It’s a Fem: Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew

Mary breastfeeding Jesus, Basilica di Santa Chiara, Napoli, Italy.

I.

I.1

Kiki and Herb encourage us to crucify Jesus. Let’s sing along:1

I.2

“Banging In The Nails” is a compelling performance of a queer critique of religion. The object of Kiki and Herb’s critique is Catholic piety, represented by “the Nazi pope,” the late Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger). What it means to crucify Jesus, to bang in the nails, to put the crown of thorns on his head, and so forth, becomes more apparent in the context of Ratzinger’s legacy.

It was Cardinal Ratzinger who wrote the infamous “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons” (1986). In his letter on “pastoral care,” Ratzinger blames homosexuals for homophobic violence:

[T]he proper reaction to crimes committed against homosexual persons should not be to claim that the homosexual condition is not disordered. When such a claim is made and when homosexual activity is consequently condoned, or when civil legislation is introduced to protect behavior to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the Church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational and violent reactions increase (emphasis mine).

In addition to placing the blame of “violent reactions” on homosexuals for insisting on being treated with dignity and respect, Ratzinger also advises us, homosexuals “who seek to follow the Lord,” to carry our crosses:

What, then, are homosexual persons to do who seek to follow the Lord? Fundamentally, they are called to enact the will of God in their life by joining whatever sufferings and difficulties they experience in virtue of their condition to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross. That Cross, for the believer, is a fruitful sacrifice since from that death come life and redemption. While any call to carry the cross or to understand a Christian’s suffering in this way will predictably be met with bitter ridicule by some, it should be remembered that this is the way to eternal life for all who follow Christ.

Ratzinger wants homosexuals to conspire with Rome and crucify our desires. He believes that murdering same-sex desires is a “fruitful sacrifice.”

Kiki and Herb perform an alternative to Ratzinger’s theology. They crucify Rome’s Jesus instead of same-sex desire.

Crucifying Rome’s Jesus, we free ourselves from the reign of Roman terror on homosexual persons. We free ourselves to take pleasure in our “condition.” We free ourselves to think for ourselves, to think about how it feels like to us to be subjects of same-sex desire. “Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, banging in the nails,” we also potentially free ourselves to think about what we can do with Jesus now, now that we have executed Rome’s Jesus.

1.3

Traditional gay theology is a helpful resource for resurrecting Jesus, for giving Jesus a new, gayer life(style). In “What Is Traditional Gay Theology(, Now)?,” I argue that gay Christian theology is the discipline of recognizing, describing, and unfolding the implications of identifications with devalued femininity (i.e., gay identifications) within the Christian mythos.

The Gospel of Matthew is one source of the Christian mythos. It is in this text that we discover a spirituality of gay identification.

I.4

The reading of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew pursued in this essay is inspired by Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1964 film The Gospel According to Saint Matthew (Il vangelo secondo Matteo).2 In the film’s opening scene, Mary’s face confronts us (first image below). She is looking directly at her fiancé, Joseph. For this reading, the significant aspect of this scene is Mary’s simple black head covering.

The black head covering is worn by a group of women witnessing three men entering Jerusalem (second image below). These men have come to search for “the child who has been born the king of the Jews” (Matt 2:1-2).

Jesus, too, is clothed in a simple black head covering. At the end of John’s sermon against the attitudes of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the face of Jesus fills the screen (third image). The style of Jesus’ head covering (fourth image) and the specific presentation of Jesus’ face (see, again, third image), as if he is looking back at Mary, return us to the film’s opening scene, stylistically linking Jesus to Mary and Mary to Jesus.

Pasolini connects Mary and Jesus in the context of Jesus’ baptism, an event in which the Spirit of God is the central figure (3:16-17). Pasolini’s aesthetic inspires curiosity about how Mary, Jesus, and the Spirit are textually intertwined in the Gospel of Matthew.3

I.5

The Greek grammar of Matthew 1 (see below) links Mary and the Spirit to each other and a tradition of maternal rebellion and survival. Ek, ex (ἐχ/ἐξ) mark the spot, if you will.4

Specifically, in Matthew’s gospel, Mary is a figure of the Spirit of God. Matthew defines the Spirit in and through Mary, described in and through a tradition of maternal rebellion and survival.5

Matthew inextricably links Jesus Messiah to the maternal figure, Mary/Spirit (1:16, 18, 20). Jesus Messiah embodies Mary/Spirit, a cunning/rebellious and virtuous/conventional spiritual life within the tradition that privileges the Father in the (his)story of redemption. In Jesus Messiah, gay identification bursts into the world as a messianic practice or politics.

II.

II.1

Matthew is not the obvious choice for those interested in Mary’s significance in Jesus’ life. The Gospel of Luke, far more than Matthew, dwells on Mary’s role in Jesus’ story. Indeed, Luke’s gospel concerns motherhood—and that is the problem.

In The Man Jesus Loved: Homoerotic Narrative in the New Testament (2003), the late Theodore Jennings, Jr. observes that, in Luke, there is “an episode particular to itself that undermines the importance of biological motherhood, including, by implication, the role of Mary” (184, emphasis mine). Jennings refers to Luke 11:27-28: “As he said this, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that you suckled!’ But [Jesus] said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it.’”

Jennings argues that “Luke . . . undermines [Mary’s] role insofar as it is based on biological grounds . . . . Her place in the narrative as one who is honored is not as “mother” but as believer, which corresponds precisely with the intention of Jesus’s saying [elsewhere, namely Luke 8:19-21]” (184-185).

