Revelation E. Velunta, "The Ho Pais Mou of Matthew 8:5-13: Contesting the Interpretations in the Name of Present-Day Paides," Bulletin for Contextual Theology, School of Theology, University of Natal.  Vol 7.2.  June 2000,  pp.25-32

The Ho Pais Mou of Matthew 8:5-13

Contesting the Interpretations in the Name of Present-Day Paides

by Revelation E. Velunta

Two empires meet (Jesus and the centurion); and curiously enough, they are pleased with one another. Fritz Kunkel1

Never was it the case that the imperial encounter pitted an active Western intruder against a supine or inert non-Western native; there was always some form of active resistance, and in the overwhelming majority of cases, the resistance finally won out. Edward Said2

Suffering from dehumanizing poverty, Asian women-many barely into their teens-are forced to sell their bodies in order to survive. They are truly servants in the hands of their pimps or bar-owners. They get the smallest percentage of the money paid by their clients. They do not have days off, in fact, they are fined for being absent. They suffer violence, not only from their pimps but also from sadistic clients. They are sure to be infected at one time or another with sexually transmitted diseases. Many resort to feigning illness just to get a breather. Many look forward to their menses because clients hate "bloody messes." A few would rather be pregnant than be subjected to 20 to 30 rapes each day. Sadly, many have died from AIDS or induced abortions.3

A Filipino Reading

My selective literary analysis of Matthew as imperializing text, following Musa Dube’s lead, presupposes the reality of imperial power as central to the construction of the narrative. (Many Filipinos employ a similar analysis when engaging Jose Rizal's Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, Francisco Baltazar's Florante at Laura, and Carlos Bulosan's America is in the Heart.) It is a particular and perspectival presentation, a “reading that does not equate the gospel with historical facts. What it does is argue that Matthew is a rhetorical text-a narrative discourse-constructed within and by a particular historical setting: in this situation, the Roman Imperial occupation.”4

Dube, in agreement with Frantz Fanon and Paulo Freire5, argues that dynamics leading to literary production exist not only between the colonizer and the colonized, but also between various interest groups of the colonized, some of which try to gain power to define national cultural identity, as well as to compete for the attention of their collective oppressor. My reading seeks to explore whether Matthew is rejecting the imperialism of its time, condoning it, or seeking its favor.

My reading also presupposes resistance, Salud Algabre and Reynaldo Ileto's "little tradition."6 Algabre and Ileto memorialize all those resistance fighters that have been victimized by the violence of institutionalized forgetting; a fate the slave, the pais, in Matthew 8:5-13 shares. This tradition coincides with the argument of postcolonial theorists, particulary Fernando Segovia, that in the wake of imperial reality lies the inverted, deconstructing dynamic of resistance/fear, where the margins actually take the initiative, while the center is forced into a reactive position. The pais, in other words, resists.

Faint Voices

If crying is the first prophetic utterance (as lifted up by Chung Hyun Kyung's statement during her controversial opening address at the 7th Assembly of the WCC), then Phyllis Trible's Texts of Terror7 with its poignant, gut-wrenching portraits of women as victims offer us a hearing of those "cries." Those texts of terror lead us through a journey that is both painful and intense. We are challenged to hear not just the cries within the text but also those in front of it.

But there are texts that do not look terrifying the first or the second or even the third time we read them. Actually these texts might even land in the top ten list of many Christians' favorite Bible passages. I cannot remember how many sermons, all of them the feel-good-about-yourself-kind, I have heard preached on these texts. But I can imagine that not everyone was happy about David's victory over Goliath8 (especially not Goliath's mother). We know that not everyone believed that God spoke only to and through Moses (especially not Miriam).9 We definitely know that not everyone believes that salvation is through Jesus Christ alone (especially not the disenfranchised Palanan tribes of Isabela)!10

There are voices, there are cries-isolated, marginal, ignored, taken for granted, faint-needing to be heard amidst the thundering noise of triumphalist, imperializing texts. Matthew 8:5-13 is one of these texts.

