Leaky Creatures, Regenerative Blood

by Ashtyn Adams

Matthew 9:20-23
20 Just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. 21 She said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed.” 22 Jesus turned and saw her. “Take heart, daughter,” he said, “your faith has healed you.” And the woman was healed at that moment.

I find it ironic that there is little talk about menstruation in the church considering the Christian intrigue with blood. The Eucharist is the central Christian rite, in which we eat the body of Christ and drink His blood. While Christ’s blood is public, out on display, female-gendered blood is conventionally held in secret. This secrecy is harmful in two primary ways. First, it obscures women’s understanding of their period as “a monthly liturgy,” as my professor Dr. Janet Soskice describes it. There is a deep kinship between women and the Earth which witnesses to a central theme in Genesis: many creations, one Creator. Women’s menstruation is one among many ecological cycles, and, for example, most notably mimics the 28-day lunar cycle. Here, the intimate interconnectedness between our bodies and the earth from Genesis 2 is on full display: the Adam from the Adamah, the Earthing created from the Earth. ​

Dr. Melanie Harris, author of Ecowomanism, also highlights this connection through a womanist and Black feminist race-class-gender analysis. She explains the paradoxical solidarity between women and the Earth, drawing parallels between enslaved African women’s bodies which were violated and raped by white oppressions under domination logic and the way the body of the feminized earth has been abused. These connections are vital for our spiritual well being, connection, and God honoring practices which bring healing, justice, and shalom. Yet, they are severed by secrecy. The second harmful result of our intrigue with blood, but only that of male violent bloodshed, is our blind eye towards the 200,000 tonnes of menstrual waste each year. Jesus said that he came so we might “have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). My supervisor and mentor, Derrick Weston, has noted how “abundance” is now confused with “excess.” We disregard and dispose without thought of the impact on the world around us or future generations. Following the one who brings abundant life may mean some of us will have to sacrifice and reorder our ways of living if we want other humans and nonhumans to participate in this divine desire. This includes our selling, buying, and use of women’s health products. It is ultimately deeply troubling that in order to care for themselves, women are damaging the Earth and their connection to it, and even putting their bodies at risk with toxic chemicals, two intermediaries which testify to the purposeful creativity and wisdom of the Creator. How can we set this relation right? How can we, like the woman with the flow of blood, be made well? This month’s lectionary text may offer us a starting point to acknowledge the many different women who bleed and re-envision sustainable menstruation in the life of faith.

There is a deep kinship between women and the Earth which witnesses to a central theme in Genesis: many creations, one Creator. Women’s menstruation is one among many ecological cycles, and, for example, most notably mimics the 28-day lunar cycle. Here, the intimate interconnectedness between our bodies and the earth from Genesis 2 is on full display: the Adam from the Adamah, the Earthing created from the Earth. ​

​The story of the bleeding woman is told in all the Synoptic Gospels, but the presentation in Mark 5:25-34 is the longest and most detailed. Absent from Matthew’s account is a Jesus who becomes, “immediately aware that power had gone forth from him,” and looks around, asking the crowd, “Who touched my cloak?” with the disciples responding, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?” New Testament scholar and historian Candida Moss sheds light on the Markan account by reading it with the broader Greco-Roman conceptions of the body. On the hierarchical male-female continuum, women were viewed as incomplete males whose bodies never achieved the heat, dryness, or impermeability that makes up healthy bodies. Women were more porous, soft, moist, and weak, vulnerable to attack. Men, therefore, needed to avoid porosity and feminization. This idea is subverted in the Markan account though, with the bleeding woman being the active agent in her healing, pulling power from a passive, unsuspecting, and porous Jesus. Moss notes that “Like the woman, Jesus is unable to control the flow that emanates from his body. Like the flow of blood, the flow of power is something embodied and physical; just as the woman feels the flow of blood dry up, so Jesus feels-physically-the flow of power leave his body. Both the diseased woman with the flow of blood and the divine protagonist of Mark are porous, leaky creatures.” Jesus does not avoid, but shares in the woman’s flow, becoming a body also marked by porosity. From the convention of the epiphany motif in Greek mythology, where divine bodies could barely conceal their glory in their fragile human form, it also revealed his concealed identity as divine. Thus, porosity functions positively rather than negatively, facilitating the woman’s cure and speaking to a previously veiled aspect of Jesus’ identity.

Understanding Jesus’ body as one of porous femininity is essential to our insight on the meaning and significance of the incarnation. While we ought to hold in tension how God does choose to work and love in specific, non-generic ways, this account helps us deemphasize the particularity of God becoming flesh as a Jew rather than a gentile, as a man rather than a woman. As one of my professors Dr. Chris Doran has observed, the Greek word for flesh, sarx, which appears in John’s gospel to speak of the incarnation, has its roots in the Hebrew basar, which refers to all living creatures, not just humans. I think the encounter with the bleeding woman uniquely underscores this idea in narrative form, allowing us to see how God indeed took on the stuff of living creatures, becoming a member of creation, and in this instance, a feminine, bleeding one. The incarnation is thus cosmic in scope and speaks to the goodness of creation as a whole. God is not anti-flesh or anti-world. In his book, Hope in the Age of Climate Change, Dr. Doran writes that the incarnation fully affirms that “God is the one in whom we live and move and have our being as fleshy, earthy creatures.”

Jesus does not avoid, but shares in the woman’s flow, becoming a body also marked by porosity. 

