-1- Eunuchs and the Postgender Jesus: Matthew 19:12 and ...

the community, but to be healed of their practices and sexual object choice. Heterosexist
creation theology of the binary paradigm serves as the model according to which sexual
activity and identity is to follow, and deviation therefrom needs to be addressed and made
to conform.
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Where does the eunuch fit in such a sexed ideology? Outside of it altogether. The
eunuch is a figure that not only violates the heterosexual binary dualism, but cannot
participate in it at all. Even as a figure of celibacy, it renounces the forms and practices at
the heart of binary paradigm. Indeed, in the saying of Matthew 19:12 there is absolutely no
suggestion that to be a eunuch is to be someone who is in any way in need of “fixing”,
“healing”, or “reintegration” into society. Jesus heals the blind, the paralyzed, the
possessed, the fevered, the leprous, the hemorrhaging, even the dead, in every case
restoring them to full societal membership. In the case of the eunuch, however, there is no
implication whatsoever of “illness” or social “deformity” in need of restoration. Instead, the
eunuch is held up as the model to follow. Such a model suggests, even in the larger
Matthean context of marriage and divorce, that the rhetorical direction is away from
reinforcement of the binary sex paradigm and its function to establish and naturalize
heterosexual marriage and procreativity. Unlike Isaiah 56 where the eunuch is promised a
return to society and a reward set in terms of that society’s sex-gender ideology (“more
than sons and daughters”), it is the transgressive body of the eunuch that symbolizes the
kingdom. Canonical appeals 108 to creation theology or Torah legislation in an effort to
naturalize the heterosexist imperative ignore or dismiss this figure at their own peril.
Interestingly, this notion of the rejection of the binary sex paradigm finds resonances
even within the canon itself, as the triple tradition report of Jesus’ controversy with the
Sadducees (Mk 12:18-27//Mt 22:23-33//Lk 20:27-39) and the pre-Pauline baptismal
108 Cf. C. Seitz, “Sexuality and Scripture’s Plain Sense: The Christian Community and the Law of God,” in
Homosexuality, Science and the “Plain Sense” of Scripture.