THE PARABLE OF THE DEAD BRIDESMAIDS

Many times people read this parable like it were a wake; like someone died; like it's the end of the age. It's a wedding! And for communities then and now, it's about new beginnings; moving forward; a celebration of life. The groom and the bride were very late for their wedding. It happens. Most of the weddings I have attended started late.

The bridesmaids, all ten of them fall asleep waiting. Five were wise. Five were naive--not foolish. The Greek text supports that reading. And all ten girls were, yes, girls, about 12 years old or younger. Five were mature for their age and prepared. Five acted their age and did not. Those who prepared were not prepared to share. Those who did not prepare were afraid of the dark. Many of the wedding guests were shut out.

Given the horrors that is happening to the Palestinian people especially in Gaza, I propose reading this parable like it were a wake. Over ten thousand have been murdered by the Israeli Defense Forces using US-made weapons of mass destruction. It's the end of the age! It's genocide.

The grooms are late because they are dead. So are the brides. And all the bridesmaids who were waiting? Those young girls--12 years old or younger, with their names written on their arms and legs--are also dead! Mature, naive, prepared, unprepared? Those bombs that drop morning, noon, and night have only one purpose: death and destruction. And those who miraculously escape the bombs are shot.

No more time for births. Nor weddings. Nor wakes. Nor burials. Because unless a ceasefire is declared now, EVERY.ONE.IN. GAZA.WILL.BE.DEAD! And that is what the perpetrators want. Do know that this ethnic cleansing in Palestine is not new-- it began way before 1948!

*PHOTO: (ALJAZEERA) The body of a Palestinian child lies at the al-Shifa Hospital after an Israeli air strike in Gaza City on October 9 2023 [Mohammed Saber/EPA]

ANCIENT ISRAELITES, BIBLICAL ISRAELITES, AND THE STATE OF ISRAEL

The Bible is quite possibly the most influential body of literature from Antiquity. It is an ancient library written in a land--interchangeably called Canaan, Palestine, and Israel - - that has been under imperial rule or occupation for millenia. Its collection of myths, legends, stories, parables, poetry, oracles, and other literary types present a wide gamut of discourses generated in the midst of empire. From indifference to apathy, from collaboration to passive resistance, from reform to revolution. 

The Bible paints a future where swords will be beaten into ploughshares. The same Bible also paints a vision where ploughshares will be turned into swords.

The Bible, despite its pluriformity and multivocality, is a literary production of the privileged and the learned. Archeology and its allied disciplines provide us a much bigger picture. 

Archeology has shown us that, like many of its neighboring peoples, the Ancient Israelites were polytheistic and were descendants of the Canaanites. They worshipped El, Yahweh, Asherah, and other deities. Archeology thus helps us better understand the contexts that produced the texts that many now call sacred. 

Archeology and its allied disciplines help us delineate between the Ancient Israelites and the Biblical Israelites. Both are at least 2000 years old!

Now, most Christians believe that the Bible is the literal word of God. Unfortunately, these same Christians do not read the Bible!

Many literalists weaponize the Bible, like Trump and his ilk, and have no qualms about its use to support and justify settler colonialism. Many Bible-believing Christians feel no remorse over the genocides committed against the First Peoples of the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, Liberia, and many more, as long as there are prooftexts that explain such crimes as part of carrying out God's great commission. 

Many Bible-believing Filipinos don't even know about the US-sponsored settler colonialism perpetrated against the indigenous peoples of Mindanao, the "Land of Promise" (almost the same time it was being carried out in the "Promised Land"). 

Now, these three remain: Ancient Israelites, Biblical Israelites, and the State of Israel. The first two are intertwined. The last has no connection to either. 

Friends, the State of Israel, created in 1948, is an imperial project. This historically-verifiable statement of fact requires no special pleading. Its decades-long, US-sponsored systematic, racist, violent, and dehumanizing erasure of the Palestinian People needs to stop now. 

It needs to stop now!

#ChooseJustice

#FreePalestine

#Endtheoccupation

#CeaseFireNow

AND PHARISEES

The Bible is not a book. It is a library with 66 books if you're Protestant, 73 if you're Roman Catholic, 81 if you're Orthodox, and 24 if you're a Jew. Those 24 books (or scrolls) which make up the Hebrew Bible was Jesus's library. Christians have appropriated the Hebrew Bible, turned the 24 books into 39, and call it Old Testament. The New Testament is 27 diverse interpretations of Jesus and what it means to follow him.

Sunday's lection, from Matthew 23. 1-12 with its shorter parallels in Mark and Luke, clearly illustrates this diversity in Scripture. Whose voice are we hearing? The Historical Jesus of the 30's, Mark's Jesus of the 70's, or Matthew's Jesus of the 90's? The synoptics points out the hypocrisy of the teachers of the law or the scribes. Matthew's version adds "and pharisees."

That's how we know that Matthew's extended discourse addresses the growing conflict between the Jews and the Christians in the 90s. After the Roman Jewish War of the early 70s that destroyed the temple in Jerusalem, two Jewish communities began to take different yet parallel paths. One was Rabbinic Judaism, with its synagogues, grounded on the written and oral Torah. The other group was made of Jews who believed that the Messiah has arrived and whose community eventually expanded to include the uncircumcised.

This explains the several "and pharisees" in the passage. In other words, Matthew was saying, if Jesus were here he would be saying all these things against these pharisees.

We do something similar all the time. We try to make Jesus address our contemporary situations. If Jesus were here, what would Jesus do? If Jesus were here, would he support Netanyahu and the IDF? If Jesus were here, would he not be in Gaza among the Palestinians right now? If Jesus were here, would you be on the same side? We have actually pushed this appropriation too far by proclaiming JESUS IS THE ANSWER to every question.