Luke undermines the dignity of (biological) motherhood, recategorizing Mary as a “believer.” Matthew, Jennings argues, undermines the dignity of “human fatherhood,” prohibiting the practice of calling anyone father:

Jesus’ program for his disciples clearly entails the abolition of distinctions among them and thus the abolition of hierarchical relationships. In this connection [Matt 23:8-12], Jesus prohibits calling anyone “father” and thus prohibits the recognition of the claims of paternity and so of authority on the part of any human being, including biological fathers . . . . The saying attributed to Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel clearly undermines human fatherhood . . . (184, emphasis mine).6

Matthew’s critique of (biological) fatherhood is apparent in the gospel’s genealogy (1:1-17). Matthew’s genealogy connects Mary to a tradition of maternal rebellion and survival, a movement within the dominant tradition emphasizing the normative place of the Father in the (his)story of redemption.

II.2

Matthew 1:16 is a significant piece of Matthew’s critique of normative fatherhood/manhood: “and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of [ex] whom is Jesus.” The Greek preposition ex in Matthew 1:16 connects Mary to a historic movement of maternal rebellion and survival:

1:3: “Judah the father of Perez and Zerah ek tēs Tamar;

1:5: Salmon the father of Boaz ek tēs Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed ek tēs Ruth;

1:6: “David was the father of Solomon ek tēs tou Uriah.”

The ek of Matthew 1:16 also connects Mary and Jesus, and so links Jesus to a tradition of maternal rebellion and survival. 1:16 begins just like verses 3, 5, and 6, with a male name, in this case, Joseph. However, the typical de egennēsen ton (he begat), followed by the name(s) of his son(s) and then of the mother, does not come after Joseph’s name. Verse 16 does not read like this: Joseph the father of Jesus by Mary. It reads like this: Joseph is the man (or husband) of Mary, of whom is Jesus.

Joseph’s name is followed not by the name of his son(s) but rather by the name of his social role relative to Mary. Joseph is Mary’s husband.

The disruption of the typical formula begets unexpected results. Following Mary’s name, the formula proceeds predictably, the main difference being its feminine gendering: Marias ex hēs egennēthē Iēsous (Mary who begat Jesus). Notice that Mary’s name is in the place where we usually find the name of the father. The name of her son, Jesus, follows her name. The feminine hēs makes it clear that Jesus is Mary’s son.

Notice also that the designation Messiah is in the place where we typically find the mother’s name: Marias ex hēs egennēthē Iēsous ho legomenos Christos (Mary, who begat Jesus, the one called the Messiah). In this way, Matthew links the messianic role to the maternal role.7

II.3

The maternal role in Matthew 1 is quite scandalous. Matthew 1:18, the first verse of the narrative about the circumstances of Jesus’ birth, emphasizes just that point: “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from [ek] the Holy Spirit.”

Mary’s pregnancy occurs before she “lived” with Joseph. The genealogy does not shy away from Mary’s erotic rebellion. It amplifies it, literally connecting her to other queer women: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and “the wife of Uriah.”

Anna Case-Winters makes several observations in her excellent theological commentary on Matthew that highlight the oddness of the inclusion of women in Matthew’s genealogy:

There is no question that the Gospel of Matthew is written in a patriarchal context and reflects the patriarchal view of the secondary status of women and children . . . . In contrast to the society in which women were largely invisible, in the Gospel of Matthew, women have high visibility both in Jesus’ life and in the ministry of Jesus. . . . The genealogy, though patrilineal, breaks the traditional patriarchal pattern ‘was the father’ with the inclusion of five women in the line. . . . There are other extraordinary things about this genealogy. One of the most striking is the inclusion of the names of women. Luke’s genealogy does not include any women, not even Mary. Including women, as Matthew does, in a genealogy that is traced down through the male line is uncommon.8

In his An Ethic of Queer Sex: Principles and Improvisations (2013), Jennings helpfully situates Mary within a specific queer lineage (esp. 98-101). “In this line of remarkable women (which concludes with Mary),” Jennings observes, “there is a strange priority given to women who are sexually disreputable . . .” (100).

Tamar is one of those “remarkable” and “sexually disreputable” women. She is unwilling to let the men in her life shirk their responsibility to her, even if that means she must play the role of a prostitute (Genesis 38).

Rahab is, like many sex workers, observant and seems to grasp how the upcoming “street skirmish” is going to go. She shrewdly takes sides in the battle, saving her entire family from destruction (Joshua 2:1-22, 6:1-27).

Ruth, furthermore, refuses to abandon another woman for the sake of security in the arms of a man. Moreover, Ruth seduces her kinsman, “brazenly [taking] the sexual initiative in chapter 3” (Ruth 1:16-17; 3).9

Finally, Bathsheba, “Uriah’s wife,” a woman who, like Mary, is erotically tarnished, but, unlike Mary, is punished (by God), nonetheless remains with David and produces another son, Solomon (2 Samuel 11-12). Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder points out that we often forget “Bathsheba’s role in securing the kingdom for her son, Solomon” (see 1 Kings 1:11-31).10

II.4

It is clear why Mary belongs on the same list as a woman like Tamar. She becomes pregnant by untraditional means. However, Tamar, for example, is erotically rebellious, but she is also a conventional woman. She takes bold, untraditional action to safeguard traditional family values.

Mary seems to play no active role in her own story. Her future depends on Joseph’s (good)will. If that is true, then her connection to queer women like Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and “the wife of Uriah” is not entirely justified.

