If Asked, Don't Tell:
Secrecy and Jesus

           This Sunday is the last week in the season of Epiphany. The following week we begin forty days of Lent with Ash Wednesday.

           The word "epiphany" means disclosure, manifestation, unveiling or appearance. So, how fitting that Matthew 17 for this week describes one of the greatest "epiphanies" ever — the Transfiguration of Jesus, complete with blinding light, a heavenly voice, and visions of Moses and Elijah.

           But how strange that this disclosure concludes in all three synoptics with a command of secrecy. "Don't tell anyone what you have seen," Jesus told his disciples after the Transfiguration.

Ethiopian depiction of the Transfiguration.

           Back in 1901, the German Lutheran scholar Georg Friedrich Eduard William Wrede published a book called The Messianic Secret that explored a motif that's present in all four gospels, and conspicuously prominent in Mark. The phrase stuck, and ever since then "messianic secret" has been scholarly shorthand for a mysterious phenomenon in the gospels.

           Depending on how you count them, about 15 different times in the gospels Jesus explicitly suppresses knowledge about his identity. There are at least 13 occurrences in Mark alone. Jesus conceals knowledge about himself in several different ways.

           Several times he silenced the evil spirits that he exorcised: "he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was."

           He ordered his own disciples to keep silent about what they had experienced — after Peter's confession of Christ as Messiah, and after the Transfiguration.

           Jesus also told some of the people he had healed to keep silent: "Jesus sent him away with a strong warning: 'See to it that you don't tell this to anyone.'"

           In private discussions away from the crowds, Jesus told his disciples that he "explained everything" about the "secret of the kingdom" to them, whereas those on the "outside" got only obfuscating parables. And those parables, we read in another place, both reveal and hide truth at the same time.

           When he traveled, sometimes Jesus "did not want anyone to know where they were." In John 7, for example, he went to the Feast of Tabernacles "in secret" in order to hide his identity.

           In the beatitudes of Matthew 6, Jesus taught us to give, to pray, and to fast, all "in secret." God the Father, he says, will "see what is done in secret."

           There are also broader corollaries to these specific examples. Until he burst onto the public scene for three years of ministry, Jesus lived for thirty years in total obscurity — a secret life about which we know nothing at all.

The Transfiguration, batiq by Solomon Raj, India.

           Paul told the Corinthians, the Ephesians, and the Colossians that the gospel was a secret or mystery that had been revealed.

           The earliest Christians who worshipped in the catacombs of Rome were criticized by pagans for their secret meetings and bizarre rituals, rumored to include cannibalism, incest, and infanticide. They were people of the periphery — antisocial, avoiding the theater and the games, and apolitical, refusing to run for office. The Christians, griped the critic Caecilius, "do not understand their civic duty."

           There was at least some justification for the charge of secrecy — early baptismal instruction lasted many months, during which time the full gospel was deliberately kept secret from the baptismal candidates.

           Why all this secrecy? What does it mean, in its original context and for us today?

           Ever since Wrede, scholars have debated every aspect of the "secrecy motif." Some people even think it's an overeading or much ado about nothing.

           It might have been a political strategy by Jesus to avoid unwanted attention from the Roman authorities. There's also a sense that he was "biding his time" and that he didn't want any premature ending to his mission. But neither of these explains why secrecy is such a prominent literary theme in Mark.

           A few years ago I read a book by Jonathan Malesic called Secret Faith in the Public Square; An Argument for the Concealment of Christian Identity (2009). The title sounds crazy (which is one reason it attracted me), until you consider the breadth and depth of the secrecy motif in the gospels.

           Malesic commends a simple theme from Scripture: "Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them. . . But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you" (Matthew 6:1, 6).

           He laments the enormous damage done to the faith by its putative "success" in society. For many American believers, faith is a form of currency (political, economic, social) by which they accrue personal benefits. Think of a politician who makes sure that voters know that he attends church.

           Malesic's response to this problem is counter intuitive. He tries to show how deliberate secrecy about one's faith "is a real though under emphasized theme in Christian theological, liturgical, and spiritual tradition." To save our faith we must veil it from others.

The Transfiguration by Mimi Ess.

           He has in mind Christianity in America, and especially the "bourgeoisie" and "cosmopolitan evangelicals" who enjoy and strive for social privileges by wearing faith on their sleeves. Only by a return to secrecy, by which Malesic means "intentional concealment of knowledge from another person," can American Christianity be saved from its opportunistic impulse to exploit the gospel for social gain.

           Malesic devotes two chapters each to three Christians who commend Christian secrecy. Cyril of Jerusalem's catechetical practices withheld knowledge of the sacraments until after baptism. Kierkegaard's book Works of Love argues that genuinely selfless acts must be hidden in order to avoid the quid pro quo of praise. And Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that "the Christian cause will be a silent and hidden affair."

           So, says Malesic, concealing one's Christian identity is "not an isolated tradition."

           His book reminded me of the poem by Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) called Tell it Slant:

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies;
Too bright for mind's infirm intent,
The Truth's superb surprise.

As Lightning to the Children eased,
With explanation kind;
The Truth must dazzle gradually,
Or every man be blind.

           When I mentioned Malesic's book to a church leader who speaks all around the country, he scoffed. I should have known better. But in our world of Total Information and Hype, I think Malesic might be on to something.

Footnote: For the 13 references to secrecy in Mark: 1:21-28, 29-34, 40-45;3:7-12; 4:10-12, 33-34; 5:21-43; 7:31-37; 8:22-26, 27-30; 9:2-13, 30-32; and 13:3-4.