Jesus said:

There are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Matthew 19:12 – June 23, 2012)

Okay . . . . This makes me very uncomfortable on a Saturday morning! Jesus says this after condemning divorce and saying it would be better not to marry. The description of “eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” is usually understood as a metaphorical statement of dominical authorization of clerical celibacy. I mean, really, can self-castration be anything other than a metaphor for voluntarily abstaining from marriage, family life, and sex? ~ Jesus’ description of the first two sorts of eunuchs is squarely within Jewish tradition. The Hebrew word usually translated “eunuch” (saris) describes two categories of sexually impotent persons: those born impotent and those subsequently rendered so. In Deuteronomy and Leviticus, men who are sexually impotent as a result of birth or of accident are denied certain rights and obligations and considered to be of inferior social status. Jesus, thus, uses of the word “eunuch” twice in a literal sense familiar to Jewish tradition, would he have suddenly changed gears and use it in a metaphorical sense meaning something quite different? This would not be typical of his style. ~ So who are those in the third category? I find it troubling that Jesus speaks in the present tense, referring not to some conditional future but to men living at his time: “there are eunuchs who have made themselves . . . .” Who are they? In Jesus’ society, deliberate castration was repulsive to all social instincts, contrary to the Law, or associated the idolatry of foreign religions. So one must ask: To what phenomenon could Jesus possibly have been referring? ~ Here’s the kicker . . . we don’t have any way of knowing. Jesus might have been familiar with the castrati priests of pagan cults, maybe that’s the reference. He was surely familiar with the ascetic Jewish sects such as the Essenes, maybe that’s the reference. There’s been a suggestion that because of his own celibacy (and that of his followers) that “eunuch” was tossed as them as a taunting jeer, maybe this is a response to that. There’s little, if any, biblical support for any of these suppositions, so it’s a toss-up! ~ My point is this: I don’t know what Jesus is talking about, but whatever it is it makes me squirm very uncomfortably! And guess what? That’s true of a lot of Scripture; there are a lot of things in the Bible that I don’t understand and that make me squirm. I read recently that any exegetical hermeneutic should include “a clear sense of the impossibility of closure.” This is one of those times when “closure” about the scriptures is simply not possible.