Reading the Gospel of Luke 12:22-31 Ecologically: Part Seven

Luke 12:22-31 He said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. 23 For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. 24 Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! 25 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? 26 If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest? 27 Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 28 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will God clothe you—you of little faith! 29 And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. 30 For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. 31 Instead, strive for God’s kin[g]dom, and these things will be given to you as well.

While I was working on the text for this month the July issue of Tui Motu arrived with Peter Murnane’s moving article, “At Home with the Birds”. From his experience of encounter with a number of birds during recuperation in Canberra, Peter drew attention to Matt 6:26 with its invitation to “look at the birds of the air”. I propose to take up the Lucan parallel to Matt 6:25-34 which Peter used.

For many this text (often called the “Birds of the Air and Lilies of the Field”), whether in the gospel of Matthew or Luke, is considered to be the ecological text par excellence in the gospels. Indeed it is a very significant text for the ecological reader. I want, though, to sound a note of caution. It is important that we read the section as a whole, bringing to it a prophetic critique as well as prophetic reclamation since both are needed to facilitate ecological readings.

Context of Story

This text (Lk 12:22-31) is situated on the long journey to Jerusalem that Jesus makes with his disciples—he set his face to go to Jerusalem (Lk 9:51). It finds its place among a significant collection of Jesus’ teachings (Lk 11–14). Jesus draws a number of Earth elements into his preaching, which constitute the ecological texture of the text: light and lamp (Lk 11:33), eye and body (Lk 11:34), cup and dish (Lk 11:39), mint, rue and herbs of all kinds (Lk 11:42) to alert us to just a few. In Lk 12:22-31 it is the ravens and other birds, the lilies and grass of the field that contribute to the ecological weave of this segment of the gospel.

The texture is understood by reading the biblical text and also dialoguing with insights from contemporary ecological thinkers.

For this Lucan reading, I have chosen to dialogue with Anne Primavesi who develops the concept of “gift” in her book, Sacred Gaia (2000). She supplies a significant intertext for reading ecologically when she notes that: 

“life is . . . ultimately characterised by dependence. It is continually constituted by prior and present gifts . . . which presuppose and involve us in relationships with other people and with other organisms; with the air we breathe and the land we walk; with the food we eat and the love, joy and understanding we receive from others. Some of these gifts we hand on in modified energy exchanges. Some remain with us, becoming constitutive of bone and blood, of health or disease…we act as givers/receivers in relation to…other living entities” (pp 156-157).

The Lucan text can be heard to speak to the dependence/inter-dependence that Primavesi identifies. At the heart of the text is the exhortation not to be anxious—the verb merimnaein is used to warn against worry three times (Lk 12:22, 25, 26) and a parallel term is used in Lk 12:29.

Indeed the opening verse Lk 12:22 takes us into two key areas in which the other-than-human and human are caught up in relationships: food and clothing. In both instances, the other-than-human “remain with us” the human ones, providing sustenance and covering/protection for bodies. The ecological reader is caught up in a gift-exchange process but one that in our day is precarious as a result of climate change. The human community has broken down right relationships with the other-than-human.

Galilean Peasants’ Loss of Land

For many of the first-century listeners inscribed in this text, the gift-exchange processes were likewise precarious or broken down. Many of the Galilean peasant recipients of Jesus’ teaching had been deprived of their land as a result of high taxes imposed within the Roman Empire, and forced to become day labourers on the estates acquired by Roman entrepreneurs.

Their sowing and reaping was taken out of their control. They were the vulnerable poor who did not know from day to day if they would have food for tomorrow. For them the basics of life and its foundational gift-exchange, namely food and clothing, were most at risk.

Observe the Birds and Lilies

Attentive to life and life’s processes, Jesus the wisdom teacher, invites his listeners to “observe” the ravens (Lk 12:24), to be attentive, not only to the birds generally (this is so at the end of Lk 12:24), but also to each group of birds in their specificity.

Just as Peter Murnane observed the magpies, the parrots, the currawongs and others in their specificity, so too the Lucan text singles out the ravens. They were perhaps the most common bird in first-century Galilee. God’s care for each of these most common of birds is indicative, therefore, of God’s care for the most vulnerable poor inscribed in the ecological texture of this text.

Verse Lk 12:27 parallels Lk 12:24 when Jesus invites listeners to consider, to observe, the lilies of the field. They are not described in any detail but the reader can imagine their beauty, delicate texture, colour and in some instances, their fragility. The tasks that cannot be ascribed to these flowers of the field are those of toiling hard and spinning.

While hard toil might be ascribed to men and women, especially among the Galilean peasants inscribed in this text, spinning is a woman’s task. Both male and female work is therefore evoked, contributing to an ecological reading that is attentive to right relationships in the human arena as well as in the other-than-human.

Read Suspiciously

However there is a need for a hermeneutics of suspicion in relation to this text as it values the human over the other-than-human. In Lk 12:24b Jesus asks: “Of how much more value are you than the birds!” And in Lk 12:28b readers encounter the question: “How much more will God clothe you?” (in comparison to the “grass of the field”). The human is constructed in the text as of much more value than the birds or the plants.

The ecological reader must read against the grain of such anthropocentric superiority. Once this has been done, it is possible to reclaim the text.

In the gift exchange of God’s basileia — of what God desires for the Earth community — right relationships in the entire more-than-human community will be key characteristics. The invitation to consider, to look at or pay attention to in a reflective manner, a contemplative manner, is at the heart of this gospel invitation. If we embrace it prophetically we can participate in the shaping of a new ecological consciousness. We can become, in the words of Primavesi: “givers/receivers in relation to…other living entities”.

Published in Tui Motu InterIslands magazine. Issue 207, August 2017