At church this morning, the pastor offered a sensible interpretation of the Messianic Secret. The Messianic Secret is Jesus keeping secret his Messianic status in the synoptic Gospels. Jesus either did not tell people that he was the Messiah, or he exhorted his disciples and demons not to reveal to others that he was the Messiah. Why? According to the pastor, Jesus did not want people to think he was the Messiah according to a common understanding of the day: that the Messiah would be a king who would deliver Israel from her Gentile oppressors. New Testament scholars would probably offer a more nuanced perspective on first century Jewish Messianic expectations, but there were many who envisioned a cataclysmic and dramatic intervention by God into world events. The pastor’s point was that Jesus did not want to be associated with that in people’s minds, and so he distanced himself from the term “Messiah”. Rather, Jesus desired for people to focus on his deeds of mercy and compassion.
This could be. At the same time, plenty of New Testament scholars would argue that Jesus did proclaim an imminent cataclysmic intervention by God into world events. He just thought that he’d have to die and rise again for that to happen, and that did not accord with his disciples’ expectations.