Matthew and its Readers

“If Matthew has little to say of the disciples as individuals, then it has next to nothing to say about of the other characters that dot its pages. Most of these persons do not so much as bear a name.”11 Meier12 locates the present pericope within Matthew's first trio of miracles (leper, 8:1-4; centurion's servant, 8:5-13; Peter's mother-in-law, 8:14-17) where Jesus associates with outcasts and the mistreated (the three who were healed were lepers, the servant of a gentile, and a woman). In this situation, Meier in his commentary follows what Matthew does because like the evangelist he offers voice both to the leper and the woman, but the pais remains in the background. He is identified via the master. His master speaks for him. His master diagnoses his illness. Both the leper and the woman are healed by touch. The servant is healed long-distance. He starts and ends in the background. We can almost say the same thing about the Canaanite woman's daughter (15:22-28). The pericope is about her healing but we never get to hear her nor do we ever see her. Where is the daughter? “The subaltern, to borrow Gayatri Spivak's term, disappears because we never hear them speak. They are simply the medium through which competing discourses represent their claims.”13

It is not only Matthew that relegates the servant way, way back in the background. Most of his interpreters do. The text, after all, is about Jesus. But what if the text has someone that Jesus actually looks up to? The text does have one character whose faith Jesus finds exemplary. Many interpreters therefore follow what they think is Matthew's lead. They focus on the centurion and his faith. They include, among others, Fritz Kunkel who comments:

“The decisive factor is not the bodily touch or the spoken word. It is the power conveyed by the healer and received by the patient through the channel of confidence. Matthew tells of the Roman captain, visualizing his calm and warlike dignity. Face to face with him-infinity alive-stands Jesus. Two empires meet; and curiously enough, they are pleased with one another. Jesus, marveling at the captain's faith, predicts in his excitement a vast spread of the teaching to 'many from east and west.'”14

Davies and Allison,15 in their massive commentary, remark that, "Centurions play a prominent role in the NT which is somewhat surprising given the hostility many first century Jews felt toward the invincible Roman army. What is most significant in the passage in question is that the centurion is the paradigm for the believer as far as he exhibits true faith. The man trusts implicitly in Jesus' power and authority. This is why his faith is mentioned not once but twice (8:10, 13)!"

The members of the Jesus Seminar, who designate this pericope "black" following their color-coding method and thus does not carry any authentic Jesus saying, entitle this pericope in their Scholar's Version "Unusual Trust," referring to the centurion.16

Donald Senior explains, "The intervening story about the centurion and his servant is complex. The exchange stresses Jesus' unique authority: he can heal with words. But the fact that this man is a Roman captain and Jesus' amazement at his faith leads the story into another direction: the response of Israel and the mission to the Gentiles. The faith of this Gentile outshines what Jesus has experienced from his own people." 17

The following contemporary readings from readers of diverse backgrounds continue the centurion-centered interpretation:

Daniel Patte,18 who comes from a French Huguenot tradition, focuses on the centurion's faith and suggests that, "great faith involves a trust in Jesus' authority such that one is confident that his power is effective against evil even when he is not physically present." He continues, "thus from the centurion's perspective, no transgression of the boundaries between clean and unclean is needed. And indeed, by a word, Jesus heals the servant according to the centurion's faith."

Jewish New Testament scholar, A.J. Levine19 argues that the context of the pericope, the centurion's comments on the limitations of authority, the ambiguous, and obscure terminology of the eschatological logion, and the Matthean technique of addressing the church through Jesus' words all indicate that the major theme of Matthew 8:5-13 is not the rejection of the Jews and the eventual salvation of the Gentiles. The division expressed by this pericope as well as throughout the gospel is between the complacent elite-Jewish disciple, Gentile, procurator, church member, anyone in a position of authority-who does not have faith and act upon it, and those excluded from or marginal to the ruling religious, social, or political system-sinners, women, lepers, Gentiles-who manifest pistis, faith.

