Saint Margaret’s
Anglican Church
Budapest, Hungary
Jesus ordered them to tell no one…
One of the enduring questions or issues of New Testament studies in the past century or so has been the hypothesis of the so-called Messianic Secret. First articulated in the late nineteenth century by German theologians, including the famous Albert Schweitzer, this theory postulates that for reasons which are not entirely clear the Evangelists, most especially Mark, have our Lord repeatedly admonishing his disciples and followers not to tell anyone of the miracles he has been performing and of the meaning of the Parables he has been telling, not to tell anyone in other words that he is the Messiah. Hence, the term Messianic Secret. Don’t tell anyone.
Now, why would our Lord do that…? Why would he not want his followers to tell of his wonderful deeds and words…? The concept almost seems counter-intuitive from our twenty-first century Christian perspective. Left to our own devices, we might well have expected, wanted, Jesus to encourage his disciples to proclaim the Good News of the Messiah’s coming, as we today encourage each other to spread the faith and make our Lord known far and wide to everyone we encounter. Why all the secrecy, Jesus…? That is what the German theologians wanted to know a century ago.
Well, several explanations have been offered over the decades, perhaps the most common one being that it would simply have been dangerous in Israel in Roman times to declare the coming of a Messiah. Maybe, but a bit simplistic, if you ask me. Our Lord does not seem to have been particularly intimidated by anyone, much less Romans. Others suggest that from a theological or spiritual point of view it was not yet time for this profound revelation that the Kingdom has come and that it would only be after the Resurrection that the world would be ready to accept our Lord as Messiah and saviour. But in spite of our Lord’s admonition not to, people do proclaim what they have seen and experienced. Zealously, even.
So, neither explanation seems entirely adequate to me. Our Lord’s demand for secrecy, it seems, has much more to do with the mystery of the Kingdom he has come to proclaim, a Kingdom which is not of this world, not of human making, and at some level not of human knowing or understanding. We see this clearly in today’s passage from very nearly the middle of the Gospel of Mark, the more or less twin healing stories of the daughter of a Gentile woman possessed by an unclean, or evil, spirit and of the man who is deaf and unable to speak, dumb, as used to be said of such unfortunate people.
Now, to begin with, keep in mind that our Lord has set out, presumably alone and for the very first time, for Gentile territory, for the region to Tyre to the north of Israel, today’s Lebanon; and for reasons which are not explained, he does “not want anyone to know” he is there. More secrecy. While there, a Gentile woman of all people, encounters our Lord and challenges him to exercise his healing power on behalf of her daughter. After a brief and rather tart exchange of words and insults, perhaps more playful than earnest, our Lord acquiesces, and the daughter is healed, sight unseen.
And this Gentile woman leaves our Lord’s presence, knowing the healing power of his words and knowing the healing power of her own tenacious expression of hope and faith. The Messiah has come; the Kingdom has reached even her in her humility in far-off Gentile territory. She returns quietly to her own home and to her daughter, now healed of that unclean spirit. The mystery of the Kingdom knows no bounds, it seems, no earthly distances; knows no alienation of peoples, Jew or Gentile European, African, or Asian; knows no secrets.
Returning to Galilee, Jesus then encounters a man unable to hear or speak, a man in other words who is himself locked in the unholy secrecy of his own thoughts and mind and spirit, alienated even from those closest to him who bring him to our Lord in the first place. And taking this man yet farther apart “in private, away from the crowd,” as the text tells us, Jesus then opens to him the Messianic Secret as he could never have known it on his own. “Be opened,” our Lord commands, and it is so. This poor deaf mute speaks. I wonder what he said. For this poor man, as for the Gentile woman’s daughter, the Messianic Secret is out; that which in a sense has been hidden for ages in plain sight is made real and true.
Yet “Jesus ordered them to tell no one.” Jesus ordered them to tell no one. Perhaps that is the paradox at the heart of the Messianic Secret itself. That which is hidden is revealed. That which cannot be seen or touched becomes visible and palpable. That which is spoken of in whispers is shouted from the rooftops. The ordinary becomes the extraordinary and astounding. The true Messianic Secret is that it is not a secret at all. The Messianic Secret is the one secret which by its very nature cannot be kept. And, my friends, we are all in on it. So, can you keep a secret…? No, I thought not. Neither can I.
Amen.
The Revd Canon Dr Frank Hegedűs
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