Almost twenty years ago, there was book published by Leonard Swidler, Jesus was a Feminist. Jesus was neither a feminist in our contemporary meaning, nor was he a patriarch. I would place Jesus in another category, knowing very well that he broke a lot of categories. He troubled his cultural gender boundaries; for he created unsettling gender space. His companionship of empowerment or kindom created new dislocated space outside the gender categories of household. He could hardly be an advocate for traditional family values or married life or the patriarchal household. God’s companionship of empowerment was not known social space; it never was before in history. Jesus understood very well that God’s kindom was no social location, it was no-place, it was outside space yet to be created and realized. Many of his radical sayings challenged gendered household space and roles.

Think for a moment his identification with eunuchs in Matthew 19:12, proto-transgendered folks who were outside male space. Jesus’ opponents used the gender slur of “calling him a eunuch,” much like word “faggot” or “queer” was used against us in earlier times.

But like the word “queer,” Jesus took the slur of eunuch and identified with it. He had a brilliant strategy of taking a slur used against him, appropriate it, and disturb his opponents by being comfortable with it. Jesus announced that there are eunuchs for the kindom of God. To take on the label of eunuchs, Jesus further unsettles the masculine codes of his opponents. By denying the very nature of masculinity and marriage, his use of the image evokes castration anxiety. He recalls the wonderful image in Isaiah 56:4-5:

For thus says the Lord, “To the eunuchs who keep My sabbaths, And choose what pleases Me, And hold fast My covenant. To them I will give in My house and within My walls a memorial, And a name better than that of sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name which will not be cut off…
Jesus deliberately disturbs the gender codes at a primal cultural and religious level for his opponents. To be a man in his culture was to be an honorable man, who was in charge of his household and owned land, dominated his wife, servants, and children. But he created a counter-cultural space, calling male disciples to become itinerant, share the goods, and to leave their families for the mission—to be outside the patriarchal household. There was only one household, with one parent God, and we were God’s beloved children.
Jesus queered his responses and ministry against religious critics. He queered, that is interfered with, troubled the categories that were rigid and exclusive for God’s kindom. He disturbed his religious critics with a larger, more inclusive vision of God’s companionship of empowerment. Radical inclusive was new to tribal thinking or even Roman imperial notion. Both have entrenched hierarchies.

Jesus never defines any notion of queer, but his actions and message are shockingly queer. He shocks with a radical inclusive vision of God with us, and this disturbs the cultural and religious system that Jesus lives with. It imprisons people, creates hierarchy, separates insiders from outsiders, holy from unholy, sinless from sinner.

If I could have been present to Jesus during his time and engaged in conversation, I would describe to him the meaning of queer as “to disturb the world and its categories and rules with God.” And I suspect he might respond, “I am very queer.” Queer works will as interpretative window into Jesus’ ministry and message of God’s reign.

I do think Jesus delighted in creating such gender dislocation of alternative space, outside space that mess with cultural gender definitions. He was continually at odds with his dominant Jewish patriarchal culture and the Roman hyper-masculinist culture of domination and male virility. We see hypermasculine codes and misogyny because Hillary Clinton is a woman candidate. We have not progressed sufficiently on gender equality.

Jesus troubled almost everything in his culture with God. A Norwegian gay biblical scholar Halvor Moxnes, uses the word “queer.” Jesus queered the cultural codes, the gender codes, for queer challenges fixed definitions and codes of gender and cultural normality. Queer does not indicate another category, but points to an “alternative” space and dislocation, a not yet space coming into existence. It is the space of God’s reign breaking in, and that is new.
Moxnes describes the women who followed Jesus as “irregular women.”
They were most likely not bound in marriage, or they had some freedom within the relationship to leave their husbands. They were not childbearing, or had reached the stage of life when they were free because of their age. Thus, their sphere of possibilities had opened up. (Moxnes)

Women accompany Jesus; they support him financially. There is an insider group of women (Lk. 8:2-3), who provide monies and resources for Jesus and his male disciples out of their means (Lk. 8:13) Women disciples journey outside the confines of their homes, accompany him to the cross, and are the first witnesses to his resurrection. Women spatially break the cultural categories of women as respectable daughters, wives, and mothers. Women space is in the household, and Jesus women travel outside the household space into public space unaccompanied and unveiled.
These women are more than “irregular,” perhaps transgressive women who were able to follow Jesus just as his male disciples were. They are liminal, if not disrespectful women, crossing the gender-threshold into male space. Jesus notes that barren women are “blessed” (23:29), and barren women are shamed in the Jewish gender codes. He associates and empowers a Samaritan woman, with five previous husbands and living with a sixth. He does not condemn her. How many churches would condemn and ostracize her, exclude from church? He associates with prostitutes. How many clergy associate with prostitutes? Perhaps, only those clergy, who hire them for sexual service. Jesus disturbs religious categories then as he continues to queer our society with a vision of God who disturbs the world.