Mary’s story requires a queer(er) analysis. To make sense of the connection between Mary and women like Tamar in Matthew’s genealogy, we may interpret the angel’s speech in Joseph’s dream as an expression of Mary’s defiance of Joseph’s will to dismiss her.     

III.

III.1

Before dreaming, Joseph concludes that Mary has been disloyal to him. So, he decides to send her away. His resolve to do so discreetly, rather than publicly, earns him the title of “just man” (1:19). Satisfied with his plan, he falls asleep and begins to dream.11

An angel appears in Joseph’s dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their injustices” (Matthew 1:20-21).

There are at least two ways of reading the angel’s speech in Joseph’s dream. We may read the speech literally, supposing it is a divine message delivered to Joseph. One problem with that interpretation of Joseph’s dream is that it deprives Mary of agency. If Mary is a passive recipient of God’s/Jospeh’s will, why is she linked to women who make bold choices in their stories?

We may also read Joseph’s dream psychoanalytically. Reading the dream in a psychoanalytically informed way clarifies the more obvious details of the text, especially Mary’s relationship to a tradition of maternal rebellion and survival. It also aligns Matthew’s witness with Luke’s by giving Mary a voice.

III.2

In his Interpretation of Dreams, Freud observes that “the dream-work cannot create speeches.” According to Freud, the speeches (and conversations) we hear in our dreams “have really been made or heard.”12

Yet, the dream work does a lot with the speeches and conversations we have actually heard. For example, what appears as a single speech in a dream is often an effect of the dream work. The dream work “drags [fragments of speeches] out of their context . . . incorporating some portions and rejecting others. . . often [abandoning] the meaning the words originally had in the dream-thoughts and give[s] them a fresh one.”13

Speeches may undergo editing and even recontextualization in dreams, but the dream does not create them. I want to use the Freudian idea that “whatever stands out markedly in dreams as a speech can be traced back to real speeches which have been spoken or heard by the dreamer” to make sense of the angel’s speech in Joseph’s dream.14

III.3

The angel in Joseph’s dream gives a speech to Joseph. Freud describes speeches in dreams as having an acoustic and a motor aspect.15 The angel meets those criteria, speaking and (dis)appearing in Joseph’s dream. What is not clear is who actually gave the angel’s speech to Joseph.

One possibility is that Joseph gave the speech to himself. In that case, the speech functions in the dream as a reminder of the disturbing object of his desire, namely Mary. Again, the problem with this interpretation is that it deprives Mary of agency.

It is easy to understand why Mary belongs on a list of erotically suspect women, but they are also fierce women. They manifestly do not wait for men to make choices for them.

It is more plausible that Mary gave Joseph the speech he heard in his dream. We may rigorously speculate that the dream work’s redemption of Mary, transforming her into an angelic figure, enables Joseph to listen to what he finds disturbing: Mary’s defiance of his will to dismiss her, discreetly ruin her future, and sabotage the redemptive will of God.16

Mary insists on Joseph’s fidelity, and he ultimately offers it to her (1:24-25). Although, we should not imagine that it was easy for him to change his mind about Mary (and Jesus). Notice that when the Gentile magi arrive to pay homage to the “child who has been born king of the Jews,” they find “the child with Mary his mother” (2:2, 11). Joseph is textually absent at this critical moment in his son’s life.

Joseph’s redemption is the first miracle associated with Jesus’ birth, and his redemption is consequential. Joseph becomes Jesus’ real dad because of Mary and by adoption (not by biology/nature). Jesus becomes a “son of David,” and so he becomes the real “Messiah, son of David, the son of Abraham,” because of Mary and by adoption (1:20).17

III.4

Matthew explicitly links Mary to a tradition of feminine rebellion and survival. Matthew unambiguously identifies Jesus with her (1:16). Thus, Jesus Messiah is of the Marian tradition of feminine dissidence and conventionality and within the dominant tradition privileging the Father in the (his)story of redemption.

Jesus is also of the Spirit (1:18, 20). What is the character of their relationship? The answer to that question is related to the character of Mary’s relationship to the Spirit.

IV.

IV.1

Matthew describes Mary’s baby as “of [ek] the Holy Spirit” (1:18, 19). Some readers may be inclined to heterosexualize the Spirit’s relationship with Mary and credit the Spirit with somehow inseminating her. However, in New Testament literature, the Spirit is associated with the feminine/maternal role. Consider, for example, Romans 8.

IV.2

Paul believes the Spirit dwells in the Roman Christians (8:9). If the Spirit of God dwells in them, then it follows that the Spirit of Christ dwells in them, too. Paul connects the Spirit and Christ in his theology.

In an earlier letter, Second Corinthians, Paul clearly defines the relationship between the Spirit and Christ: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (3:17). “The Lord” refers to Jesus Messiah, to the one who, Paul claims in 3:14, removes the veil that blocks recognition of him as Messiah. Notice that Paul collapses the distinction between the Spirit and Christ: “The Lord is the Spirit.”

Paul makes a similar argument in Romans 8. For Paul, believers are pregnant with a pregnant Spirit. The spiritual life refers to the Spirit’s pregnancy developing within believers. Believers, now pregnant with Spirit/Messiah, “groan inwardly” as Spirit/Messiah grows within them (8:23).

In the interim, between pregnancy and birth, the Spirit parents believers. The Spirit “bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (8:14). The Spirit “helps us in our weakness” (8:26). The Spirit “intercedes” for believers (8:27).