Kenyan scholar Grace Imathiu, 20 who is an ordained United Methodist pastor, affirms the inclusion of centurions in the new community (8:5-13 and also 27:54). She reads the first pericope as an account of a powerless military officer; one who pleads not for himself but for his slave who is ill. Yet, she raises a question that challenges the almost unanimous pro-centurion bias among most Matthean interpreters: "Is this compassion on his part, or is he simply interested in getting his property repaired for use?" Still she opts for the former because the centurion was concerned about his servant's distress and not his inability to work. Imathiu believes that the account portrays an officer who, in spite of his authority, is impotent to help one who is even more powerless than he, his servant.

Matthew and Empire

Warren Carter notes that although many New Testament scholars have examined Paul's writings and their relationship to the Roman Empire and its imperial policies and writings, they have focused little attention on ways in which the Gospels were influenced by that imperialism. Carter--in Matthew and the Margins21--and Dube-in Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible--have responded to the challenge. In his commentary (and in Matthew and Empire), Carter argues that Matthew's gospel protests Roman Imperialism by asserting God's will is carried out, not by the empire and emperor, but by Jesus and his community of disciples. Musa Dube, on the other hand, argues the opposite. For her Matthew, along with The Aeneid, the Hebrew Scriptures, Heart of Darkness, the story of Pocahontas, or Kipling's "White Man's Burden", are imperializing texts and should be subject to a thorough postcolonial feminist decolonization.

These two scholars take seriously the reality of empire in the construction of the Matthean narrative landscape and thus, as Carter points out, offer an alternative to the almost exclusive emphasis on the relationship with the synagogue that has long been a staple of Matthean criticism, especially in the West.

Carter locates Matthew's imperial context by examining Roman imperial ideology and material presence in Antioch, the traditional provenance for Matthew. He then argues that Matthew's Christology, which presents Jesus as God's agent, is shaped by claims-and protests against those claims-that the emperor and empire are agents of God. Carter pays particular attention to the Gospel's central irony, namely that in depicting God's ways and purposes, the Gospel employs the very imperial framework that it resists.22 Dube does not believe that Matthew is resistance literature. She posits the following questions in order to measure whether a text is imperializing or not. Does the text have an explicit stance for or against the political imperialism of its time? Does the text encourage travel to distant and inhabited lands and how does it justify itself? How does the text construct difference: is there dialogue and liberating interdependence, or is there condemnation and replacement of all that is foreign? Is the celebration of difference authentic or mere tokenism? Does the text employ representations (gender, divine, etc.) to construct relationships of subordination and domination?

Using these questions to analyze Matthean rhetoric, Dube concludes that the implied author's stance toward the imperial powers of his time presents the imperial rule and its agents as holy and acceptable. Its (Matthew's) inter-textual weaving constructs a politically unsubversive Jesus and encourages travel to distant and inhabited lands. The positive presentation of empire and the decision to take the word to the nations (28:16-20) is born within and as a result of a stiff competition for power over the crowds (Israel) and the favor of the empire. In envisioning the mission to the nations, Matthew's model embodies imperialistic values and strategies. It does not seek relationships of liberating interdependence between nations, cultures, and genders. Rather, it upholds the superiority of some races and advocates the subjugation of differences by relegating other races to inferiority. Matthew's model employs gender representations to construct relationships of subordination and domination attested to by featuring the Canaanite woman and the centurion in stories foreshadowing the mission to the nations.23

Dube and Carter present contrasting readings of Matthew 8:5-13. Dube translates Jesus' response to the centurion's plea in 8:7 as a quick and eager: "I will come and cure him." Carter opts for a resistant, hesitant, "Will I come and cure him?" Dube argues that this passage shows the implied author's accommodating stance toward the Roman Empire especially when the centurion is compared to the only other Gentile featured in the narrative, the Canaanite woman in 15:21-28. Like the Roman officer, the woman also pleads for an ailing person but she never receives the same treatment, or the same praise Jesus extends the centurion. The divergent reception accorded the centurion and the Canaanite woman-who's characterized as a dog-reflects the imperial and patriarchal currents at work in Matthew.24

Carter, on his part, argues that despite the centurion representing the occupying power, being responsible for public order, and protecting the interests of the elite, he occupies the margins-vis-à-vis Israel's elite. His plea for help and dependence (discipleship features) surpasses the response of many Jews. God's empire in healing the centurion's slave accomplishes what the Roman Empire cannot do despite the propaganda claims of Aristedes and Josephus that Rome has healed a sick world.25

