A little aside. In English, we now call this phenomenon the ‘messianic secret’, but the original German term Wrede actually used was messiasgeheimnis. Some people in fact argue that messiasgeheimnis is better translated as the ‘messianic mystery’, and that the motif should be seen in terms of ‘mystery’, ‘revelation’ and ‘apophatic/negative theology’ (= a theology that proceeds by negation) rather than of secrecy. ‘Mystery’ is a better word because it has this apocalyptic overtone connoting the disclosure by God of a truth hidden until a certain decisive point in the divine plan is reached.
In fact, you’d notice it all fits: the narrator, at the very beginning of Mark’s gospel, introduces his readers to “Jesus Christ, son of God.” From the very beginning, we the readers already know that Jesus is the messiah, because Mark took the trouble of divulging this to us. We have the benefit of knowing what most of the characters in the story do not know - dramatic irony at its finest. It’s like ‘reality TV’ actually; in fact, ‘reality’ shows like Big Brother are concrete examples of dramatic irony, because we the omniscient viewers know stuff that the people inside the house don’t.
So as soon as Mark begins his story, we know that Jesus is the messiah. What awaits full disclosure is the kind of messiah Jesus is. Which brings us again to the centurion who proclaimed Jesus as God’s son when he “saw that … he breathed his last.” You see what he did there? It’s Jesus’ admittedly pathetic, not very pretty kind of death (“Jesus, uttering a loud cry, expired”), that ironically (there’s that word again) pushes the centurion to declare Jesus’ true identity. We finally realize what kind of a messiah Jesus is when He is hanging broken and dead on a cross.
In fact, Mark already gives us some foreshadowing to this effect in his version of Peter’s confession in Caesarea Philippi.
And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they told him, “John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets.” And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.” And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him. And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly.
So when Mark’s Peter gets things half-right (by saying that Jesus is ‘the Christ’), Jesus shuts him up and then proceeds to tell the disciples in plain words of His coming suffering. As if to say that being ‘the Christ’ meant undergoing the passion. (This ties in with another thing I’ve said earlier: of Jesus being condemned as “deserving of death” as soon as He openly admits to being the messiah.)
It’s often said that Mark probably composed his gospel as an apologia for the cross. The Jews, no matter what they thought the messiah would be like, didn’t exactly imagine the messiah to get arrested and be sentenced as a common criminal. And everyone knows that crucifixion was a very shameful, degrading form of death. So how in the world could God’s son and the messiah be - gasp! - crucified? As St. Paul would say, it is “a stumbling block (a skandalon) to the Jews, and to the Greeks foolishness.” That’s one of the issues Mark was addressing in his gospel, and his ‘messianic mystery’ motif is one of his answers to the question.