The eschatological hope is for the Spirit to birth Christ within believers. The birth of Christ within believers finally conforms them “to the image of [Christ] . . . the firstborn in a large family” and thereby fully realizes their adoption as children of God (8:29).

For Paul, the Spirit is like Mary. The Spirit is like a woman unnaturally pregnant with Jesus Messiah and a fierce protector, supporter, and teacher of her children.

IV.3

In Matthew, the Spirit is also like Mary. Just as Matthew 1:16 defines Jesus as Mary’s son, so Matthew 3:16-17 explicitly defines Jesus as the Spirit’s son: “And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove (hōsei peristeran) and alighting on him. And a voice (hē phōnē) from (ek) heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.'”

Ek appears in 3:17 but does not function here as in Matthew’s genealogy. More important in this context is the voice’s declaration, “This is my son.”

The fact that the voice’s identity is initially unclear strengthens the temptation to read God the Father into this text as the identity of the voice in 3:17. Matthew’s grammar, style, and theology, in addition to themes in biblical literature more broadly, connect the Spirit of God in 3:16 to the voice of 3:17.

The grammar of the Greek text connects the Spirit and the voice. Matthew describes the Spirit’s behavior as dove-like (hōsei peristeran) in 3:16. Dove is gendered feminine in Greek (hē peristera). The voice, hē phōnē, of 3:17 is also gendered feminine.

There is also a stylistic symmetry between 3:16 and 3:17. The Spirit and the voice are from heaven. The voice, like the dove-like Spirit, descends from or comes down from heaven.

The dove-like Spirit calls attention to biblical themes especially relevant to this reading of Matthew, maternal themes like birth and rebirth. The Spirit flying above the waters of Jesus’ baptism is reminiscent of the avian Spirit hovering over the waters of the formless earth at the birth of creation (Genesis 1:2). The dove-like Spirit also reminds us of the flood’s aftermath when Noah sent out a dove to find dry ground to begin rebuilding the earth (8:8-9).18

The dove-like Spirit recalls the circumstances of Jesus’ birth in Luke. The young Jesus is presented before the Lord in the temple in Jerusalem, and his parents sacrifice two doves there (Luke 2:24). Finally, the dove-like Spirit calls to mind the character of Jesus’ reforming messianic politics in Matthew. Jesus overturns “the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves” (21:12, see section VI for 10:16b).

Up to this point, the emphasis in Matthew’s narrative has been on the presence of the dove-like Spirit in Jesus’ life. Jesus is of the Spirit (Matthew 1:18, 20). John the Baptist testifies, “He [i.e., the Messiah] will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (3:11; see also 12:18). The Spirit will soon lead Jesus into the wilderness (4:1). God the Father does not explicitly appear in the Gospel of Matthew until 5:16.

Theologically, Matthew does not give God the Father a voice. The Father observes, listens, judges, wills, and saves—but the Spirit does the talking in Matthew (see also Romans 8:26-27, 1 Corinthians 12:3). Communication is the role of the Spirit.19

As Jesus sends his disciples “like sheep into the midst of wolves,” he advises them not to worry about “how you are to speak or what you are to say” (10:16, 19). They will be given the required words, “for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (19).

For all these reasons, we are justified in identifying the voice of 3:17 with the Spirit of 3:16. At Jesus’ baptism, it is the Spirit of God, and not God the Father, who declares, “[Jesus] is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (3:17).20

The Spirit, like Mary, is Jesus’ mother.

IV.4

Does Matthew’s Jesus have two mothers? No, as Matthew makes it impossible to de-link Mary, Jesus, and the Spirit.

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is not the Spirit’s son by adoption; he is internal to the Spirit (1:18, 20). Jesus is also not Mary’s son by adoption; he is internal to Mary (1:16). Jesus is not of two wombs.

Jesus is of the maternal figure. He is of Mary/Spirit. She is his at once erotically rebellious and conventional mother.

IV.5

The radical emphasis on the Mother/Son relationship highlights how thoroughgoing is Matthew’s critique of (biological) fatherhood. It raises the question of God the Father’s relationship to Jesus.

One of Freud’s patients reports that his “Nanya” told him that Joseph was “like” a father to Jesus, and God was his “real father.”21 His Nayna is wrong about Joseph and right about God.

God/Joseph is the real Father of Jesus—not naturally, but through (the advocacy of) the Spirit/Mary.22 We typically describe this kind of parent-child bond in terms of adoption.

V.

V.1

Matthew inextricably links Jesus to a non-standard, feminine or maternal politics. Thus, we should expect Jesus’ messianism, aligned in Matthew 1:16 with the maternal role, to swerve to some degree from the dominant culture’s understanding of legitimate messianism. We should expect, that is, Jesus to incarnate a resistant relationship to the culture of normative masculinity also represented in the genealogy—and of which Jesus is, by the advocacy of the Spirit through Joseph by adoption, connected as a “Son of David.”

V.2

The significance of Jesus’ specific messianism is highlighted by Rosemary Radford Ruether. She asks, “Can a male savior save women?”23

Jennings responds to Ruether’s question, arguing that Jesus Messiah is relevant to women because he enters into solidarity with them. Jesus “becomes the one who shares the attributes traditionally associated with women.”24

For Jennings, Jesus shares “the attributes traditionally associated with women” because he represents a third gender. He is androgynous, in some sense male/masculine and female/feminine.

