Places and Secrets
Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, Year A; Mark 1:29-39
Topography—place—is important in Mark; it is almost a form of theology. The places where Jesus speaks and acts function as a kind of coded backdrop to his ministry, and we quickly learn to associate particular places, or types of place, with the form of Jesus’ actions and with how he will be received. Often the narrative contrasts his actions and his reception in successive places, with different geographical and social characteristics alternating or emphasizing the changes.
Apart from the polarity of heaven and earth—not just places but spiritual forces—the most obvious of these contrasts may be that between Galilee and Jerusalem, which shapes the whole Gospel. In Galilee, Jesus is welcomed among his own, and lives with the humble who are struggling under foreign oppression and elite indifference; in Jerusalem, although it is the dwelling of the Most High, he himself will be the one to experience rejection and suffering. When he is raised from death, the fearful women are then instructed to return to Galilee, the place of the poor who had accepted him, to meet the risen Jesus.
Yet there are also contrasts at a more local level, even within Galilee. Capernaum itself gets mixed reviews, and Jesus will not stay long after this set of episodes. A real contrast emerges there between the more civic and institutional aspect of the city and its less formal, communal dimension. While Jesus has just made a foray into the synagogue, which seemed at best a passively hostile environment, there is a palpable shift of tone as he moves to the domestic sphere and to Peter’s house.
To this point Jesus has been a mysterious and powerful figure, whose humanity or at least compassion has had no real chance to appear—there has been only the barest glance at any sort of interior or emotional life, when his experience of the heavenly voice at his own baptism is recorded. Here however, in a home rather than in public, we have hints not just of mysterious power, but of personal relationships and the exercise of his power in healing—this being the first healing story as such in the Gospel.
Jesus, told of the fever Simon Peter’s mother-in-law is suffering, acts on it immediately and effectively. Her response, to serve, emphasizes her recovery via fulfillment of expected hospitality, but also hints that Jesus’ actions are not merely focused on individual suffering or pathology; they address the place of illness and suffering socially, their capacity to prevent the one in need of healing from fulfilling their place in community.
So the significance of Jesus’ action here is not merely, or not so much, that he is able to do unexpected things, as what specific things he does. As Ched Myers puts it, these acts “were powerful not because they challenged the laws of nature, but because they challenged the very structure of social existence.”1
Along with the curious obliqueness about his teaching at the Capernaum synagogue in last week’s Gospel went a reluctance on Jesus’ part to be recognized or announced at all, a single demon exorcised as much for the sake of silencing it as anything else. These two related motifs now recur in the remarkable story of a mass gathering outside the Capernaum house, where “the whole city” gathers and “many” sick persons are healed and “many” demons expelled.” In the latter case he again warns the spirits not to identify him. And while Jesus soon announces the importance of leaving there to proclaim “the message,” we have still not read in so many words just what that message was.
We have now encountered enough of this theme of mystery, what is often referred to as the “Messianic Secret,” to consider it more directly. In a liturgical year with a longer period between Epiphany and Lent, we would hear two more stories that add to this puzzling picture of the early ministry (1:40-35, 2:1-12, on the 6th and 7th Sundays), but it continues through the whole narrative of Mark.
Contrary to our assumptions, Jesus does not want to be recognized or publicized, even though he wants to “proclaim the message.” His desire to encounter many in order to share the message, or for healing or exorcism, does not equate to a desire for fame or popularity—a distinction worth pondering. Mark also tells us this was not a completely successful or realistic strategy, given we also hear often—including this week—about his resulting reputation.
The concern for secrecy intersects with the theological geography or topography of Mark, in the recurrent motif of Jesus’ quest for solitude (v.35). While Christian tradition has often commended spiritual solitude in imitation of Jesus, this is not Mark’s point. While Mark does of course emphasize that Jesus prays, the “solitary place” is another geographical shift that reflects his unique experience, relative to the crowds and the fame, rather than being first an implied statement about prayer or spirituality generally. This is the embodied performance of the messianic secret.
In 1901 scholar William Wrede first discussed the motif of the messianic secret at length, but argued it was artificial, a device used by Mark to compensate for a lack of messianic self-designation in the earlier oral traditions about Jesus. While the importance of the secret is incontestable, Wrede’s explanation is unconvincing; the motif is too pervasive to be just a sort of overlay, but essential. As Vincent Taylor puts, the messianic secret “lies behind almost every narrative in Mark.”2
The secret will of course be revealed in time, but it is so readily misunderstood, at least this side of Cross and Resurrection, that it cannot properly be shared without misconstrual or manipulation. Adela Collins suggests the motif of the secret serves “to reveal and yet conceal Jesus and to imply that, during his lifetime, his identity was similarly revealed yet concealed.”3
Mark places the reader with the disciples; we are called to follow, and to be in relationship with this one in whose mysterious power we place our hope. Our growth in understanding however will not simply be straightforwardly incremental, but must involve our following the geography of his ministry, from Galilee to Jerusalem, and back to Galilee, and to discover in those places just who he really is.
Binding the Strong Man : A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus. Maryknoll, N.Y. : Orbis Books, 1988. pp. 147-8
The Gospel according to Mark (London: Macmillan, 1951), p. 123.
Mark: A Commentary. Hermeneia. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007, p.172