Earth and Sky

An Ecological Reading of Matthew’s Gospel 10:1, 5-13

ELAINE WAINWRIGHT shows how the central proclamation of Matthew’s Gospel 10:1, 5-13 invites us into a new relationship with the heavens and Earth.
Matt. 10:1 Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. . . . 5 These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, 6 but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. 7 As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ 8 Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment . . .

Before beginning an ecological reading of the text chosen each month this year, I have placed it within the well-constructed story of Matthew’s Gospel. The February text (Mt 1:1) belonged within the Infancy Narrative (Mt 1–2) or Prologue (Mt 1-4). The March text, the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount is in the first block of gathered teaching (Mt 5–7). The April text, the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law, is in the collection of healing narratives (Mt 8–9). This month’s reading opens the second block of teachings in the unfolding gospel, the Mission Discourse (Mt 10). In it we encounter the instructions Jesus gives to those who will participate with him in his ministry.

The opening verse of the Mission Discourse (Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness) reminds us of the collection of healings in Mt 8–9. In the April article, I said that the healings “invite readers into the profound materiality that plays in the text — the materiality of bodies broken, bodies touched, bodies healed — and this in named habitats that are geographical, cultural and social.” And as Jesus healed, so too will his disciples whom he authorises (Mt 10:8). They too will touch bodies and will experience themselves likewise touched as they heal.

However, the ecological reader will notice that the opening verse (Mt 10:1) provides no context for the discourse and will need to refer back to Mt 9:35. There the context is the unfolding ministry of Jesus who has been going around “the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness.” The synagogues visited are the context for healing and it is bodies in all their corporeality that cry out for healing.

Context of Compassion

The poignancy and urgency of Jesus’ recognition of the need for healing among the people is captured in the phrase in Mt 9:36: he had compassion for them. The Greek verb used, splangnizomai, means “to be moved in the depths of one’s being, one’s gut, one’s entrails”. It is a powerful expression which captures the urgency of the need for transformation.

Sallie McFague raises the question as to whether this compassion of Jesus was extended beyond the human world to place and the other-than-human. She speculates in moving language — is it seeing with the loving rather than the arrogant eye, the eye of the ecological self?

Jesus sees with a loving eye that the people are “harassed and helpless” (Mt 9:36). Their plight draws forth a material metaphor from the narrator: they are like sheep without a shepherd. And it prompts yet another metaphor from Jesus: the harvest is plentiful but the labourers are few (Mt 9:37). This is the context then for Jesus’ co-missioning of those who will assist him in the preaching, teaching and healing ministry.

Instructions for Mission

Jesus instructs the labourers first in relation to place (Mt 10:6). As the Matthean story unfolds to this point, Jesus’ co-missioners are not to go anywhere among the Gentiles nor to any Samaritan town. Rather they are to go only “to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

The mission Jesus shares with his followers is limited at this point. He uses an other-than-human character as symbol of the plight of those in need — that of lost sheep. It is an experience that unites the human and other-than-human in the context of first-century Galilean agriculture. It also resonates intertextually with Ez 34:6 and Jer 50:6. Together these enable the ecological reader to be caught up in the embodied “intertwining” of sheep and people both knowing the experience of “lostness”.

At the heart of Jesus’ co-mission of the named disciples is the imperative: “As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near’” (Mt 10:7). This message had been preached by John the Baptist (Mt 3:2) and Jesus (Mt 4:17). It is couched in language that holds the human and the other-than-human in creative tension. The Matthean phraseology, hē basileia tōn ouranōn/the kingdom of the heavens or sky, is unique in the New Testament and intertextually. It brings together the material and spatial term, the ouranōn/the heavens or sky with hē basileia, the socio-political designator evoking power or empire.

Contemporary readers understand the ouranōn/the heavens or sky, as the night sky filled with stars, planets and galaxies, what we know now of the universe in all its complexities and beauty [and as seen in the recent programme, Stargazing Live with Brian Cox and Julia Zemiro on ABC television]. Even the first-century Graeco-Roman cosmology envisaged the earth surrounded by concentric planetary spheres.

The key Matthean proclamation given to both John and Jesus links the image of the heavens or sky with the basileia, the empire, the material, social and politico-cultural entity that constituted Rome. The people of first-century Galilee, where the disciples were being commissioned to preach, were oppressed by this empire in almost every aspect of their lives.

Power of a New Image

What did it mean for Jesus to infuse the multiple aspects of the oppressive empire with the image of the ouranōn, the other-than-human heavens? It offered the oppressed people of Galilee the potential for a new imagination at the time of the ministry of Jesus and his disciples. They were being invited to imagine anew, to bring together images, metaphors and experiences that would enable them to dream of and also to enact an alternative to the basileia of Rome.

Similarly today, we are invited to allow the imagery of this central proclamation of Matthew’s Gospel to evoke new ways of listening. We are called to be attentive to our ouranōn, our heavens (and our Earth). The heavens cannot be just metaphors functioning in a human world. We must befriend, engage with, care for and love the heavens, the Earth and all the materiality that constitutes them in the new universe that is emerging and to which this gospel calls us. We need to be attentive also to the basileia of the central Matthean proclamation and look to the social and politico-cultural relationships that interweave with the material in this new vision.

May this central proclamation of the Matthean Gospel — the basileia of the heavens is near — propel us to care for the heavens and the Earth.

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 215 May 2017: 22-13