The bleeding woman not only speaks to our grasp of the incarnation, but also of atonement. Eugene Rogers in his work Blood Theology notes that when the woman reaches out to Jesus, “her past will become his future,” as he will become associated with the issue of blood, shedding it involuntarily on the cross, and giving it to an unlimited number at the Eucharist. When the woman dares to reach out, Rogers writes that “her touch feminizes him; it figures his blood as no longer contained and male but henceforth forward and female.” Rather than viewing the atonement of Jesus in terms of male sacrificial bloodshed, the feminization of Jesus allows us to understand the blood of God, which is drunk as the central Christian rite, as something shared and unlimited. For women, menstruation and afterbirth are experiences where blood “is given without harm or reduction to the giver.” It is a regenerative process that brings forth life. Sarah Jobe even says that the blood and water of a woman “are perhaps as close as we will ever come to witnessing the blood and water that poured from Jesus’ side on the cross.” Menstruation may therefore be a special opening into the divine life, where “humans remain in readiness, ovulating every month – practicing, like God, the openness to new life and renewed birth.” It is not simply a biological process where a baby may or may not be conceived, but “a costly renewal, in view of a perhaps, seventy times seven, holding a place where life could be.” Women can even use their menstrual blood as a natural fertilizer in their gardens, helping their plants grow. The blood itself is not a waste product. In this way, because of its persistence and repetition each month, menstrual blood resembles the blood in the Eucharist, where “the life is in the blood.” The bleeding woman may not just reveal aspects of Jesus’ identity then, but Jesus himself may be described as the bleeding woman, with pain turned to purpose, with menstrual blood taking on cosmic significance, with “her hope revealed.” 

There is more to be said. Mark and Luke are rich for theological discussion and research. Matthew’s redaction, in contrast, renders the woman passive and saves Jesus from the disordered and embarrassing presentation of porous femininity. We are given three short verses. Yet, attention and questions about what’s not there is as much of an important exegetical practice as to what is there. I find this month’s lectionary text in Matthew concerning the bleeding woman to still be quite pertinent to today in the sense that it testifies to a historic and tragic tendency to see female gendered blood as taboo, to look away, to forbid it in the sacred realm. Christian artwork has reinforced this gender binary time and again, with, for example, the classic images of Bathsheba bathing, presumably a ritual bath after her period has ended, but only showing her naked without any traces of blood. Mary’s priesthood is also denied in images as artists avoid showing Jesus’ birth. This is relevant because tampon and pad companies market their products on these patriarchal taboos around menstruation. Annie Dillon and Hannah Black have highlighted how disposable products dominate the industry and reinforce the status quo by promoting products as “antidotes to the shame and embarrassment women must feel about their periods. They almost always depict blue liquid rather than red blood, and avoid realistic imagery of menstruation by portraying women dancing or swimming. Some even suggest the need for women to accommodate male desires during menstruation.” The 12 billion pads and 7 billion tampons in the U.S. alone that fill up our landfills and contribute to ocean plastics cannot be separated from the messaging that women must hide, conceal, and quickly get rid of any evidence that they are experiencing their period. This is antithetical to the Jesus who freely bleeds on display and chose solidarity with the oppressed on the cross. It is well known that one of the key issues of environmental justice is that those who contribute the least to climate change suffer the most. The production process of menstrual products generates significant fossil fuel emissions, which communities of color will disproportionately bear the cost of. Promoting and providing alternative sustainable products, such as reusable menstrual cups, pads, and underwear, which have minimal impact on the planet, women’s bodies, and their wallets, may be one lasting solution that can save creation, women, and usher in the abundant life Jesus wills for us. 

The 12 billion pads and 7 billion tampons in the U.S. alone that fill up our landfills and contribute to ocean plastics cannot be separated from the messaging that women must hide, conceal, and quickly get rid of any evidence that they are experiencing their period. This is antithetical to the Jesus who freely bleeds on display and chose solidarity with the oppressed on the cross.

Although traditionally concealed, menstruation is a form of participation in the divine life, a process which the God-man himself takes on. Like the ecological cycles of the Earth, it points to the Creator. It is an experience which speaks to our place within the created order, to the incarnation, and to the atonement itself. Our current conversations around menstruation, or lack thereof, shortchange women, damage creation, and hinder our ability to commune with the earth and with the divine. Just as the church mystic, Julian of Norwich, saw something of God revealed in the process of defecation, at the very least, intentional awareness of menstruation can reveal a certain holiness if we treat it as such, “for in man is God, and God is in everything.” Despite our attempts to conceal the blood of women, the woman with a flow of blood makes herself known in the biblical witness. Despite our attempts to avoid the topic of wasteful menstrual products, the Earth testifies to their existence. Education and accessibility concerning sustainable feminine hygiene products are an opportunity for Christians today to testify and live into the counter-cultural ways of Christ, bringing justice and abundant life to all of creation. Our attention must shift, for women’s blood may be the very site to see, seek, await, and comprehend the God who repeatedly bleeds for the sake of our enduring flourishing.

Although traditionally concealed, menstruation is a form of participation in the divine life, a process which the God-man himself takes on. Like the ecological cycles of the Earth, it points to the Creator. It is an experience which speaks to our place within the created order, to the incarnation, and to the atonement itself.

Resources 
Books:
Doran, Chris. Hope in the Age of Climate Change. Eugene: Cascade Books, 2017.
Harris, Melanie L. Ecowomanism: African American Women and Earth-Honoring Faiths. 
Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love. Translated by Barry Windeatt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Moss, Candida R. “The Man with the Flow of Power: Porous Bodies in Mark 5:25-34." Journal of Biblical Literature 129, no. 3 (2010): 507–19.
Rogers, Jr, Eugene F. Blood Theology: Seeing Red in Body- and God-Talk. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
Soskice, Janet M. The Kindness of God: Metaphor, Gender, and Religious Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Web Article:
https://stanfordmag.org/contents/planet-friendly-periods ​

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Ashtyn Adams is a Seminary Intern at Creation Justice Ministries. Ashtyn earned her B.A. in Religion from Pepperdine University and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Divinity at Duke University.

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