The comparison between the centurion and Jesus, according to Dube, highlights the gospel's stance toward the empire. Both men are presented as having authority that effect things simply by the power of their words (vv. 8-9). The paralleling of Jesus' authority with that of the centurion's has the effect of sanctifying imperial powers. Jesus pronounces the centurion's faith as surpassing the faith of all in Israel (v.10), a statement that compares him with the colonized and exalts his righteousness above them. The passage casts imperial officials as holier beings and predicts that they, and other groups, will have more power. Such characterization not only disguises what imperial agents represent, institutions of exploitation and oppression, but also pronounces imperialism as holy and acceptable.26

Carter, like Imathiu earlier, raises a few concerns about the centurion. No reason is given for his concern over his pais, whether human decency or inconvenience. No cause for the slave's paralysis is given. Carter also notes that Jesus' act is limited. While he heals the slave, he does not free him from slavery.27 Nevertheless, both Jesus and the centurion come out smelling like roses at the end of Carter's commentary. The healing counters the short-term damage inflicted by imperial power in anticipation of the wholeness of God's future empire. The report-that the slave was healed that very hour-confirms the effective combination of Jesus' word and the centurion's faith.28

Matthew and the Margins

I agree with Carter when he argues for assessing the relationship of early Christian movements with Roman imperial power. Dube does a similar assessment. Diverse Jewish traditions and social patterns of responding to imperial domination, such as capitulation and assimilation through compliance, disinterest, survival, and prioritized loyalties to forms of non-cooperation and resistance are all helpful in making sense of the Matthean discourse. What I find disconcerting is Carter's arguments for the centurion as model disciple. If centurions epitomized imperial might for the colonized--according to many scholars-- and the gospel were an anti-imperial text as Carter argues, then why does Carter not find problematic Matthew's explicit fascination with imperial officials? Why does a supposedly anti-imperial discourse create a mini-discourse that promotes THE agent of the empire as THE Christian role model?

More than this, why does a supposedly anti-imperial narrative perpetuate the continued exploitation and systemic dehumanization of others? Both the centurion and Jesus support slavery. Carter does note that Jesus healing is limited and returned the pais to the system that he might have been protesting against but the healing anticipates the very different world and time of God's empire established over all.29 So, what is the pais to do--bear his suffering with dignity?

Carter also does not find problematic Matthew's domestication of Mark and Luke's demoniac named "Legion" (8:28, Mark 5:1-13 and Luke 8:26-39). Instead of offering the explicitly named demoniac, Matthew waters it down and offers two unnamed men (8: 28). Why would a supposedly anti-imperial discourse drop such a highly subversive characterization of Rome: the Empire as evil spirit?

Carter argues that the centurion is a marginal character30 but marginal relative to whom or to what? The centurion does not occupy the margins of Matthew nor does he occupy the margins among a representative circle of contemporary Matthean interpreters. Carter notes that centurions protected the interests of the elite, whether as agent of Rome or of Herod Antipas, but adds they occupied the margins as far as Israel's elite was concerned. Which elite is he talking about-the ones whose interest centurions did not protect?

For the legion of Matthean interpreters who find no problems with the centurion, I offer the following observations that might stir further discussion.

People brought a paralytic to Jesus for healing (9:2). Why did the centurion leave his paralyzed pais behind? The centurion had a century under his command. Would a meeting between Jesus and the pais produced a genuine diagnosis (not the centurion's)? As Bruce Malina points out: for the imperial officer, allowing another colonized subject (Jesus) to enter his home may have meant an intrusion into his social space, his power area. Similarly, Jesus meeting the sick slave may have produced a genuine diagnosis (not the centurion's) and ultimately a genuine healing, the health-giving with the ill, as well as a sharing of the healer's power and solidarity.31

From the master's perspective, a sick slave is a worthless slave. The centurion set out to find a healer, another colonized subject, who can cure his servant back home. It is the centurion's healing that is realized, not the healing Jesus offered. Jesus offers, "I will come and heal (therapeuo) him" in 8:7. But the healing (iaomai) that the centurion asks for (8:8) is the healing (iaomai) he receives (8:13). Both terms are used for healing but iaomai deals more on restoration, while therapeuo focuses on taking care, being there, serving.32 The centurion thus effectively manipulates Jesus to restore things as they were before. Good news for the centurion. Bad news for the pais especially if her sickness-whether real or imagined-afforded her a brief respite from the system that oppressed her.

