![sign[1]](http://politicaljesus.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/sign1.jpg "sign[1]")
Recently, the Metropolitan Community Churches located in Texas (a very socially-conservative Red State) has started a billboard campaign to start a conversation on the Christian position on homosexuality. It has stirred some controversy, but there has not been any really debate about the queer interpretation of this passage.
With an appeal to the key authority for Christians, the Bible, the billboards quote passages such as Matthew 8:5-13 or reading Ruth 1:14 along with Genesis 2:24. Since Matthew is pertaining to the Gospel in the New Testament, with a claim that Jesus affirmed a union between a man and a man, I have a question. If Jesus indeed does affirm the homosexual relationship between the Roman centurion and his young SLAVE boy, which, in the original greek the term for slave or boy used in the passage is pais, according to a queer interpretation, means a same-gender loving partner. However, the use of the term partner is questionable, indeed. It was hardly a mutual partnership; far from it, the term pais refers to a subordinate relationship between a master and his slave. I am just wondering that if Jesus’s miracle simply means an affirmation of the centurion’s and SLAVE’s humanity, that he also is affirming and therefore endorsing their human situation: the situation that I am referring to is the enslavement of a young boy. Question: Does that mean that Jesus, our LORD and Savior, endorses human enslavement ?
Isn’t Pais used to denote Christ in relation to the Father?
That is used as well, as in Matt 12. And angels according to Job 4:18 in the LXX. And the messiah as in Isaiah 42:1 LXX AND iSAIAH 52:13 lxx.
So we have have gay angels, and a Father with a gay Son? Bad interpretations lead to stupidity
I know, but according to Halden, John Milbank once referred to the angels as sort of queer.
http://www.inhabitatiodei.com/2009/04/23/what-gives-with-milbank/
I do not know the source, however.
interesting topic. another question of endorsement might concern empire (by way of the centurion).
i found the context in ch. 8 interesting. right after the sermon on the mount (5-7), Jesus . . .
1. touched and healed a leper (8.1-4),
2. acknowledged the faith of a gentile and answered his request (8.5-13),
3. showed concern for a woman (8.14-15), and
4. showed concern for outcasts (i.e. demoniacs, 8.16-17)
these are not the high-up people that most people thought messiah would be concerned with. maybe the question centers more on why Jesus, right after a sermon about righteousness towards God and others (matt. 5-7), is a present helper for those whom 1st-century readers would least expect him to be concerned with.
it’s interesting how many times Jesus calls the pharisees “faithless” in matthew, yet here the roman centurion has “such great faith” (8.11). i think we’re getting a hint in this passage that the gospel is not merely for israel, a thought that culminates with the great commission in matt. 28 and is also a huge hebrew bible theme (gen 12.1-4; isaiah 2.1-4; mal 1.11, 14; etc.).
just offering some thoughts
Thank you, Mike.
The categories are right but the solution and the reading of the same is only possible through the death of the Anointed. No relationship is by nature Holy but any relationship taken through the door of his death is. Jesus knows how to cure by this means. By cure I do not mean ‘change to what we think is right’, but cure in the sense of preserve – such as is done by salting for instance or the hardening of steel. Every sacrifice shall be salted with salt.
So Bob,
Jesus redeems the nature of the relationship between the centurion and the pais through his death? So, that would make the nature of the relationship unholy? Which means that jesus is not affirming the relationship, but is pointing out that there is something lacking in the relationship? If this is what you are saying, than Jesus is not merely affirming the humanity of those who receive his miracles. That, I could agree.
inasmuchas there is something lacking in all relationships
healing is not pointing out something lacking, it is making it whole
so the question is will we allow Jesus to make whole what we disapprove of a priori?
I think you are going to have to clarify. I feel like I am missing your point and I do not want to respond by possibly misinterpreting you.
My position on the healings/miracles of Jesus is that, like everything, he is pointing us to what his Father is doing, which is bringing life and radically changing our relationships with God and others. As for affirming relationships through or making them whole, I believe that the interpretation falls short. Jesus’ works are for the Father first (thus, his obedience) and then us second. I think these works are showing Christ’s divinity; if he was here to just make our relationships whole, he would not have said, ‘he has not come to bring peace (unity, etc), but a sword, or that the real family members for Christ are not his extended family or clan, but those who obey him–a fairly subversive notion for Jesus’s day and age. That would not be affirming relationship in the status quo but changing them.
I would certainly agree with you. He does what he sees the Father doing. So must we all learn to do likewise – and greater things.
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