30 YEARS OF READING THE BIBLE INSIDE A JEEPNEY

Below is a short homily on Matthew 8:5–13, deliberately centered on the “pais”, the centurion’s slave, and shaped by Jeepney Hermeneutics*—that is, reading the text from below, from inside crowded, precarious spaces where power is felt most sharply and often most painfully.

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“The One Who Never Speaks”: 

A Very Short Homily on Matthew 8:5–13

If we read Matthew 8 inside a jeepney, our attention shifts.

Half of the time we focus on Jesus. The other half we focus on the centurion—his humility, his faith, his surprising trust in Jesus. But reading inside the jeepney teaches us to ask: Who is missing? Whose voice is not heard? Who is carried by the story but never allowed to speak?

And here, it is the slave. The slave never asks to be healed. The slave never approaches Jesus. The slave never speaks a word.

Inside empires, slaves do not speak. They are spoken about. Objectified. Commodified. 

This slave is sick, and sickness inside empire is dangerous. A sick slave is expendable. Yet the text tells us the slave is “valued”—not because he is free, not because he has rights, but because he is useful. Even compassion, here, is filtered through power.

I have argued for three decades now that reading the Bible inside a jeepney challenges us to read the Bible from the places where bodies are packed tight, where people are carried but not noticed, where survival depends on someone else’s decision. The jeepney is full of people like this slave—workers whose labor matters more than their names, whose pain must wait, whose healing depends on permission. And yet—this is where grace interrupts.

Jesus never meets the slave. Jesus never inspects the body. Jesus never demands proof. From a distance, Jesus speaks life.

This matters. Because distance is often how power operates. But here, distance becomes the space where healing happens without domination, without control, without spectacle. The slave is healed not because empire commands it, but because compassion crosses boundaries empire created.

Inside the jeepney, this sounds like good news. It is good news for the workers who cannot leave the job to seek help. Good news for the sick who cannot afford to be visible. Good news for those whose healing must happen quietly, offstage, without recognition.

When Jesus praises the centurion’s faith, it is not faith in authority—it is faith that releases control. The centurion does not insist on presence. He does not demand inspection. He trusts that life does not need to pass through empire’s checkpoints to arrive. And the slave—the one who never speaks—lives.

So today, the Gospel asks us: Who in our world is being healed quietly, without credit?  Who is carried by decisions made far away?

And are we willing to trust a God who heals from below, from the margins, from inside the jeepney?

Because the reign of God often arrives first to those who never get a seat, to those who never get to speak, to those who are too weak to even sit, —and yet are still carried home, are still heard, are still touched by compassion that transgresses both distance and boundaries.

Amen.

+Art by Zee-m Tiempo

*Thirty years ago, eight individuals affirmed and supported my proposal.  It is my privilege to name them here. Melinda Grace Aoanan, Melanio Aoanan, Elizabeth Gravador-Dominguez, Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza, Katharine Sakenfeld, Daniel Patte, Renate Rose, and Alberto P. Velunta Jr.

SIT, DRINK, AND TALK

In Sunday's Gospel Reading from John 4, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman—someone doubly marginalized: ethnically suspect, religiously “other,” and socially vulnerable. Many readings treat her as the first missionary and this encounter as an evangelistic crusade template. I see two empire-wounded people meeting at a well, both shaped by histories larger than themselves. 

I love this narrative. It is the longest pericope in the gospels where Jesus is in conversation with another person. This might be the one moment in the Gospels that Jesus meets his match. They speak as equals. They talk about their own faith traditions. They talk about their differences. Both are truthful. And they talk about their people's hopes. Not one moment do they treat each other as estranged. 

The narrative challenges us to recognize ourselves not as neutral observers but as active conversation partners. Like the woman at the well, we bring our histories into the encounter. And Jesus meets us there—not demanding sameness, but celebrating difference as divine gift. 

My friends, I love this narrative. I pray you do too. God's miracles happen when people take time to sit, drink, and talk. 

P.S. Let us not forget the that a well was the setting for the unions of Rebekah and Isaac, Rachel and Jacob, and Zipporah and Moses. 

P. S. S. Today, close to one billion women, many of whom are girls, spend hours each day just fetching safe water. I've always argued that the Samaritan woman was in a similar situation. 

*art, "Jesus’s and the Samaritan Woman," JESUS MAFA, Cameroon 1973, from the Vanderbilt Divinity Library digital archive.

