breaking free.

#25percentrevolution
#ChooseJustice
#EndTheCultureOfImpunity
#IAmWithJesus
#JusticeForMyanmar
#JusticeForNewBataan5
#FreePalestine

*art, "Trinity," Kelly Latimore, 2016 (available at the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives)