Transcript
But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him. Please be seated.
How many of you remember your school days? Maybe not grade school, maybe college or professional training. But whenever it was, how many of you remember having that one teacher or that one subject that did not make sense? No matter how many times you asked for an explanation, or how many times you stayed late or met with a tutor.
For me, those subjects were the tangible math and science subjects, things like geometry and trigonometry. I had to get a tutor because I almost failed Trig when I was in high school. And biology, and physics. I remember trying so hard to remember this one lab we did on DNA. I still don’t fully get it.
The irony of all of this is the fact that the first time I got an A in a math class was in calculus, Once they introduced imaginary numbers. And a hobby of mine now is quantum physics, thought experiments, and super abstract and creative scientific theories. But anyway, how many of us remember having a teacher who, yes, like all teachers, had patience and would repeat themselves and answer questions and do their best and explaining the lesson to you? And yet, no matter how many times you asked, and no matter how many times they answered, you still just could not get the lesson. I imagine that is what the disciples are feeling right about now in Mark’s gospel.
You see, today’s gospel reading from Mark, this time chapter nine, may seem to have a similar pattern from last week’s gospel reading from Mark, except last week was chapter eight. It also happens again in chapter ten, a passage we’ll get in several weeks. This thing when Jesus starts to explain what will happen to him- his betrayal, his arrest, his crucifixion, his death, and eventually his resurrection- The disciples just don’t get it. They didn’t get it last week. They won’t get it when we read the passage in chapter ten, and they don’t get it today.
Literally, today’s passage says, “but they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him. They did not understand and were afraid to ask.” Kind of like my experience with Trig.
This piece, though, this bit of conversation between Jesus and the disciples, it oddly goes nicely with the secret. You know, The Secret. And no, I don’t mean that 2006 self-help book that was super popular once upon a time. Instead, I mean, The Messianic Secret, the secret that we get all throughout Mark and seems to baffle readers today. So much so that I’ve actually had multiple conversations about it just in the past couple of weeks.
So what is the Messianic secret? Basically, it’s the first half of the second sentence in today’s gospel reading. It was also the end of the first paragraph of last week’s gospel reading, and the second sentence of the gospel reading from the week before that. And as I mentioned, it’s found throughout all of Mark’s gospel. So the Messianic Secret is: don’t tell. Say nothing. Don’t make Jesus known. Often said to Jesus’s disciples, or to those he heals, or even to the demons who recognize him and call out to him.
Literally, the gospel of Mark, chapter three states, “whenever the unclean spirits saw Jesus, they fell down before him and shouted, you are the Son of God! But he sternly ordered them not to make him known.” Today we call this reoccurring theme the Messianic Secret, the idea that Jesus’s Messiahship is a secret that no one is supposed to know. I guess it’s a good thing the disciples don’t fully understand the implication, then. Also, though, why? Why would Jesus not want his messianic identity revealed?
This theory about the messianic secret it came about in the year 1901 by William Reed, a German Lutheran theologian and professor. He argued a couple of reasons why Jesus would want his messianic secret kept secret and closely linked to why the disciples wouldn’t understand Jesus’s predictions. Over the past centuries, we’ve had more ideas, and I have my own. So here are a few of them.
Perhaps Jesus is using reverse psychology. Maybe it’s crowd management. After all, the Messiah is starting to get quite a following. Maybe it’s a historical reality that Jesus’s Messiahship wasn’t recognized until later. Or maybe it’s a rhetorical privilege to the reader. Like we know the ending so we know the secret, but no one else seems to get it while Jesus is alive.
And I want to add, maybe it’s self doubt or self insecurity. Because let’s be honest, if Jesus was both 100% divine and 100% human, then Jesus had to experience all the things we also experience. And while we do get stories of Jesus experiencing grief when he weeps at Lazarus grave, and Jesus experiencing fear when he asked God to take the cup away from him in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus also has to experience all the other things we experience as humans. The insecurities, the anxieties, the preoccupation with being enough, as in good enough or strong enough or whatever might be the qualifier of being enough.
So maybe, what if… Jesus isn’t trying to hide his identity from the world. Instead, what if Jesus just wasn’t completely sure it was going to be true? Jesus wasn’t completely sure of his own messianic status. Wasn’t completely sure that God the Father’s plan was in line with Jesus the man and Jesus the Messiah’s plan.
After all, we all know that saying, actually, based on a line in Proverbs, something like God laughs when we make plans. The actual passage is the human mind plans the way, but the Lord directs the steps. But you know what I mean.
Add to the Messianic Secret the fact that we are created. We are humans, limited in our very beings. And the Messiah is a concept so great, so unimaginable, so impossible that maybe instead of Jesus trying to keep his Messiahship a secret, he is trying to protect us from making, dare I say, stupid mistakes.
After all, just look at the disciples, the ones Jesus specifically called individually to follow him. They are literally there with Jesus and they still don’t seem to understand it. Perhaps that is why the ending of today’s gospel reading includes a new character, a child, innocent, unknowing, naive, perhaps even a bit mischievous.
Fun fact for those of us who don’t have children, they use up a lot of resources. They don’t contribute to the household funds, and honestly, they seem to create more chores than they actually do. This is according to many of the commentaries I read for this sermon.
And while, yes, like children, we also require a lot of God’s resources, a lot of God’s attention. We could also benefit from a childlike faith, knowing that we may never fully know the impact of Jesus as the Messiah, may never fully understand the secret of Messiahship, may never fully realize exactly who Jesus was and what Jesus did for each and every single one of us. But if it’s at all helpful, at least we know we’re not alone. Even the disciples didn’t really understand or know who Jesus was.
And if misery doesn’t love company, or in this case, lack of knowledge, maybe at least it gives us comfort to know that even in our own doubts and fears and anxieties, we are not alone. The disciples had all of those things too, and Jesus probably did too. And that is okay.
Jesus didn’t want anyone to know who he really was. And yet we all still found out. The plan was fulfilled. The Messiahship revealed. May we as humans have trust in God fulfilling God’s plan for each of us based on our own identities as children of God.
Jesus didn’t want his true identity known. Perhaps he was scared. May we not be as scared. May we trust that we will one day fully know the truth of Jesus’s identity, as well as our own.
Amen.