Jim Perkinson's reading of the Canaanite Woman33 can be applied to the centurion who, as imperial agent, occupies the position of the dominant. His request could represent, what Perkinson terms "a desperate fetishizing of the spiritual power of the weak who are otherwise despised in everyday life."34 The centurion would be involved in perpetuating an oppressive structure that "accords mythic healing potency to those positioned as the lowly or the less-than-civilized or in this case, the 'less-than-Hellenized'."35 In effect, "... Jesus here would take on some of the character of the folk-healer, a kind of Jewish Shaman. And in such reading, his initial refusal ... could be grasped as an act of resistance to yet one more appropriation of the resources of the oppressed by the powerful."36

We end up with Matthew's Jesus mimicking the centurion. Jesus, who initially wanted to go to the sick servant, is impressed with the imperial structure of kyriarchy offered by the centurion (where when the powers say, "Go," their servants go, where when the powers say, "Come," their servants come). He goes on to condemn his own people (who will be thrown out into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth37). And at the end, Jesus, like an obedient soldier, barks out an order, "Go" to the centurion (v.13) as the empire convinced him to do and the centurion's servant is healed. At the end of the gospel, Emperor Jesus sends out his own "imperial storm troopers" to disciple the whole world (28:18-20).

And we have the pais who might not have wanted to get "healed" miraculously "healed of his illness" and thus back to the bottom of the pyramid, still a slave and more able to participate in his exploitation.38 What we have is a Jew that has become an agent--an extension, an accomplice--of the empire in its exploitation of a slave (who may very well have been a fellow Jew). If Jesus looked bad in his encounter with the Canaanite woman, here he is worse. He gets to save face with the woman. Here he looks like a "makapili," a collaborator.

This reading fits Loomba's definition of imperialism and colonialism.39 She proposes thinking of imperialism or neo-imperialism as the phenomenon that originates in the metropolis, from the center (read: centurion as being representative of Imperial Rome), which leads to domination and control. Its result or what happens in the colonies, in the margins (read: Jesus and the pais), as a consequence (read: Jesus obeys, servant is "healed") of imperial domination is colonialism or neo-colonialism.

The imperial country is the metropole from which power flows, and the colony or neo-colony is the place it penetrates and controls. More importantly for my reading, whichever direction human beings, resources, and cultural exchange traveled, the profits, the net benefits always flowed back into the so-called 'mother country.'

In this pericope, everything eventually goes back to the centurion. He gets what he needs from Jesus. He gets an added bonus: Jesus' highest praise twice! He gets his 'sick' servant back. Again, we point out, who made the diagnosis of the servant's illness? Whose standard of health is used as canon?40 The centurion gets everything he wanted and more. Imperial power-then and now-almost always does.

The Other Meaning of Pais

Sr. Mary John Mananzan memorializes Rosario Baluyot in her book, Chjallenges to the Inner Room. Baluyot was a 12-year old child prostitute in Olongapo City, former site of the American Naval Base at Subic. A Swiss doctor who came as a tourist to the Philippines hired her through her parents to be his "love servant." He regularly inserted a vibrator into her vagina. One day the vibrator broke in half, and one-half remained inside her. After a few weeks she began to have crippling stomach pains. The intense pain kept her from doing her duties. Her parents gave her painkillers so she can go back to work. The doctor also gave her pills to ease the pain. More and more drugs allowed her to go back to meeting her obligations. She eventually began to bleed profusely and was rushed to the hospital. She was operated on, but it was too late. The rusted object was removed from her. The doctor was brought to court. The latest news was that the doctor was freed because of "lack of evidence."41

There is another facet about the pais that needs to be raised. It is not farfetched to argue that her situation and her paralysis are both the centurion's fault. She is a slave because of the centurion. She is ill, also because of him.

