2. The Secret Come to Light

This past week on Ash Wednesday we began our Lenten journey with a sermon series based in Mark’s Gospel, a series entitled “Hiding in Plain Sight.” I hope that at least once and maybe several times in Lent you will read through the entirety of Mark’s Gospel. If you do, you will notice what scholars call the “messianic secret” — Jesus is always commanding secrecy about who he is and what he does.

There are many interpretations about the messianic secret but the simplest seems to center on the correct answer to the question, who is Jesus? Readers of the gospel know the answer from the very first verse. Mark’s Gospel begins with these words: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” (Mark 1.1) So we readers see who Jesus is right from the start. Or do we?

Time and time again in Mark, people do not understand Jesus. The problem isn’t that just a few misunderstand him. Practically everyone is blind to who Jesus really is, especially the disciples. So Mark uses the theme of blindness to show the importance of seeing with the eyes of faith. What does faith see? We’ll look at this more closely in a couple of weeks when Jesus says very openly that he will be crucified and that if people want to follow him, they must also take up their crosses. That’s why the secret is hiding in plain sight. It’s not that Jesus doesn’t make it clear. It’s that people and especially disciples — you and me — prefer staying blind about the way of the cross. In these sermons during Lent we’re going to look at this every way we can and hopefully overcome some of our own blindness.

The morning lesson comes in the middle of a section of teaching in which Jesus tells the parable of the sower. The sower scatters seed and some of it falls on different kinds of soil. That which falls on good soil takes root and becomes a bountiful harvest. The text today, which I’m going to read in two parts, begins with Jesus explaining why he speaks in parables.

When he was alone, those who were around him along with the twelve asked him about the parables. And he said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; in order that

And he said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables?

A few comments can clear away some of the difficulties in this part of the text. It hinges on the phrase “to you has been given the secret.” It is God’s grace that gives. Knowing the real Jesus is not something we discover for ourselves. God’s grace gives us the eyes to see. When it says that those outside hear everything in parables it means that everything about Jesus’ life and teaching is parabolic. In other words, everything about Jesus points to a deeper reality. His life as the Messiah is an enigma, open to understanding and also to misunderstanding. For those to whom the secret is known, everything is clear. For those on the outside, everything is a puzzle.

The problem we have is that it sounds like God decides to give the secret to some and not to give it to others. It suggests that the secret’s purpose is that some will not see and be forgiven. Can the Bible possibly say that God wants some to not see and not believe and not be forgiven?

In answering we must remember two things. First, both Christians and Jews of that time attributed anything they didn’t understand to God. They believed that God’s grace was necessary for faith. They also saw that many people did not have faith. They attributed both to God and didn’t worry about the contradictions with the idea of human freedom. We have problems with this but they didn’t worry about it or dwell on it.

Second, we must also remember that while it suggests that some are on the inside and others are left out, Mark is at pains throughout his gospel to show that everyone, including the disciples, is really on the outside. Even disciples don’t understand the secret. But the second part of the text today shows that ultimately the secret is not meant to conceal. In fact, the secret is meant to show truly who Jesus is and invite disciples to follow him.

He said to them, “Is a lamp brought in to be put under the bushel basket, or under the bed, and not on the lampstand? For there is nothing hidden, except to be disclosed; nor is anything secret, except to come to light. Let anyone with ears to hear listen!” And he said to them, “Pay attention to what you hear; the measure you give will be the measure you get, and still more will be given you. For to those who have, more will be given; and from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.”

The last verses I read are probably based on a proverb which said, in effect, that a rich person, having wealth and influence always gets more, while a poor person, with hardly anything going, always gets the short end of the stick. We can understand that. Jesus applied this spiritually. Anyone who has spiritual sight will see more and those who don’t will see less. So the challenge for us is to see more clearly with the eyes of faith.

What is it that needs to be seen? What is the secret that has come to light? Who is Jesus? There is really one answer to all those questions. Jesus’ way in the world is the way of the cross, the way suffering love. The first disciples did not understand this because they did not and would not believe it was going to end on a cross. So they continued to misunderstand. But Mark is saying what Jesus said. All who follow the Lord must follow the way of the cross, the way suffering love. Let’s get at this with a couple of stories.