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BEAT PLOWSHARES INTO SWORDS (Reading Joel 3:10 inside a Jeepney)

 

The Prophet Joel’s words—“Beat your plowshares into swords”—sound strange to those of us trained to work for peace. We know the more famous reversal: beat swords into plowshares found in Isaiah 2:4 and Micah 4:3. But Joel speaks to a people who have been trampled, displaced, and humiliated by invading powers. One empire after another. This is not a call to aggression. It is a cry from the margins; a scream from under the rubble: “The little ones must no longer be crushed.”

My friends, for thirty years I have invited you to read the Bible like we ride a jeepney: close to the bodies of the masses, alert to the stories of strangers beside us, aware that many roads we travel are unpaved and uneven, and always resisting the routes dictated by empire.

From the jeepney, Joel 3:10 is not a divine command to wage war. It is the voice of a people who have run out of options. When institutions fail, when the powerful negotiate “peace” only for themselves, when the small nations are treated as expendable—the oppressed cry out for dignity. Not domination. Not destruction. 

Across the Middle East, ordinary people are caught in the crossfire of decisions made far above their heads. Babies, children, mothers, elders, migrant workers, refugees: these are the ones who fill the jeepney of history.

The prophet’s cry echoes in them: “How long will our lives be treated as bargaining chips?” “How long will our land be someone else’s battlefield?” “How long will our grief be ignored?”

When Joel says, “Let the weak say, ‘I am strong,’” he is not glorifying violence. He is restoring voice. He is insisting that the weak are not voiceless, not invisible, not disposable.

God stands with those who have been pushed to the edge of the road. God always has. God always will. Joel’s prophecy is not about sharpening weapons; it is about sharpening agency. It is about a people refusing to be erased.

In the Middle East today, the prophetic call is not to escalate war but to refuse the narratives that justify the suffering of the powerless. It is to insist that every life—Palestinian, Arab, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, migrant, refugee—is sacred.

The Bible holds both movements: plowshares into swords (Joel 3:10), and swords into plowshares (Isaiah 2:4, Micah 4:3). The goal is always the same: a world where plowshares are enough, because swords are no longer needed.

A PRAYER FROM INSIDE A JEEPNEY

God of the crowded, the displaced, and the wounded, hear the cries of those who sit beside us on the long, uneven road. Strengthen the weak without hardening their hearts. Break the swords without breaking the people. And lead us toward a future where every child— in Gaza, in the Philippines, in Iran, in every land— can grow up holding a plowshare, not a weapon.

Amen.

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*Art by Zee-m Tiempo

READING ISAIAH 2:4 INSIDE A JEEPNEY

Isaiah 2:4 imagines a world where nations “beat their swords into plowshares” and “learn war no more.” Inside a jeepney, we read this not from palaces or war rooms but from the crowded, noisy, wounded spaces where the masses struggle to survive. The jeepney is a theology classroom on wheels—full of stories, fears, jokes, prayers, and the stubborn hope of commuters who know what it means to live under systems bigger than them.

From that vantage point, Isaiah’s prophecy is not abstract. It is a cry from the ground. Or from under the rubble.

A jeepney is built from the leftovers of war—U.S. military jeeps repurposed by Filipino need and creativity into vehicles of community. It is a reminder that people who suffer the consequences of empire can still transform implements of violence into instruments of life.

But a jeepney is also vulnerable. The Philippine Government has been trying to remove it from the streets for over 60 years. When global powers clash, it is the jeepney riders—the workers, the mothers, the students, the 70%—who feel the shockwaves first: rising prices, fear of escalation, the anxiety of watching powerful nations trade threats while ordinary people pray simply to get home safely.

Isaiah echoes the fear many feel when powerful states use military force in ways, more often tragic, that ripple across the region and the world. The human cost is undeniable: families and communities are displaced, cities crumble, innocents are killed, and multitudes are caught in cycles of retaliation. Isaiah speaks precisely into this kind of world.

The prophet does not pretend that nations will suddenly become compassionate. He knows the logic of empire: security through domination, peace through superior firepower, change through overwhelming force.

But Isaiah interrupts that logic with a different imagination: weapons become tools for feeding people; training for war becomes training for community empowerment; national pride gives way to shared pilgrimage toward God’s ways.

Reading Isaiah 2:4 inside a jeepney is like watching a jeepney driver refuse to honk in anger, choosing instead to wave another driver through. It is experiencing community where there is always space for one more rider. Always space for one more.  It is small, stubborn resistance to the culture of aggression. It is the belief that peace begins with ordinary people refusing to mirror the violence of the powerful, the propertied, and the privileged.

Isaiah’s vision is not naïve. It is defiant.

When nations escalate conflict, when missiles fly, when leaders speak of “deterrence” while civilians brace for impact, Isaiah stands in the middle of the road—like a traffic enforcer with nothing but a whistle—and says: “This is not the only way the world can be.”