Carter, in his commentary, talks about the possible causes of the pais' paralysis. Did it result from beatings or torture? The words used to describe the pais' condition signify intense suffering. Beating slaves and children senseless signified their marginal status in relation to adult male society.42 What Carter does not suggest is the possibility that the centurion beat the pais. Neither does Dube.

Donald Mader asks: “How may the word pais been understood by contemporaries first encountering the narrative?” 43 He continues: the word had multiple meanings, which often must be understood from the context: it can mean "boy," "girl," "son," "daughter," or "slave." The word is used 23 times in the NT and is used with almost all of these senses. There is, however, an additional specific usage that one might not necessarily expect to find in the New Testament. Most historians agree that intergenerational sexual relationships were a facet of ancient culture and society. Pederasty was not a mere fashion or aberration in Antiquity. Wherever or for whatever reasons it originated it served certain needs of the leisured or citizen classes. So important was its function that it flourished all over the Hellenistic world under Roman rule.44

A positive reading of the pericope would have Jesus affirming a homosexual relationship with the healing of the centurion's younger lover. But the opposite is equally, if not more horrifyingly, true. Jesus' "healing" might have restored someone who was trying to break free back into a relationship of exploitation. Because of the partners' difference in age "the nature of pederasty is inequality, and inequality always leads to domination, and domination to dehumanization and abuse."45

Pagsanjan, Laguna, south of Manila, is famous for its beautiful waterfalls. The place is also a popular haven for pedophiles, mostly from Europe or the United States, that prey on the very poor and the very young. The violence of poverty that millions face every day, throughout the world, can drive people to prostitute themselves and even their children. The number of child prostitutes in the streets of Asia's metropolitan cities is staggering. Majority of them are not much older than Rosario Baluyot. Their bodies bear the ravages of beatings, malnutrition, and AIDS. I have had the opportunity to meet with some of these children. Their names, their voices, their cries offer a name, a voice, a cry for the pais submerged in Matthew's text.

I have also had the chance to offer a prayer during the wake of a young Filipina overseas-contract worker (OCW) who died abroad. The death certificate read she died of pneumonia. But the nasty bruises on her face and over her body showed otherwise. There are over seven million Filipino OCWs working as domestic helpers, entertainers, or hospitality girls. Most of them live under the most inhuman conditions. Many of them eventually get home after their contracts expire, or when they get their debts paid, or when they escape from their employers. A few of them come home in boxes. Some don't get home at all-like Flor Contemplacion who was hanged in Singapore (for a crime many believe she did not commit). Again, the pais of Matthew has a name and a story because of women like these. Like the unnamed concubine in Judges 19 who is gang-raped, killed, and chopped into pieces, we can only hear cry of the pais-and the other children in Matthew's "culture of silence" 46 through the voices of multitudes like them in front of the text.

The Pais Resists

“Suffering from dehumanizing poverty, Asian women-many barely into their teens-are forced to sell their bodies in order to survive. As I noted in the epigraph, many resort to feigning illness just to get a breather. Many look forward to their menses because clients hate "bloody messes." A few would rather be pregnant than be subjected to 20 to 30 rapes each day.”47

The pais, whether I translate it son, daughter, girl, boy, slave, or sex slave, is a child and he or she serves to remind flesh and blood readers that the reality of empire-in varying forms and degrees-is experienced by children and by those constructed as "children." Ashis Nandy draws attention to the colonial use of homology between childhood and the state of being colonized.48

Fred Atkinson, the first American General Superintendent of Education in the Philippines inaugurated over a century of racist public education in the islands when he remarked: "The Filipino people, taken as a body, are children and childlike, do not know what is best for them ... by the very fact of our superiority of civilization and our greater capacity for industrial activity we are bound to exercise over them a profound social influence."49

The pais reminds flesh and blood readers that children's oppression-of varying forms and degrees-is inscribed in the text because, despite the rhetoric that God's reign is for children (19:14) no child is ever named-except Jesus-or is given a voice in the gospel-except Herodias' daughter who says what her mother tells her to say. Yet like the Canaanite woman's daughter and the pais, Herodias' daughter serves only as a medium through which competing discourses present their claims. The girl falls prey to manipulation by her mother and by Herod. We don't even get to hear the cries of the children who are massacred in 2:18, only their mothers'. Children are the primary victims of Matthew's "culture of silence."

