The idea that our earliest Gospel should finish on a note of fear and silence is a scandal to any Christian reader who knows the other four canonical Gospels, and is familiar with the well rounded and carefully crafted endings. Matthew draws the reader towards the climactic saying about the Great Commission and Jesus ascension; Luke has his own version of the directions to the disciples, about waiting for the Holy Spirit and the enduement of power and the ascension, ; John has two endings both of them deeply satisfying tying up of loose ends and relational healings with Mary Magdalene, Thomas and Peter.
Then there is Mark – and this is how he finsishes his Gospel.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”
8 Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.
Now where is the good news in that? How does the Gospel spread if people ar stunned into silence by fears that make them run away? Mark is like one of those films that leaves you hanging, wondering what happens next, aware of unresolved tensions, frustrated by unanswered questions, and feeling let down by a story that had all the makings of an artistic triumph.
That feeling of incompleteness, that lack of any sense of a real ending is why very early in the church's story, some reverent writers, scribes, copyists, who knows, wrote what we now call the longer ending, usually appended with a clear break and a footnote explanation.
For myself I have never really had a problem with Mark 16.8 being the end of the Gospel. Mark is the Gospel as story, and it begins with an abrupt announcement of the good news of the Kingdom of God; it ends with the abrupt announcement of resurrection but with no proofs of that, just the order for the women to tell the men to go to Galilee. Did they tell? Did the disciples go? The track record of their obedience, trust and understanding isn't impressive throughout the Gospel. But Mark has just created in the reader that same dilemma; will the reader now go to Galilee, encounter the risen Jesus, take up their own cross, and follow in a life of cruciform discipleship, not so much a card carrying Nazarene as a cross carrying follower of the risen Messiah Jesus.
And why not fear, awe, trembling, instinctive running away? Apart from the psychological likeliehood of just such responses when faced with worldview shattering events, Mark is a highly skilled writer. The literary tension has built to a crescendo, most recently Gethsemane, betrayal, denial, trial, brutalisation and long drawn out execution, cry of dereliction and finally burial and a merciful sabbath when the world could rest from its dirty work. To anoint and care for the dead body was the least that could be done – even that is denied because the stone is rolled, the grave is open, the body is gone and there is some stranger talking about resurrection, and giving directions to Galilee where Jesus is ahead of them. Just hear the theological reverberations of that phrase – "he is going ahead of you to Galilee…" Not dead beyond all hope, not abandoned to the grave, not crushed and silenced by the machinery of power, but doing what he said he would, going before them, waiting to eat the bread and drink the wine of the kingdom with his followers.
The longer ending is a pastiche of words and ideas from the other three Gospels. Those verses have little of the power and purposefulness a and drive of Mark's Gospel as it hurtles towards its conclusion which is a brilliantly set up caption – "to be continued". And it will be continued by cross carrying disciples, those who know the fear of God, that combination of awe and love, excitement and risk, and who hear the question at the literary and theological centre of the Gospel of Mark, "Who do you say that I am?" The answer to that question is given as we enter the story, the continuing story, and as we head for Galilee to meet the risen Christ, and to take up the cross and follow the one who came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.
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