I argue elsewhere that theories of androgyny tend to collapse the distinction between sex and gender. Theories of androgyny tend, that is, to confuse social realities (gender) with biology/genetics (sex), unintentionally naturalizing the normative sex/gender/race/class regime they are attempting to resist.25 Thus, an androgynous Jesus cannot save women.

V.3

Our answer to Ruether’s question builds on the specific character of Jesus’ non-standard messianism, defined in and through his identification with a devalued feminine or maternal figure, namely his mother, Mary/Spirit. She is a maternal figure who is simultaneously rebellious and conventional. Matthew identifies Jesus with her; thus, his messianism is of her: at once dissident and ordinary.

VI.

VI.1

Jesus describes his spirited messianic politics just as he is sending his disciples back into their traditional religious world “like sheep into the midst of wolves.” Jesus authorizes them to drive out “unclean spirits . . . and to cure every disease and every sickness” (10:1, 5, 16).

The success of their mission depends on embodying the proper spiritual logic. The disciples must be like him, like his mother. They must “be wise (phronimoi) as serpents (hoi opheis) and innocent (akeraioi) as doves (hai peristerai)” (10:16b, 17:5).26

Jesus teaches the disciples to be dove-like, virtuous/conventional/socially valuable.27 He also encourages them to be snake-like, clever minds/rebellious/socially disturbing.

The disciples are not to be like Satan, a poisonous snake, a sickening force in the world (Genesis 3:1; Revelation 12:9; Matthew 7:10). They are to be like Jesus, like his mother, like the bronze snake of Numbers 21: they are to rise up and heal the afflicted.28

The bronze snake of Numbers 21 nicely illustrates the harmony of the terms of Jesus’ messianic politics. So do the hai peristerai of Matthew 10:16b.

VI.2

Hē peristera refers to “a bird of the family Columbidae [frequently] glossed as either a pigeon or dove (but the use of the latter term in preference to the former suggests a difference that cannot precisely be determined from usage in our texts). . . .”29

From a scientific standpoint, there is no difference between a dove and a pigeon. However, the (ancient) social meanings of the dove and the pigeon diverge: pigeons represent what is socially insignificant/disturbing, and doves represent what is socially significant/valued.

However, pigeons are like doves. They are simple, peaceful, and often colorful birds. Their cooing sounds are soothing. They are not aggressive or harmful animals.

Pigeons often live near or with humans. The unhoused sleep in, for example, church porticos, parks, and under bridges—the same spaces pigeons typically occupy and make their homes.

The unhoused often seek food in tourist areas and entertainment districts. Pigeons also frequent these zones of local commerce.

Local governments in the U.S. often treat the two populations in identical ways.30 They control pigeons and the unhoused by making it illegal or difficult to feed them, decreasing support for safe housing, spiking various surfaces, blasting loud music or harsh sounds in, for example, the church portico, and chasing them out of public spaces, like parks and popular tourist destinations.

Pigeons are called “flying rats” and “trash animals” for a reason. Pigeons, like the unhoused and snakes, are socially disturbing. Pigeons disturb us because they shit on our secular and religious values, like piety, law and order, wealth, and so on.

VI.3

Jesus shits on the temple in Matthew 21:12-17. “Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves” (21:12).

Jesus disturbs the status quo and liberates the “doves” from the prison of respectability. The reason for the disturbance is simple and innocent. By shiting on respectability, Jesus empowers the “blind and the lame” to enter the temple and be healed by him (21:14).

Like the bronze snake, the pigeon illustrates the equipoise of the terms of Jesus’ messianism. Like the bronze snake lifted up in the desert, the pigeon hovers in the air, a figure of rebellion and survival, a figure of Jesus’ anti-social messianic politics.

VI.4

Women, in particular, find Jesus’ anti-social spirituality appealing. In Matthew, “[m]any women were there [at Jesus’ crucifixion], looking on from a distance; they had followed Jesus from Galilee and had provided for him. Among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee” (27:55).

At the end of his life, Jesus only has mothers and sisters. Likewise, at the beginning of his resurrected life, only women are present to greet him. Women are the first to preach the resurrection of the dead (Matthew 28:1-10).

Jesus’ female disciples answer Ruether’s question about the relevance of a male savior for women. Jesus can save women because while he is a male, his messianism is not essentially about males. His messianism is a queer form of masculinity (gendered feminine because it is departs from normative masculinity), rebellious and conventional, and anyone who finds it persuasive may adopt it as their lifestyle.

VII.

VII.1

Daniel Boyarin, in Dying For God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (1999), highlights another of Ruether’s provocations, this time about Jewish and Christian difference, that helps clarify the social appeal of Jesus’ messianism. Boyarin writes:

It was with the birth of the hegemonic Catholic Church . . . that seems finally to have precipitated the consolidation of rabbinic Judaism as Jewish orthodoxy, with all its rivals, including the so-called Jewish Christianities, apparently largely vanquished. It was then that Judaism and Christianity finally emerged from the womb as genuinely independent children of Rebecca. As Rosemary Radford Ruether put it a quarter of a century ago, “the fourth century is the first century for Christianity and Judaism” (6).31

It was not until the fourth century and the rise of the power of “the orthodox Church and the Rabbis to declare people heretics” that the two children of Rebecca, intertwined siblings in her womb, emerged as two distinct religions (15, see Genesis 25:21-34).

