Reading Luke’s Gospel 8:40-56 with Ecological Eyes - Part Four

Two stories are combined in Luke 8:40–56. The story of a woman who had suffered from haemorrhages for 12 years is inserted into the account of a young girl of 12 years old who is dying. The human body and its materiality is to the fore in these biblical stories. This alerts the ecological reader to Earth’s body that also suffers and is dying.

Only recently reports of the bleaching of coral in the northern stretches of the Great Barrier Reef signify that the reef is dying. In many other places Earth haemorrhages as a result of the violent fracking of its inner core. If we paraphrase Benedict XVI we could say that “God has joined us so closely to the world around us that we can feel” the bleaching of the reef as a “physical ailment” and the haemorrhaging of the Earth as a “painful disfigurement” (cited in Laudato Si’ par 89).

As we read Luke 8:40–56, we will be attentive to the human and the holy. We will also attend to habitat as it is encoded in the text and as we shall encode it in our interpretation beyond just the human and the holy — which is our familiar way of reading and interpreting our biblical narrative. Doing this is entering into the call to conversion which Pope Francis holds out to us in Laudato Si’. It is to set out on what he calls “the long path of renewal” (LS par 202). He names this a pathway to an “ecological spirituality” informed by the “teachings of the Gospel” (LS par 216). Being attentive to habitat, human and holy intertwined in these stories is one way in which we can shape an ecological spirituality.

Familiar Place on the Lake Shore

Hidden within the opening phrase of Luke 8:40, “when Jesus returned”, is a reference to his voyage across the lake from the Gerasene territory (Lk 8:37). The story of Jesus’ ministry is continually located within a changing habitat. He is now on the western side of the lake in what must have been a familiar place as crowds are waiting for him. Both the habitat and the human provide context for the two narratives that follow.

Jairus Touches the Ground

Jairus emerges from the crowd and the narrative captures social and cultural elements. Jairus is identified by his position — he is leader of the synagogue. First century readers would have been shocked, therefore, at Jairus’s falling to the ground at Jesus’ feet. Within the social system of his day, Jairus is dishonouring himself so that he can honour Jesus and his power to heal. Today we might recognise Jairus as associating himself with the earth, the humus. From this place of identification, he seeks the healing, the restoration of right physical interrelationships, in the body of his daughter. Human and habitat connect in this story that yearns toward healing.

Naming and Not Naming

We might note that while the two men in the story have names, the young girl, Jairus’s daughter, is not named. Neither is the woman in the story that follows. This alerts us to the profound interconnectedness of injustices in the habitat/human nexus as we read ecologically. All require recognition and healing within an ecological spirituality.

Jesus takes up Jairus’s invitation to come to his house and as his feet travel along the way, the crowds press in on him maintaining the link between habitat and human. The mission is healing, which can be extended beyond the human to habitat.

Woman Touches Jesus’ Hem

The journey is interrupted when a woman reaches out and touches the edge of Jesus’ clothing. She has been introduced as having suffered bleeding for 12 years — the right ordering of processes within her body have been disrupted. Her illness, in turn, may have disturbed her relationship with her physical as well as her communal context. She would, therefore, have known the intimate interrelationship between the human and other-than-human in her world.

The woman, whose life may have been regulated by what she could touch and ought not touch, reaches out across whatever restrictions she may have incurred and courageously touches the fringe of Jesus’ garment. Human flesh encounters the material and the power of touch is evoked. The power of her touch calls forth power through Jesus’ garment that is touched, and healing happens immediately according to the narrator (Lk 8:44) — touching is also being touched. The next verse clarifies that it is not just Jesus’ garment that responds to the call of the woman’s touch. Jesus himself knows that power was drawn forth from him by that touch (Lk 8:46).

Earth’s Touch Seeks Restoration

I suggested earlier that we might consider Earth haemorrhaging as was the unnamed women in the gospel narrative. So too we know that Earth reaches out and touches the human community in a variety of ways. We might consider these touches the “hem of our garment”. Earth’s waters are being polluted and they reach out for a healing of our broken relationship with this resource. Soils are being depleted by intensive farming and they touch us for restoration. Can we allow these and other touches to draw forth healing from us and to draw it immediately and almost imperceptibly as happened for Jesus?

Earth would certainly seem to have faith in us as the woman had faith in Jesus. It is continually touching us for healing, seeking to draw on the power that is within the human community. As Jesus’ healing power was able to be touched and activated by the woman of faith, so too as human community we need to develop those right relationships, attentive to the cry for healing and wholeness, that will enable healing to be drawn forth from us.

Girl is Touched, Healed and Restored

The Lucan narrative returns the reader in Lk 8:49 to Jesus’ journey with Jairus to his house where his daughter is dying. One of the householders intercepts the journey to tell that the young girl has, in fact, died. And we learn a few verses on that mourning procedures had been set in motion. Jesus interprets the girl’s condition as sleep rather than death and again touch is the vehicle of healing or restoration of life. Jesus touches the young girl inviting her to rise up. If we are right that in touching, one is touched, then Jesus’ action of touching for healing means that he too is restored.

Invitation to Commit to Ecological Spirituality

That healing is grounded in the materiality of human flesh and in the right ordering of materiality beyond the human, is made evident in the penultimate verse of this narrative when Jesus orders that the young girl be given something to eat. She is restored to her habitat with her human body healed.

While the young girl and the haemorrhaging woman are not named, their stories speak powerfully of the restoration possible when healing is a core commitment. We are all invited by Pope Francis to this commitment of an “ecological spirituality”.

Published in Tui Motu InterIslands, Issue 204, May 2016.