The jeepney teaches us three things Isaiah would recognize: peace is communal. You cannot ride a jeepney alone; you share space, breath, and destiny. Peace is creative. It takes imagination to turn a war jeep into a vehicle of life. Peace is courageous. Every jeepney ride is an act of trust in strangers.

For those grieving the senseless deaths in the Middle East, for those afraid of escalation, for those who feel powerless as nations posture and retaliate—Isaiah’s promise is not escapism. It is a call to resist despair. God’s dream is larger than the ambitions of any empire.

And every act of compassion, every refusal to dehumanize, every insistence on truth, every prayer for peace based on justice is a hammer striking metal—slowly beating swords into plowshares.

My friends, war teaches us to expect the worst of one another. Isaiah teaches us to expect more from God and the best from each other.

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*Art by Zee-m Tiempo

Reading the Parables of Jesus inside a Jeepney

THE WOMB OF GOD

Sunday's Gospel Reading  contains, arguably, the favorite Bible verse of most Christians: John 3:16. (As an aside, the Protestant Bible has over 31,000 verses while the Roman Catholic has over 35,000!)

I like this narrative because two men--Jesus and Nicodemus--are talking about something men do not have and an experience men never go through: wombs and birthing. When Nicodemus asks Jesus if being being born anew meant going back into his mother's womb, Jesus says no. It is being born from God's womb. 

Many among us learned about the Yahwist tradition in the Torah (the Pentateuch) which describes God in anthropomorphic terms: God forming Adam from the dust of the ground; God breathing into Adam's nostrils; God planting a garden; God walking in that garden; and God making garments for Adam and Eve. Yet, God is male in these imaginings. 

Most of us have been conditioned to block out female imagery for the divine in the Bible. Scholars tell us that there are at least 40 citations about Asherah in the Hebrew Bible. Sunday's lection challenges us to imagine God as a woman. Sunday's reading challenges us to imagine God giving birth. Sunday's reading invites us to imagine God nursing her children. 

Why? Because this is one way John's Jesus imagined God. Because hundreds of Judean Pillar Figurines (JPFs) found in Ancient Israelite and Judahite homes and cultic sites tell us that this is how many in Palestine imagined God. Because archeology, anthropology, and related disciplines, across cultures, support this imagination. God has a womb. God has breasts. God is a mother. 

Friends, Sunday's reading challenges us to imagine God beyond the boxes we have created to contain God. 

*image of JPFs from Femmina Classica [In Search of Ashera: The Hebrew Lost Goddess]. 

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40 DAYS OF TESTING

Sunday's Gospel Reading from Matthew is also found in Mark and Luke. 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. 

The number 40 denotes 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. Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell us that Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness being tested. Matthew and Luke add that he fasted. This narrative is the basis for the 40 days of Lent.

Many imagine that Jesus was alone in the wilderness during those 40 days of testing. He was not. The Synoptics say Jesus had company. Wild beasts. Angels. And Satan. God's surprises 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, abuse, and murder Jesus. The Romans did.

Satan is not behind the War on Terror. Satan is not responsible for the economies of death and destruction that pervade our world. Nor is Satan responsible for the Genocide against the Palestinians, or for the human trafficking rings of Epstein and his fellow pedophiles. We all know who are responsible and should be held accountable for all these. 

Students of "Redeemer/Hero Myths" know that heroes and heroines undergo exhaustive and exhausting testing and trial to help prepare them for their mission. These tests usually come in threes: physical and mental trials, a descent into death (or near death), and moral testing. Luke had Yoda. Neo had Morpheus. In this rite of passage, Jesus has Satan. 

Who among us wants to spend 40 days in the wilderness being tested by Satan? Jesus went. Took the tests. And passed all three.

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*Art, "Is Jesus the Spirit Brother of Satan?" (from Christianitydotcom).

THE LAW AND THE PROPHETS

Amy Jill Levine and Peter Haas, my Jewish teachers in graduate school, taught that one of the best ways to understand the TaNaKh-- especially the Torah (Genesis to Deuteronomy) and the Nevi'im (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 Torah (Law), God speaks through Moses. In the Nevi'im (Prophets), God speaks through Elijah and the rest of the prophets. For Sunday's lection on the Transfiguration, God tells Peter, James, and John to listen to Jesus. God speaks through Jesus.

Dear Friends, please take note. None of these three 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. Don't ever forget: God spoke through Balaam's donkey. 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!

These days, God speaks most loudly from under the rubble in Gaza. 

God speaks through anyone and anything God chooses. God always has. God always will. 

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

The Little Bitch who taught Jesus a Lesson

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