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How does sensitivity to current ecological and environmental issues impact on our hearing of the Gospels? About Earth’s Child listens for the ecological sounds that are present in Luke’s narrative symphony and offers a way for readers today to identify them.

Michael Trainor approaches Luke’s Gospel with a fresh engagement while respecting the evangelist’s own purposes in addressing the social and cultural concerns of first-century followers of Jesus. Hearing the Gospel from an ecological perspective allows us to see how Luke presents Jesus as ‘Earth’s Child’. In the Gospel’s early chapters, Jesus is presented as born of Earth, wrapped with Earth’s cloth and laid in Earth’s manger. In the final chapters, he is affixed to Earth’s wood and laid in Earth’s receptacle from where he is resurrected and meets his disciples.

Between these opening and closing chapters a remarkable story of Earth unfolds. This concerns all Earth’s members, human and non-human, organic and inanimate. It is about God, angels, demons, human beings, soil, seeds, mountains, waters, animals (even ravens, pigs and a couple of asses). Luke presents a fundamental truth about following Jesus: how one treats Earth and freely shares its fruits are central. An authentic disciple of Jesus is ecologically contemplative and environmentally respectful. About Earth’s Child sparkles with surprising insights as Jesus’ teaching and his meal and healing ministries take on new meaning for today’s world faced with growing environmental challenges.

Michael Trainor is Senior Lecturer at the Catholic Theological College, Adelaide, and in the Department of Theology at Flinders University, South Australia.

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