Do you ever wonder why Jesus said some of the things he said, and did some of the things he did?
One of the most puzzling aspects of much of Jesus ministry is the fact that he seems to often ask his follower not to tell anyone what they have seen. Now, because most of us have been reading and listening to the bible since we were children, we probably don’t stop often enough to ask obvious questions.
So here’s an obvious question: Why would Jesus, the Messiah, the saviour of mankind, not want people to know that he had the power to perform miracles, or to forgive sins?
Well, if we look at today’s reading, we begin to see a possible answer to that question. I am currently re-reading a book I first read at college. Marcus Borg was a pivotal figure in New Testament scholarship from the 1970’s until his death in 2015. He has written extensively on all the Gospels. But his book on Mark explores some of the themes that underpin the text and help us understand the audience it was written for. He suggests that these early chapters introduce the idea of conflict in Jesus Ministry, and that this is a theme which frames his public ministry; at the beginning and the end of his three or so years of ministry, Jesus was challenged, and threatened by scribes, and particularly by Pharisees. Scribes were educated men whose job was to interpret the bible, whilst pharisees were all about ritual observance. In Mark’s Gospel, which we will read this year, we see chapters 2 and 3 are dominated by these encounters which always involve conflict of some sort with authorities of one sort or another.
So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that Jesus began his ministry in Capernaum and not in Jerusalem or Nazareth. Capernaum was a village in Galilee. It sat by the lake, and nearly all of those who lived there would have been involved in the fishing industry. It was a fairly small village – only about 1500 people lived there during Jesus time and it remined a place where people lived and worked until around 100AD when it was abandoned, almost certainly because of the first crusade.
So if we were to compare Jesus decision to begin his ministry in Capernaum, with a location here in Queensland, I suppose we could say that it is as if he picked somewhere like Stanage Bay. And if you don’t know that Stanage Bay is a tranquil fishing spot in the Livingstone area of Queensland, you probably will now understand that Capernaum has a similar vibe; it was not a well know place. But Just like Stanage Bay, far away from the hustle and bustle of the city, Capernaum had a peaceful, laid back rhythm to life.
On the outskirts of the village is the synagogue. You can still visit it today and stand in the very room where Jesus began his ministry. Mark tells us that Jesus spoke as one with authority, not as a scribe; in other words, there was something about Jesus, about the way this wiry young man held an audience, that made him stand out.
Just down the road from the synagogue is a church. It stands on the site of a house which tradition holds is the home of Simon. It makes sense; its about 2 minutes from the synagogue and it was a small plot, the kind of size a fisherman’s family would have. And it is here, in this house that we begin to really see the kind of power Jesus has. He heals Simon’s mother in law, and the gossip factory that is a small community spreads so that within a couple of hours most of the village is in the street outside Simon’s house trying to see who this man is. He healed the sick and cast out demons that day. And the next day he began his journey south.
If we go back to that original question I asked – why didn’t Jesus want people to know about his skills and abilities, we might begin to answer by saying something like “ because so many people flocked to see him” or “because he was worried about the authorities arresting him.” But Ched Myers, the American theologian suggests that Jesus’ reluctance to be open and proclaim God’s power withing in him was because he not only challenged the laws of nature, but that he challenged societal structure. Jesus was no doubt aware that his very existence was going to continually challenge the entire fabric of the world he inhabited and he had to be careful about what to reveal, to who and how. And this is one of the reasons Jesus is often mysterious, why he speaks in metaphors and pictures and doesn’t answer questions directly.
For the last hundred or so years we have referred to this idea as the “Messianic Secret.” The theologian William Wrede explored the idea in 1901; most of his ideas have been dismissed, but the name and the concept has stuck, and it is a puzzling conundrum.
There is tension in Jesus ministry from the very beginning. He has a message to proclaim and he wants it to be heard. But he doesn’t want the message to become about him. This posed a huge problem for Jesus and he wrestled with it throughout his ministry. I get the impression it frustrated his as time went on and he became more famous. And one can argue that he failed in this respect, because Jesus went on to become a celebrity.
When we are faced with conflict, we often see it become polarized in key figures. Think of wars: Hitler and Churchill or Putin and Zelensky. Think of politics: Albanese vs Dutton, or for us Brits, Thatcher vs Kinnock. Think of our church for a moment, we even vest conflict in our church leaders. Think for a moment of names like Glenn Davies and Kanishka Raffael. These church figures are often posed against figures like Jeremy Greaves and Kay Goldsworthy.
Jesus had to know he would face conflict; Jesus vs the Scribes, Jesus vs the Pharisees, Jesus vs Herod, Jesus vs Pilate. But he had to weigh the need to be humble, to be reserved, to focus on a message about his ideas and not himself. We don’t often see this in our modern world. It may be naïve to think we could achieve outcomes if we tried to emulate it. But Jesus leaves us with this conundrum for us to ponder.
Perhaps our leaders would do well to emulate some of Jesus’ ideas about when and who to reveal their thoughts too. Perhaps they should take a little more care in choosing the battles they fight. And Perhaps we would all do a little better if we stopped focusing so much on our selves and our message, but on others and the need to find the right language to communicate with them.