Boyarin observes that while there were differences between the two as early as the second-century (Matthew was written written sometime between 70-107 CE), “the border between [them] was so fuzzy that one could hardly say precisely at what point one stopped and the other began” (11, emphasis mine). Differences between “rabbinic and Christian Judaism” begin to emerge and harden in response to the experience of martyrdom, specifically to the question of whether to avoid or seek death for the sake of one’s faith. Tricksters and martyrs are the main characters of this drama.

VII.2

Tricksters represent attempts to escape martyrdom through cunning or wit. They are explicitly gendered feminine. Martyrs represent a spirit of “manfully provoking death” (52). Theirs is considered a virtuous response to martyrdom. Martyrs are explicitly gendered masculine (48ff).

The gendering of tricksters and martyrs potentially expresses a broader cultural dynamic between the victorious Romans and the subjugated Greeks. The gendering of cunning as feminine and virtue as masculine may demonstrate “the Greek tradition of cunning, metis, as a value, versus the Roman supreme value of virtus is at play here” (63-64). In patristic sources, for example, Clement (i.e., Greece) represents the trickster option, while Tertullian (i.e., Rome) represents the martyr option.

Both rabbinic and patristic sources initially keep the options open; they do not, that is, conclude that one response to martyrdom is better than the other. However, as the debate unfolds, “Christian textuality seems bound to answer the question,” baptizing, if you will, the martyr (i.e., Roman) option (66, emphasis mine).

VII.3

At first glance, it would appear that “Christian textuality” means siding with Rome, with Empire/dominant masculinity. However, the ideal martyr, for both Jews and Christians, was defined in and through femininity, specifically through the virgin female.

It is in and through female virginity that the Rabbis and Fathers construct a dissident masculinity. They imagine Rome as a rapacious or lusty male (as feminine because, in the ancient world, women are thought to be susceptible to all sorts of pleasures). In identifying with the female virgin, the Rabbis and Fathers are disidentifying with Roman “masculinity.”

Boyarin observes that male Christian writers are often former, influential Roman “pagans” (79-80). They have power, prestige, and wealth they are willing to give up to become and remain Christians. The female virgin enables male Christians to reframe their defiant femininity as virtuous masculinity. Giving up their life is an assertion of their masculinity, the means by which they preserve their virginity (i.e., faithfulness).

For the Rabbis, Rome has a double meaning. It signifies pagan Romans and Christians. Rome is both a religious heresy and a secular power, two whores tempting Jews to abandon their virginity (i.e., faith). The female virgin enables male Jews to reframe their defiant femininity as virtuous masculinity, just as she did for male Christians. In resisting Romans and Christians, they preserve their virginity (i.e., faithfulness) in the brothel.

VII.4

The Rabbis and Fathers construct their dissident masculinity by using a definition of female as feminine. The virgin martyr is the ideal female (i.e., a dead/voiceless woman).

The male categorization of females as virgins plays out in different ways for Christian women and Jewish women. The virginity of Christian women is flexible; it can be expressed by abstaining from sex or by entering into marriage.

Whereas the Rabbis left the question of how to live faithfully in an ethos hostile to queer faith open, rabbinic textuality decides the question of virginity. Jewish women cannot die virgins. Their virginity is for their husbands.

There is no escape from (Roman-like) male domination for either Jewish or Christian women. Christian women can, however, choose to abstain from family life. There is no such freedom for Jewish women, as the Rabbis were more in agreement with Rome regarding the importance of the biological family.

Identification with female/femininity/virginity enables the Rabbis and Fathers to construct a dissident, anti-Roman male/masculinity. However, the Rabbis and Fathers purchase their valorization at the expense of actual women, leaving women with little to no freedom to decide for themselves how to live faithfully in a world hostile to queer faith and to women (of faith) in particular.

Boyarin’s rigorous textual/historical description/grounding of Reuther’s provocation allows us to retranslate the meaning of Jewish and Christian difference in terms of gender: it is the difference between two, non-standard males/masculinities built upon the ideal female as virgin, both of which subjugate women.

VII.5

Matthew’s gospel is part of this rabbinic and (Jewish) Christian tradition, which defines how to live faithfully in a world hostile to queer faith. Like the Rabbis, Matthew does not take sides on “martyrdom.” Matthew’s Jesus teaches his disciples to avoid persecution: “When they persecute you in one town, flee [pheugō] to the next . . . ” (Matthew 10:23). Matthew’s Jesus also demands that they “take up the cross and follow” him (10:38).

Matthew’s gospel does not take sides in the broader cultural debate. It does not choose between Greek and Roman values, between cunning and virtue. The messianism of Matthew’s Jesus recombines them, describing faithful living in a hostile environment in terms of cunning and virtue, trickster and martyr, snake and dove.

VII.6

Like the Rabbis and Fathers, Matthew builds an anti-phallic, anti-Roman, or counter-masculinity in and through the virgin. However, Matthew’s virgin differs in two significant ways from that of the Rabbis and Fathers.

Unlike the Rabbis and Fathers, Matthew describes a dissident masculinity in and through the virgin maternal figure. Matthew defines the gender-neutral Spirit in and through Mary. Matthew describes Mary in and through a tradition/lifestyle of erotic maternal virginity.

Matthew’s maternal figure, Mary/Spirit, may refer to actual women, but it is not essentially about women. By defining dissident masculinity in and through the virgin maternal figure, Matthew avoids circumscribing bodies and pleasures. Matthew does not tell us in advance what bodies and pleasures are of Jesus, of Mary/Spirit.

