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After following ancient prophets around the desert, lusting after Greek gods and goddesses and spying on Roman emperors, we have at last arrived at Jesus Christ.
I plan to tackle Christianity in the next few columns; next month we will meet St. Paul, who makes the only references to homosexuality in the entire Christian Bible (New Testament). Incidentally, I use the Jerusalem Bible for all Biblical quotes because it is a relatively new and widely accepted translation.
Before plunging right in with observations bound to land me in immediate hot water with a lot of Christians, I must reveal that I am a strong, lifelong, albeit very liberal, Christian; in speaking frankly about Jesus Christ and his life, I mean no disrespect whatsoever.
That said, it is clear to me that Jesus Christ was gay, and that his lover was St. John the Divine, writer of one of the four gospels. John always refers to himself as "the beloved," which, for the Greeks and Romans of that time, meant the younger man in a same-sex relationship.
I hasten to add that I am not the first to make this statement. This was common talk in the Middle Ages. St. Aelred of Rievaulx, who we will meet later on, was positively ecstatic about this example of a "passionate friendship." I must admit that contemplating it makes me rather happy, too.
Here are just a few of those references. At the Last Supper, "The disciple Jesus loved was reclining next to Jesus." (John 13:25) On Easter morning, "Mary came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and told them that the stone of the tomb had been moved." (John 20:2) From the cross, Jesus gave his mother into the care of "the disciple he loved." (John 19:27). You may well ask, "What were the other disciples, chopped liver?"
You do not have to turn on your gaydar very high to detect all the other signs either. Jesus was single into his 30s. He hung around mostly with men, and encouraged several to leave their wives. He had few female friends, all apparently named Mary — except for one named Martha. (The precursor of Martha Stewart? At one point (Luke 10:42), he does tell her, "Martha, Martha. . . you worry and fret about so many things"!)
His devotion to his mother, also named (what else?) Mary, is legendary, but you never hear anything about poor St. Joseph, his "father." Obviously, Jesus had a deep sense of spirituality. He was a charismatic teacher; he healed the sick; he told people entertaining stories; he fed the hungry; he served wine at the wedding. About the only "gay" occupations left out here are hairdresser and airline steward!
To the eternal chagrin and disappointment of the religious right, Jesus Christ never says a single word about homosexuality. In fact, even sexuality seems to be a matter of complete indifference to him. He affirms marriage between men and women, but he also says that such marriage is not for all (Matthew 19:3 -12), and it certainly wasn't for him. The closest thing we have to a girlfriend in his life is St. John.
If you ever want to see a fundamentalist turn pale, start to shake, and look like he or she has seen the devil in the flesh, just mention Jesus Christ and sex in the same breath. The general Christian belief is that Jesus was exactly like us, except for sin, and since sex is sinful(!), he didn't have any. This includes masturbation, sexual thoughts, and the whole repressive list of things the nuns warned me to avoid if I didn't want to go directly to hell without passing go.
So Jesus lived as a human being for thirty-three years without any kind of sexual thought or expression whatsoever. This is the official Christian party line.
To put this as delicately as I can, baloney! A major part of being human is being sexual, and I certainly have no problem accepting him as a normal, red-blooded, Jewish boy who jerked off whenever the mood and opportunity struck and who had sexual thoughts about others. However, I do tend to feel that he was celibate. After all, a passionate friendship such as he had with St. John does not have to include sexual activity.
Mark reports the story of Jesus' temptation in the garden and subsequent arrest. Then comes this: "A young man who followed him had nothing on but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him but he left the cloth in their hands and ran away naked" (Mark 14:51, 52)
Every minister I have ever asked about this little item has only been able to offer that it is some sort of allegory. But why does our reporter mention it in the middle of a straightforward news story? As radical as this may be, I feel that part of Christ's pain here was the temptation to violate either his celibacy or his deep relationship with John.
The naked young man was probably just a guy looking for sex in the park. I can certainly empathize with Jesus wrestling with his human desire to get sexually involved. This is the area that Nikos Kazantzakis explored in The Last Temptation of Christ, and that got the eponymous Martin Scorsese film picketed by many Christians and banned by the Catholic Church when it came out a few years ago. He also presented Jesus in sexual situations and vividly showed the resulting torment.
To think of Jesus as gay and/or sexually active does not disturb my faith at all. You might as well tell me that his mother was a redhead or that John the Baptist liked mud wrestling! His sexuality does not matter one iota in the grand scheme of why he came or who he was. In fact, I like to feel that it actually improves things when, like the Native American berdache, Jesus Christ was, in a real and totally human way, the bridge between heaven and earth, and between men and women.
Next time: To circumcise or not to circumcise? That is the question
For more information: Richard Cleaver has written an excellent book called Know My Name on gay liberation theology; it takes a new look at the place of gay men and women in the Christian community.
Charlie Emond teaches in Springfield. He has a bachelor's degree from Queens
College and master's degrees from both Dartmouth and Keene State.
He teaches college history courses including a course he developed: Hidden
History: Homosexuality in Western Civilization.