Dear friends, if Jesus were here and he was the answer, he'd probably be executed within a year because he would not be the answer most of us want him to be.

*art, "Christ Teaches Humility" by Robert Scott Lauder (1803-1869), from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives,

THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT

Sunday's lection from Matthew 22 is also found in Mark 12 and Luke 10. Most historians think that Mark's is the original version. One of the scribes asks Jesus about the greatest commandment, possibly expecting him to quote one from the Ten Commandments in Exodus. Jesus responds with the "Shema" from Deuteronomy. 

The answer Jesus gives according to the passage is one some of us don't want to hear. The Hebrew word "shema" means to hear, to do, to act. The question is: How do we love God? The answer we don't want to hear: By loving our neighbor.

Take note of the "this" (singular) in Jesus's exchange with the scribe (in the Markan version) and the lawyer (in the Lukan version). The scribe says to Jesus, "THIS is much more important..." Jesus says to the lawyer, "do THIS and you will live." Loving God is loving our neighbor. THIS is more important than burnt offerings and sacrifices. Jesus observes that the scribe is not far from the Kingdom of God. 

To love God is to feed the hungry, to offer drink to the thirsty, to clothe the naked, to visit the prisoners, to care for the sick, to welcome the stranger. 

To justify 75 years of violent and oppressive occupation of Palestine as a "God-given right", to redtag faith communities who serve the most vulnerable, to dispossess and disenfranchise indigenous peoples of their ancestral lands and ethnic identity, and to feed the insatiable greed for wealth and power while millions are dying and tens of millions find themselves barely surviving from one day to the next is the complete opposite of loving God. 

Finally, the "loving" in loving our neighbor is "agape." Agape is not based on emotions. (That is "eros." ) Nor is it based on relations. (That is "filia.") It is and will always be based on decisions. Every moment of our lives, we decide for the other. We choose the least, the last, and the left out. We choose to follow Christ, to love our neighbor, and to serve the people! 

We choose and we act.

*art, "Love for One's Neighbor," (detail from a choir screen, National Museum of Scotland), from vanderbilt divinity library digital archives. 

WHOSE IMAGE, WHOSE TITLE?

Coin collectors highly value the denarius in the photo. It dates back to the time of Jesus. Most historians think that the denarius the Pharisees and Herodians showed Jesus as described in Sunday's lection most likely comes from the same series. Most of us know the dilemma Jesus faced when he was asked the question abot paying taxes to Caesar. On one hand, the Pharisees (who resisted Roman Occupation) probably expected him to say NO. On the other hand, the Herodians (who supported the Roman supported Herodian dynasty) probably expected him to say YES. 

Jesus tells them to show him the coin for the poll tax, the denarius, and asks, "Whose image is this, and whose title?"  

They answer, "The emperor's."

One side of the coin has the image of the emperor and reads, "Tiberius Caesar, son of the Divine Augustus" while the other side reads, "High or Chief Priest." That coin, my friends, was an affront to Israelites. It violated at least two of the Ten Commandments. (Let us not forget that the titles "Son of God" and "High Priest" were only ascribed to Jesus many years, actually decades, later. They were originally ascribed to the emperor. )

Then Jesus says, "Give back therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's."

Render unto Caesar what he owns. What bears his image. His property.

But never, ever, render unto Caesar what he does not own: people. People are not property. People are not commodities. 

But most importantly, do you know why God despises graven images and false titles, like what that coin symbolized? 

Because God has already created God's image. 

God already has a title for them: God's sons and daughters. 

People. Everyone! Especially those we think are not children of God. 

KINGS, WEDDINGS, AND GAZA

Why do we identify the King in Sunday's parable with God? Or the masters, fathers, and landlords in Jesus's other parables?

The king is a king. He is on top of an intricate system of honor and shame, patronage, property, and privilege. He is rich. He is powerful. He hosts a banquet. His invite is turned down. He is shamed. He gets back at those who shamed him. He has them killed and burns down their city.

Then he gathers the dregs of society to his banquet. He finds one of the dregs not wearing the wedding robe, which the King obviously provided--where do you expect the dregs of society to get clothes for a royal wedding?

The King is a King. He is rich. He is powerful. He is benevolent, but he has been shamed--again! He has his minions bind the man, hand and foot, and thrown out to where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

This is how many among us, who proudly call ourselves God's People and God's Chosen, tragically imagine God and God's Kingdom. This is why so many among us support the "burnings and the killings" in Gaza because God's People and God's Chosen have been shamed.

P.S. My friends, there is no war in the Holy Land. The State of Israel has an army, a navy, an air force, 90 nuclear warheads, and the US Government! Palestinians have none of these. There is no war in the Holy Land. What is there is Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian Territories and the largest open-air prison on earth, Gaza.

*art, "The Marriage Feast" by (from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives).

THE PARABLE OF THE "WICKED" TENANTS

Once upon a time there was a rich 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 slave. 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 had the titles to prove it. 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 Villars. The heir is a landlord in training. Like the heirs of the Cojuancos, the Consunjis, the Enriles, the Villars. The heir will eventually get the land. Then after him, his heir. Anyone who tries to seize the landlord’s property will have a miserable death. 

Don't forget this fact--ever. One-third of the world's wealth is inherited wealth. There are heirs who are born to wealth, who will never work one second in their entire lives, and who will die wealthier. 

Then there are the millions who live from one day to the next. Those whose lives are tied to the land yet are dispossessed, dislocated, and disenfranchised. Farmers, peasants, tenants beware: if you organize and collectively try to seize lands that belong to the rich by whatever means, you and your kin will have a miserable death. 

Like each and every one of the tenants who was killed in the parable. 

https://www.esquiremag.ph/long-reads/features/lupang-ramos-agrarian-reform-a2212-20190315-lfrm2