Luke the evangelist participates in the masculinist culture codes of Greco-Roman ideology, but he inherits from the Jesus tradition the “discipleship of equals.” There has been a storm of dispute by scholars on the reading of women in Luke’s gospel. Some scholars have claimed that Luke has a positive view of women while others maintain that he has a negative of women as leaders in the Jesus movement. For example, Luke omits the story of the outspoken Gentile woman who wins an argument with Jesus (Mk. 7:24-30). There are no call stories to discipleship for women recorded in the gospels; and they remain at the narrative fringes of the gospels. Yet Luke has to accommodate the fact that irregular women were present in the Jesus’ history. There are more women visible in Luke’s gospel, but they are generally silent. It is only we realize that these were queer women, who broke gender categories for the sake of Jesus’ message of God’s kindom. We give voice and recognize their queerness.

The story of Martha and Mary (10:38-42) has germinated a very productive and conflicting discussion on whether it supports women’s leadership role or submission to male leadership in the Jesus movement and later missionary activities of the church.

First, it is a story about hospitality. Martha is the dominant figure who welcomes Jesus into her household. There seems to be no male head of the household. Perhaps a younger brother, Lazarus, in the later story of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus in John’s gospel.

Mary is more marginalized person initially in the story. Martha appears to be extravagantly preparing a feast for Jesus while Mary has chosen to sit at the feet of Jesus listening to his teaching. She has broken female stereotypes ad assumed a male disciple position, sitting at the feet of Jesus.

But this is a story about more than hospitality. These two women are irregular women. Mary is silent and passively listening to Jesus’ instruction while Martha is fussing and distracted in her service (diakonia). The Greek used for service is diakonia, and it does not specify domestic service but “designates a commissioned spokesperson or agent, a ‘go-between’ who ministers on the behalf of God.” (Carter) Diakoinia is a loaded word for Jesus’ followers. It is the root word for deacons and deaconesses. Diakonia is the communal service at table that was an essential part of Jesus’ tablefellowship of an open table where people of all kinds joined, talked about their pain as outsiders, shared a meal with God’s presence and acceptance. Diakonia was the service of the greatest as the least, where those disciples would take on the position of the least, women and slaves in washing the feet of the guests. Deacons and deaconesses became later installed positions in Christian service.

Martha is not distracted with kitchen duties as traditionally preached but she is focused with her duties that included care for followers, teaching, and preaching. She is fussing over what she needs to do while her partner in ministry Mary is sitting at the feet of Jesus. Her problem is with what she perceives as Mary’s slackness. Martha is an overzealous disciple committed to the goal of hospitality.

I understand Martha’s role of fussing very much on Sunday morning.
Jesus’ loving reprimand is a reminder to take some time out, not be anxious, and just chill out like Mary. The work will get done. And I need to often to remind myself of Jesus’ words to chill out.

A queer reading might build on the liturgical nature of the text. Mary intrudes on male space, receiving a theological education that authorizes her leadership. She is one of those irregular women following Jesus, preparing herself as a disciple. But Martha also is a person in charge of the household, trying to ensure that hospitality is extended to all. Martha, I am sure, in the post Easter Jesus movement probably became a house church leader and presider or presbyter.

I need to point out that many of the Pauline house churches were led by women. They took serious the baptismal formula: “There is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, nor freed and slave in Christ.” (Gal. 3:28) The irregular women in Jesus movement took this serious, and Paul panicked in his letters to Corinth as women became prophets and leaders not only in the church households but extended that leadership into public male space. Paul panicked while Jesus enjoyed disturbing or queering cultural space of the household and the public.
Irregular women are paradigms of discipleship in Gabriel’s annunciation to Mary the mother of Jesus, Martha and Mary, the women at the tomb, and perhaps the unnamed partner of Cleopas in the encounter with the risen Jesus on the road to Emmaus, or Lydia in Acts of the Apostles. Irregular women were equal to irregular men in God’s kindom.

They became deaconesses, presbyters, and even bishops in the first and into the second century CE. And I am glad that the United Methodist Church in its western region elected its first lesbian bishop this week, Karen Oliveto.
And I rejoice that women are celebrated with men as irregular men and women dedicated to Jesus’ very queer vision that there is an equality of discipleship in his movement for God’s reign. May all churches attain the gender equality that Jesus envisioned.