Matthew defines Mary/Spirit’s virginity by linking her to women who are manifestly not virgins; they are all mothers by unconventional means. This makes perfect sense of Mary’s virginity if she is a figure of the Spirit. Matthew emphasizes rebellious sexual desire as a characteristic of the Mary/Spirit by making the point that Mary/Spirit’s son is not a product of male agency/power/rule.

Matthew is especially clear that biology/nature cannot save us (Matthew 3:7-10, 19:10-12).32 In the (Jewish) Christian imagination, Jesus Messiah’s birth is the only birth of ultimate significance to us.

Jesus is internal to Mary/Spirit. She is responsible for birthing him in us, fully realizing our adoption as children of God.

The displacement of salvific pregnancy onto the figure of Spirit/Mary frees women and men to decide for themselves what their bodies are for now that they are pregnant with Jesus by the Holy Spirit. It frees spirited women and men for pleasure, including sexual pleasure, because the body is no longer reducible to a temple/economy/piety of biological/natural reproduction.

The freedom to faithfully choose what to do with their bodies may account for why ancient women found Jesus’ messianic masculinity to be lifesaving. It may account for why women continue to follow Jesus today.

Unlike the Rabbis and Fathers, Matthew crucifies Rome’s Jesus instead of desire for a pleasurable faith and faithful pleasures. The Mary/Spirit is Matthew’s hammer. By singing along with Matthew, we potentially rise to new life, reorienting our relationships to one another, male and female, and to the world.

VII.7

In Matthew’s gospel, Mary is a figure of the Spirit, and Jesus Messiah is of her, of a tradition of maternal rebellion and conventionality, snake-like cunning and dove-like virtue, queer reproductivity and virginity. Our description of the Spirit in Matthew avoids the problems related to trinitarian definition/personhood outlined by Linn Marie Tonstad in God and Difference: The Trinity, Sexuality, and the Transformation of Finitude (2017), and it clarifies what it means for us to believe in Jesus today.33

Matthew prioritizes the Spirit/Son relationship, thereby deprioritizing the overtermined relationship between Father/Son. In prioritizing the Spirit/Son relationship, Matthew does not overpersonalize either the Spirit or the Son, creating a new disciplinary identity of womanhood, motherhood, or humanity. The Spirit is a feminine figure, a proxy identity for dissident or queer masculinity. Jesus Messiah is the embodiment of her in the world of Roman masculinity.

In prioritizing the Spirit/Son relationship, Matthew does not “castrate” the Father/Son relationship, creating a “vagina dentata.” Mary/Spirit is not an anti-male or anti-masculine woman. She is a rebellious and conventional figure of queer masculinity that anyone who finds it persuasive may embody.

Finally, Matthew does not, as Tonstad does, abstract the Spirit. The Spirit is defined in and through a specific social struggle for dignity and survival, and so it is defined in the terms of that struggle, in the gendered terms that organize life in the (ancient) world. The Spirit is a figure of resistance to Roman male domination, whether secular or religious.

If we are of Jesus, Mary/Spirit is our mother, too. We are pregnant with her and groan inwardly as she gives birth to Jesus in us. Our hope is to fully realize our adoption as the children of God by being like Jesus, the incarnation of Mary/Spirit in the world, the desecration of Roman orthodoxy.

NOTES:

