Jesus has AIDS

If I said Jesus has cancer. Or diabetes. Or asthma. No one will give a fuss. I have, in the past, argued that Jesus might have been gay, a woman, a Palestinian, and an African.

But most of us have problems when we hear that Jesus has AIDS. Because we have been socialized to identify AIDS with promiscuity, with illicit drug use, with divine punishment, with sin. And the Jesus many of us worship cannot be promiscuous, will not touch or even be in the same room with weed, and, of course, is a perpetual virgin, and sinless.

What is the international symbol for HIV AIDS prevention?

When you turn the red symbol on its side, what does the symbol represent?

My dear friends, the world has AIDS. Close to 40 million of our sisters and brothers are living with HIV. About 1% of all our sisters and brothers, aged 15 to 49, are living with HIV.

Since the beginning of the epidemic, over 35 million of our sisters and brothers, each one created in God's image, have died. One million last year.

"For God so loved the world with AIDS that God sent God's son..."

Do we have problems with that interpretation? Or we only think that the world that God loves in our favorite Bible verse is that part without AIDS?

And what did God's Son say, the One God sent to a world with AIDS?

For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.

I have AIDS and you, like the priest and the Levite, do not stop to help me and pass on the other side of the road.

I have AIDS and you abandon me to die, on the street, alone, full of sores, like Lazarus.

Jesus has AIDS.

He is the two-year old orphan whose parents died from the disease. He is the young prostituted woman victimized by human trafficking. He is in San Lazaro, in RITM, at the Lung Center waiting for a blood transfusion. He is the one wrapped in your embrace this very moment. He is the one whose face you see in the mirror.

Jesus is a person living with HIV and AIDS and he is one of us.

And he is here with us right now.

Amen.

#WorldAIDSDay
#PreventionNotCondemnation

Parables book now on Amazon!

Reading the Parables of Jesus inside a Jeepney.

Thank you very much for all your generous support. Maraming salamat po!

In its first week the book was #1 in Hot New Releases in New Testament Criticism and #11 in the 100 Bestselling Books in New Testament Criticism.  After 30 days the book was #2 in Hot New Releases in New Testament Criticism. And #5 in Hot New Releases in Jesus, Gospels, and Acts.

During its Holy Week Sale last March 22-26, the book went back to #1 in New Testament Criticism, #4 in Biblical History and Culture, and #7 in Jesus, the Gospels, and Acts.

Widows, Strangers, and Orphans

Most of us grew up memorizing the names of the Twelve Disciples. In the Synoptics they are all men. In I Corinthians and in the Gospel of John they are a collective, The Twelve. Better. 

When we are quizzed to name the best among the disciples, we would probably volunteer Peter, James, and John. Some will add Mary Magdalene. But only a handful would say Jesus's mother in John, the Samaritan woman in John, and the child who offered five barley loaves and two fish. Also in John. 

Yes, my friends, a widow, a stranger, and an orphan. The three kinds of people closest to God's heart. 

The Gospel of John celebrates the Discipleship of the Unnamed.  Whom do we see at the beginning, throughout, and at the end of Jesus’s earthly ministry in the gospel? It is Jesus’s mother. Motherhood is discipleship. For millions of people in the world, LOVE is spelled, M, O, T, H, E, R.

Among the four gospels, with whom does Jesus spend practically a whole chapter's length in conversation, in dialogue, in mutual exchange of ideas? A stranger. A Samaritan. A woman.

For so many people today who find themselves strangers in foreign lands; refugees because of war; displaced and dispossessed because of greed, hospitality is discipleship.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke do not tell us where the barley loaves and fish that led to the feeding of the hungry 5000 came from. John does. It came from one of the hungry 5000. A poor child. The rich in Jesus’s time ate wheat. The poor had barley. The child offered five barley loaves and two fish. Are these enough to feed thousands? Of course not. But these are enough to inspire and birth miracles.

From August 8 to 31, Union Theological Seminary received a special blessing from God. The Lumad Bakwit Iskul composed of those closest to God's heart: widows, strangers, orphans, and more came to live with us. To teach us. To challenge us. To test our convictions. To show us grace under pressure, selfless gratitude, and true grit. 

And to remind us of our promise. To go to Galilee. Where Jesus is already waiting for us. 

The International Day of the Disappeared and the Empty Tomb

We, who call ourselves Christian, should not forget that the One we call Lord and Liberator was an Executed God. He was abducted in the dead of night, unjustly tried, beaten, tortured, and executed between two rebels. Then his body was thrown into a borrowed grave. In the Gospel of Mark, at dawn on Sunday three of his disciples, all women, visit the grave to anoint his dead body. They find the grave empty. There was no body.

Jesus had disappeared.

The Gospel of Mark ends with the women described as silent and afraid.

Jesus had disappeared.

Today, August 30 is the International Day of the Disappeared. We are invited to stand in solidarity with friends, colleagues, comrades, and families of the missing who continue to seek peace based on justice, and in remembrance of the thousands of desaparecidos in the Philippines, in Palestine, in many Third World countries, and around the world.

Like the women at the tomb, many of us are silent and afraid. Like the women in the tomb, we want to find The Disappeared. We want to find them alive. Or if they are dead, we want to find their bodies. We want to anoint them with fragrant oils. Maybe build a monument or set up a memorial for them. We want closure.

But the message of the young man in the empty tomb is as real today as it was thousands of years ago… Jesus is not in the tomb. He is risen. He is in Galilee… Waiting for you.