Some of you are old enough to remember “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry, the first African American woman to have a play produced on Broadway. While searching through some old files a couple of weeks ago, I ran across a quotation from the play which was first produced in 1959 and made into a movie in 1961. The story is about a poor, black family living on Chicago’s south side in the 1950s. The father has just died and the family is expecting a life insurance payment of $10,000. Today that would be more than $68,000.[1] The mother, whose name is Lena, wants to use some for a down payment on a house and some to help her daughter Beneatha through medical school. The son, whose name is Walter, wants to invest in a liquor store — his scheme for getting rich and escaping the life of poverty in which they live.

When the money comes, Lena gives it to Walter to take to the bank. But he gives it to a friend to invest in the liquor store and the friend skips town with the money. All the family’s hopes and plans are destroyed. Beneatha is extremely bitter, of course, and cries out against her brother. She screams that he is no brother of hers. Lena is also very angry with her son. But when she sees the bitter rage of her daughter she reprimands her and says, “I thought me and your daddy taught you to love him.”

Then the mother speaks with a wisdom born of faith and her own suffering love. She says, “There is always something left to love. And if you ain’t learned that, you ain’t learned nothing. Have you cried for that boy today? I don’t mean for yourself and for the family ‘cause we lost the money. I mean for him; what he been through and what it done to him. Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most; when they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well, then, you ain’t through learning — because that ain’t the time at all. It’s when he’s at his lowest and can’t believe in hisself ‘cause the world done whipped him so. When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.”

That’s one story, and here’s another. A preacher whose sermons I read frequently, tells about a little boy named Jeff who absolutely adored his grandfather. One day when Jeff was just two-years-old, he went with has grandfather for a ride in the car. This was years ago, long before seatbelts. So Jeff rode standing up in the front seat — hard to imagine that these days — with his arm around his grandfather’s neck. Suddenly a dog ran right in front of the car. Jeff’s grandfather grabbed him at the same time as he slammed on the brakes but he could not break the boy’s fall entirely. Jeff’s forehead smacked the dashboard just hard enough to hurt and scare him and result in a good five-minute howl. Once he had caught his breath enough to talk, he looked through wet eyelashes at his beloved grandfather and said, “Paw-paw, what did I do wrong?”[2]

These two stories show the way the world thinks and the way we think most of the time. We think that if we do what is wrong, bad things will always happen. Walter did wrong and it brought suffering on the family. We also flip it around. We think that if we do what is right, good things will always happen. So if bad things happen, it must be because we did what is wrong. And this is so much the way the world thinks that when he got hurt even two-year-old Jeff would wonder, “Paw-paw, what did I do wrong?”

Mark’s Gospel challenges us to see more clearly, to see that Jesus goes a different way and calls us to follow. Here is Jesus, the one who is as good as good gets, and he still suffered. He was good but bad things happened to him. He suffered pain, all kinds of pain — physical, spiritual, and emotional pain. But instead of running from it, he faced into it and shows us a stunningly new way to live.[3]

That’s the secret come to light. That’s the way of suffering love, Lena’s way. It doesn’t lord it over others when they are down, even when they are down because of their own blindness and stupidity and sinfulness. Walter’s story — and ours. Nor does it promise there will be no suffering, even if we are good. Little Jeff’s story — and ours. It does promise that God is with us even when we cause suffering — wanting us to repent — or suffer ourselves — wanting us to trust.

Mark will show us this time and time again by showing us that we disciples are often blind to secret. We don’t like to see the way of the cross. But that is the vision that Mark holds before us. And it is what Lent shows us, if we are willing to look in plain sight. For we are all on our way to a Friday where the very worst happened to very best. But we don’t call it Worst Friday or Bad Friday. We call it Good. Thanks be to God.

[1] According to the “Cost-of-Living Calculator” of the American Institute Economic Research, $10,000 in 1959 would be equivalent to $68,144 in 2006; http://www.aier.org/colcalc.html.

[2] Barbara Brown Taylor, God In Pain: Teaching Sermons on Suffering (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998) 57.

[3] Taylor, 58.