Take the pais' basic description, "ho pais mou,"-that child's body is under somebody else's control-whether it's his father, his owner and/or master, his pedophile. The centurion's act on the pais' behalf emphasizes the latter's marginalization. As far as the text is concerned, the pais cannot speak or seek his/her own healing.

Yet, the pais, the colonial subject, because she is "paralyzed," albeit momentarily, paralyzes not just her owner-who thus seeks help from Jesus-but also the imperial expansions, the goings and the comings, in Matthew. Throughout the gospel, characters come and go, border crossings are effected: Magi from the East come seeking the king of the Jews; Joseph and his family flee into Egypt; Herod sends his death squads to Bethlehem; Joseph and his family go to Nazareth, from Egypt; Jesus goes to John the baptizer and is led by the Spirit into a the wilderness; Jesus leaves Nazareth and makes his home in Capernaum; the centurion comes to Jesus and the latter is convinced of the imperial authority that effects goings and comings, of travel to distant lands, of control-at-a-distance. The disciples are prepared systematically for their commissioning; the Canaanite woman comes to Jesus; the heavy-laden come to Jesus ... Jesus eventually sends out his disciples at the end. Everyone moves in the story, except the pais in Matthew 8:5-13. Yes, even for a brief moment, the pais revels in the "space" her "paralysis" brings. For about 8 short verses, in the very long, 28-chapter Matthean narrative, the pais is free of the centurion and, yes, even of Jesus.

The Pais is Filipino

“If Americans had never committed genocide against the Indians; if they had never incited wars of annihilation between the native peoples of the land, if there had never been a Trail of Tears; if America had never organized and commercialized the kidnapping and sale into slavery of a gentle and defenseless African people; if it had never developed the most widespread, brutal, exploitative system of slavery the world has ever known; if it had never sundered and torn and ground Mexico into the dust; if it had never attacked gallant, defenseless Puerto Rico and never turned that lovely land into a cesspool to compete with the cesspool it had created in Panama; if it had never bled Latin America of her wealth and had never cast her exhausted people into the dung heap of disease and ignorance and starvation; if it had never pushed Hiroshima and Nagasaki into the jaws of hell-if America had never done any of these things-history would still create a special bar of judgment for what America did to the Philippines.”50

The pais, for me, serves as cipher of the century-old plight/fight of the Filipino people. Epifanio San Juan Jr. points out that the centennial of the Filipino-American War (1899-1902) that began with the annexation of the Philippines by the United States in 1898 should remind everyone that of all the Asian countries, the Philippines was the only one subjected to enormous violence and ideological pacification by the entire state machinery of the United States. Over a million Filipinos died in that war. Another million perished in World War II.51

Against overwhelming odds, then and now, Filipinos--in the islands, in the United States, everywhere--continue to resist centurions and those who mimic them. The pais resists. The pais persists. The pais is Filipino.

1 Fritz Kunkel, Creation Continues: A Psychological Interpretation of Matthew (New Jersey: Paulist, 1989),120-121.

2 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), xii.

3 Paraphrasing Sr. Mary John Mananzan, OSB, Challenges to the Inner Room (Manila: Institute of Women's Studies, 1998), 54ff. She details other stories of child prostitution and child trafficking in the Philippines.

4 Adopted from Musa Dube's Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible (St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice Press, 2000), 127ff.

5 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York, 1968), 52, and Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Myra Bergman Ramos, trans. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), 48-49.

6 Reynaldo Ileto, Pasyon and Revolution (Quezon City: Ateneo De Manila University Press, 1979).

7 Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives, Overtures to Biblical Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984).