We believe in the resurrection. We believe that good will always triumph over evil; that faith is stronger than fear; that love is greater than indifference; and that life will always, always conquer death… We also believe that The Disappeared will rise again in the tens, in the hundreds, in the thousands who fight and struggle for justice, for peace, for liberation.

The Disappeared are not here. Like Jesus, they are risen. They are in Galilee where the good news is preached to the poor, where the hungry are given food, where strangers are welcomed, where liberation is proclaimed to the captives…

The Disappeared are waiting for us.

[reposted from August 30, 2011 blog entry]

READING TEXTS THAT WERE NOT WRITTEN FOR US

Let us get things sorted out first. Historians tell us that the Bible was written in Hebrew and Greek. They tell us that it was put together across one thousand years. Its latest materials is about 2 thousand years old. Its oldest, over three thousand. Take Paul's Letter to Philemon. It is a letter from Paul to Philemon. Paul and Philemon are dead. What we have is a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a two-thousand year-old letter. In Koine Greek.

We love reading texts that were not written for us!  We do this all the time. Our spouse's cellphone messages. Or our children's. Literary classics. And, yes, Scriptures. I've argued for years that most people read scripture as windows to the past (historical methods), as story (literary methods), and as mirrors (cultural studies).

When texts are read as windows to the past, we are basically listening to the dead. Hearing echoes. We might not admit it but most of our cherished values come from the dead. From departed loved ones. The works of favorite authors and composers who died before we were even born. Then there's tradition. The narratives, beliefs, behavior of a particular family, community, people that has been handed down from one generation to the next.

When we read texts as a story we assume that the story "always happens." That the text has a life all its own. That there is meaning in how the story elements of plot, characters, and setting interact. This is why we name our children after characters in books, in movies, in songs. This is also probably why so many celebrities win in our elections. We vote for the "characters" they play instead of the real, flesh and blood, people behind these characters.

Finally, when we read texts as mirrors we presuppose resonance. What we read strikes a chord deep inside us: as individuals, as a community, as a people. Thus, these are "readings as." As people of color, as LGBT, as children, as Indigenous Community, etc.

One can argue that the first is reading texts as time-bound; the next, reading texts as timeless; and the last, reading texts as timely.

Interpretation is always perspectival and particular. Interpretation is always plural. In the end, as followers of Jesus, the key question has been, and will always remain, is our reading about loving God and serving people? Especially the least?

Jesus always took sides. We must as well.

YESTERDAY AND EVERY DAY

Yesterday 76 members of our seminary community, led by our president, joined the United People's SONA. It was, for many, a liminal moment. A rite of passage. A baptism of fire. Actually, more water than fire... And we were prepared with our umbrellas and raincoats. And boots! Yesterday, 76 members of our community woke up earlier than usual, others did not even sleep, to prepare streamers, banners, rice, hard-boiled egg, and Adobo. Yesterday 76 members of our community waited for our jeepneys to arrive and spent over 4 hours in those jeepneys going to and from Commonwealth Avenue. Yesterday, 76 members of our community walked 6 kilometers to be a part of the thousands who protested against the War on Terror, the War on Drugs, and the War on the Poor that Duterte and his cohorts have declared against the Filipino People. 

Yesterday, individually and corporately, 76 members of our community participated in embodying our core values: prophetic boldness, ecumenical openness, compassionate witness, contextual timeliness, and Christ like faithfulness. Yesterday, Monday, July 23rd 2018, 76 members of our seminary community experienced what majority of our people experience EVERY DAY.

Every day, millions wake up at dawn to ride jeepneys, buses, and trains in order to go to work. Every day they have to line up to get these rides that take up to four to six hours of their lives in traffic. Every day, millions walk 6 or more kilometers a day to go to school or work. Or to get clean water. Every day, countless people spend hours under the sun, without umbrellas, or under the rain, without raincoats, toiling. Farmers, fisher-folk, laborers… Mostly overworked, grossly underpaid. Trying to make ends meet. 

Many surviving, each day, on one meal of rice and hard-boiled egg. No adobo. Struggling against death forces; working for life in its fullness. Do not forget this. Ever! For so many of our sisters and brothers our yesterday is their Every Day! 

Remember our core values? I'm pretty sure all of us know them by heart already. Those values are best embodied, like we did yesterday, in the every day of the masses. Eventually, our yesterday will be a weekend integrating with basic communities. Then two summer exposures of 6 to 7 weeks each. Then a full year. 

In the fullness of time God decided to go on community integration. We call it the incarnation. In the Gospel of Mark, God is always coming out. Out of heaven; out of the home his disciples wanted to be the locus of his healing; out of the tomb! He was a woodworker based in Nazareth most of his life. Then he leaves Nazareth. He started spending a day or two among the fisher-folk by the Sea of Galilee. A weekend with farmers. A year with the masses, displaced, dispossessed, disenfranchised, who protested against the conjugal dictatorship of the Roman Empire and the Judea Elite. 

In the fullness of time, God decided to leave heaven to be with those whose only hope is God. And God is still with them, every day. As they work for life in all its fullness. And God is waiting for us. Yes, for you. And for me.

So that eventually, our yesterday becomes every day. Amen.

[post-People's SONA reflection]

Volume 2, coming soon!

Reading the Parables of Jesus inside a Jeepney came out eight months ago. Thank you so much to everyone who got a copy, the Kindle or Print-on-Demand version. Many among you actually got more than one copy. Some even have both versions! Thank you as well to the UCCP's National Christian Youth Fellowship that distributes the book in the Philippines.

I cannot thank you enough. Volume 2 will be out very soon. I hope you continue reading more of the Parables of Jesus inside a Jeepney. With me.