Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.”
NL Daily Devotion for Sunday, January 7, 2024
by Madison Johnston, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: The secret is out—Jesus will always be there for us when we need him most.
It can seem confusing to us living 2,000-some years after this witness why Jesus would ask so many times in this passage for people to keep his identity a secret, first because what he is doing is incredible, but also because he doesn’t exactly seem like he’s trying to keep his identity a secret himself. He teaches and preaches. He casts out multiple demons and cures sickness after sickness, all in front of families and crowds. He literally says to Simon and the people with him in Verse 38, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” So why is Jesus asking for so many in the crowds following him to stay hush-hush? Why does he flee to the country to try to stop the momentum of gossip and news from spreading like wildfire?
There are many theories about this, and most of them get heady, fast. After all, whatever our answer might be, it says something big about how we interpret Christ’s very personhood. But the possibility exists that the answer is very simple. Pragmatic, even. Jesus could have been requesting what many theologians and scholars now call the “messianic secret” because he wants to be the first one to break the news about who he is and what he came earthside to do. If we really think about it, he is the only person who knows his story. This passage brings us to a place in history where Jesus is unprecedented—no one like Jesus has ever existed before; nothing even close to Jesus’s mission has ever been conceived or expressed. Maybe Jesus wanted to teach, preach, exorcise and heal so that he could determine the starting point and the course of his narrative. Maybe Jesus wanted people to stay quiet so that he could have some time to do his own PR work. His own brand management.
We’re at a much later place in history. We’re the ones reading the story, not the ones in it. And that means that we can hear the promise of Jesus’s love and transformation differently than the ones in it. We know who Jesus is. We know what he came earthside to do, and how that turned out. We know what’s coming on this journey we’re taking with Jesus to the cross. And beyond! We’re Jesus’s PR team now. There’s nothing we need to keep secret.
So, when we read that the people who truly understand Jesus are people possessed by demons and people afflicted with illness, we know that means something beautiful. When we read that the people who know exactly who Jesus is are people suffering so intensely that they have ceased being themselves, we know that a promise lives there.
And that promise is that in those seasons when we face obstacles that seem insurmountable—when we are debilitated by grief or anxious beyond imagination—we can lean on hope that our solutions, our healing and, ultimately, our peace will come into focus for us more clearly than ever before. The Spirit is telling us this morning that when we need Jesus most, we will be able to recognize Jesus more than most—that Jesus will come to us with love we can share.