  1. This essay is a reconceived version of my final dissertation chapter, “Messianic Politics.” I thank David M. Halperin for sharing with me the recording of Kiki and Herb performing “Banging In The Nails.” It was recorded by an unnamed source. ↩︎
  2. Pasolini was a gay man. He was also interested in Saint Paul. See his Saint Paul: A Screen Play, trans. Elizabeth Castelli (2014 [1977]). ↩︎
  3. I do not pursue Pasolini’s “reading” of Jesus further because I focus on building my own based on Matthew’s text. ↩︎
  4. Ek changes to ex before a vowel. ↩︎
  5. I do not mean that a person named Matthew wrote the gospel under that name. I have chosen this convention for the sake of clarity and convenience. Citations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted. ↩︎
  6. Jennings qualifies Matthew’s critique of fatherhood. It is, more specifically, a critique of human fatherhood. See note 16 below. ↩︎
  7. Ek/ex is a common preposition in Matthew (e.g., 2:6, 3:9, 3:16, 5:37), yet it functions uniquely in Matthew 1. Here, its usage attunes us to a particular lineage, connecting queer women, to Mary, to the Spirit, to Jesus. Ek/ex in Matthew 1 prepares us to read the Gospel for this scandalous memory. It teaches us to be on the lookout for other kinds of queer feminine connections in Matthew’s gospel. ↩︎
  8. Anna Case-Winters, Matthew: A Theological Commentary on the Bible (2015), 10, 12, 24. ↩︎
  9. Ken Stone, email to the author, emphasis is mine. ↩︎
  10. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder, When Momma Speaks: The Bible and Motherhood from a Womanist Perspective (2016), Kindle edition, 63. Buckhanon Crowder is also interested in Mary’s significance in the Gospel of Luke. See 73-83. ↩︎
  11. A very different, compressed version of II.4 was originally published in my essay, “‘Saint Hillary.’ On Unserious Activism,” in Taking It to the Streets: Public Theologies of Activism and Resistance, ed. Jennifer Baldwin (New York: Lexington Books, 2019): 101-113. See, esp., 106-107. ↩︎
  12. Sigmund Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1953-1974), 418, emphasis is original. All citations of Freud’s work below are from the Standard Edition. ↩︎
  13. Interpretation of Dreams, 418. ↩︎
  14. Interpretation of Dreams, 420, emphasis mine. ↩︎
  15. Interpretation of Dreams, 420. ↩︎
  16. In Greek, angel (ho angelos) is gendered masculine. My interpretation fits this detail, as Matthew resituates Mary in the father’s/man’s place. This is a reasonable reading because grammatical conventions do not describe what we more commonly understand as sex and/or gender (comportment). In other words, the fact that the word angel is gendered masculine in Greek does not necessarily mean that the angel character is imagined as male/having a penis. Textual context always determines what is (im)possible for one’s reading of it. ↩︎
  17. This is consistent with the message of John the Baptist (Matthew 3:7-10). Moreover, as one of Freud’s patients understood, an emphasis on motherhood is a critique of fatherhood as such. In From the History of An Infantile Neurosis, Freud observes that his patient’s “sexual researches . . . gained something from what he was told about the sacred story . . . . He now heard that Mary was called the Mother of God . . . . [A]s a result of what he was told, he was bewildered as to who Christ’s father really was. He was inclined to think Joseph. . .but his Nanya said that Joseph was only ‘like’ a father and that his real father was God . . . . He understood this much: if the question was one that could be argued about at all, then the relation between father and son could not be such an intimate one as he had always imagined it to be” (65, emphasis mine). ↩︎
  18. Freud often comments on the connection of water to birth. For example, in the Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Freud observes: “Birth is almost invariably represented [in dreams] by something which has a connection to water: one either falls into water or climbs out of it, one rescues someone from water or is rescued by someone—that is to say, the relation is of mother to child” (153, emphasis original). Freud further argues that the dreamer does not know this because they know that “all terrestrial animals” evolved from “aquatic creatures” or because they know that they started out in “amniotic fluid,” but rather because they have been taught the myth of the stork (160). “He is told in his nursery that the stork brings babies . . . from the water” (160). The stork myth (i.e., an adult lie) is problematic because it “contributes much to making children feel lonely and to developing their independence” (318). In The Future of An Illusion, Freud extends his analysis to the sphere of religion: “The truths contained in religious doctrines are after all so distorted and systematically disguised that the mass of humanity cannot recognize them as truth. The case is similar to what happens when we tell a child that new-born babies are brought by the stork. . . . We have been convinced that it is better to avoid such symbolic disguisings of the truth . . . and not to withhold from [children] a knowledge of the true state of affairs commensurate with their intellectual level” (44-45). Religious doctrine and the stork are weirdly intertwined here because of what is at stake in the so-called innocent lies adults tell their children about sexuality. Soon, the child discovers the role of the father in their birth, traumatically disrupting their seamless relationship with their first love, the mother. They are now dependent on their rival, the father, for protection: “The father himself constitutes a danger for the child, perhaps because of his its earlier relationship with its mother. Thus it fears him no less than it longs for and admires him. . . .The defense against childish helplessness is what lends its characteristic features to the adult’s reaction to the helplessness which he has to acknowledge—a reaction that is precisely the formation of religion” (24, emphasis original). Matthew’s emphasis on the Mother/Son relationship may also turn out to be a critique of religion. The ritual of baptism, for example, may teach us to take the Father/Son relationship less seriously. ↩︎
  19. This is further justification for aligning the angel with the Spirit/Mary. See note 14 above. ↩︎
  20. A voice “from the cloud” repeats this declaration at Jesus’ transfiguration, adding the command, “Listen to him!” (Matthew 17:5). See VI.1. ↩︎
  21. See note 16 above. ↩︎
  22. Joseph is a figure of God the Father. It is beyond the scope of this project to pursue this reading. ↩︎
  23. Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (1983), esp. chapter 5. ↩︎
  24. Jennings, Transforming Atonement: A Political Theology of the Cross (2009), 120. ↩︎
  25. See “What Is Traditional Gay Male Theology(, Now)?,” section IV. ↩︎
  26. Lyrics from Taylor Swift’s song, “Marjorie”, perfectly translate 10:16b: “Never be so kind / You forget to be clever / Never be so clever / You forget to be kind.” ↩︎
  27. In Gustave Flaubert’s tale, A Simple Heart ([1877] 2005), Félicité is self-effacing, long-suffering, dutiful, and so forth (i.e., a simple heart). Her parrot, Loulou, becomes the love of her life. Upon Loulou’s death, she has him stuffed, and she installs him in her room. “When she went to church, she would sit gazing at the picture of the Holy Spirit and it struck her that it looked rather like her parrott. The resemblance was even more striking in an Epinal colour print depicting Our Lord’s baptism. The dove had wings of crimson and a body of emerald-green and it looked for all the world like Loulou” (34-35). ↩︎
  28. For a similar argument, see Adam Kotosko, Why We Love Sociopaths: A Guide To Late Capitalist Television (2012). ↩︎
  29. See “hē peristera” in A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, ed. Fredrick William Danker (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2000), emphasis mine. ↩︎
  30. The United States Supreme Court decision in City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson (June 28, 2024) now empowers local governments to legally expel the unhoused from public spaces. ↩︎
  31. See Reuther, “Judaism and Christianity: Two Fourth-Century Religions,” in Sciences Religieuses / Studies in Religion 2 (1972): 1-10. ↩︎
  32. Matthew 19:10-12 is a unique saying about eunuchs, connected to Isaiah 56:4-7. See Jennings, The Man Jesus Loved, 105-154, for commentary on this unique saying. ↩︎
  33. Tonstad, God and Difference, esp. 227-253. ↩︎

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