8 I Samuel 17:50-54

9 Numbers 12:2

10 In Northern Philippines whose ancestral lands were grabbed by rich "Kristiyanos" from the lowlands. The most in-depth work I've read so far about "Christian" oppression of indigenous peoples worldwide is The Indigenous Voice: Visions and Realities, ed. Roger Moody (London and New Jersey: International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, 1988).

11 Jack Dean Kingsbury, Matthew, Proclamation Commentaries, ed. Gerhard Krodel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 5.

12 John Meier, The Vision of Matthew: Christ, Church, and Morality in the First Gospel (New York: Crossroad, 1979), 68-69.

13 Leela Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 90.

14 Fritz Kunkel, 120-121.

15 W. D. Davies and Dale Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Volume Two: The International Critical Commentary on the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, eds. Emerton, Cranfield and Stanton (Edinburg: T&T Clark, 1991), 18ff

16 See commentary on Matthew 8:5-13 in Robert Funk, et al, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (New York: Macmillan, 1993), 159.

17 Donald Senior, The Gospel of Matthew, Interpreting Biblical Texts, eds. Tucker and Cousar (Nashville,, TN: Abingdon, 1997), 110-112.

18 Daniel Patte, The Gospel According to Matthew: A Structural Commentary on Matthew's Faith (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), 113ff.

19 Amy-Jill Levine, Social and Ethic Dimensions of Matthean Social History. SBEC 14 (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 1988).

20 Grace Imathiu, Matthew's Message: Good News for the New Millenium (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998), 58-59.

21 Warren Carter, Matthew and the Margins (New York: Orbis Books, 2000).

22 Carter, 1-49.

23 Dube, 154-155.

24 Dube, 131.

25 Carter, 200.

26 Dube, 132.

27 Carter, 200.

28 Carter, 204.

29 Carter, 200.

30 Carter, 200.

31 Bruce Malina, Windows on the World of Jesus: Time Travel to Ancient Judea (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox, 1993), 23.

32 I am indebted to Monya Stubbs for offering these insights on healing.

33 Jim Perkinson, "A Canaanitic Word in the Logos of Christ; or The Difference the Syro-Phoenician Woman Makes to Jesus," Semeia 75, eds. Donaldson and Sugirtharajah (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1996), 68.

34 Perkinson, 68.

35 Perkinson, 68.

36 Perkinson, 68.

37Weeping and gnashing of teeth conjure images, for me, of homeless people outside in the cold with teeth chattering, of streetchildren crying themselves to sleep hungry. Luke does a similar argument with the centurion in chapter 7. He has Jesus single out the imperial officer as the epitome of abundant faith over against own people's lack of it.

38Anthropologists comment that "whether in the ancient or modern world, and whether between individuals or nations, the patron/client, master/servant relationship is one of exploitation at best and repression at worst" (see J. D. Crossan, The Historical Jesus [Edinburg: T&T Clark, 1991], 67-68). See also Carter, 200.

39 Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 6-7.

40 Postcolonial theory recognizes that imperial discourse typically rationalizes itself through rigid oppositions such as maturity/immaturity, civilization/barbarism, developed/developing, progressive/primitive. Critics like Ashis Nandy have especially drawn attention to the colonial use of homology between childhood and the state of being colonized (in L. Gandhi's Postcolonial Theory, 32).

41 Mananzan, Challenges to the Inner Room, 54ff.

42 Carter, 201.

43 Donald Mader, "The Entimos Pais of Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10," Homosexuality and Religion and Philosophy, eds. Dynes and Donaldson (New York and London: Garland, 1992), 223ff.

44 Mader quotes extensively the works of Robin Scroggs and Royston Lambert.

45 Mader quotes Scroggs, 36.

46 Freire, 13.

47 Mananzan, 54ff.

48 Leela Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 32.

49 Daniel B. Schirmer, "The Conception and Gestation of a Neocolony," The Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol 5. No. 1, 1975, 43-44.

50 Nelson Peery, Black Fire: The Making of an American Revolutionary (New York: New Press, 1994), 276-277.

51 Epifanio San Juan Jr., After Postcolonialism (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 216.