Mark 16:8
So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
We mentioned yesterday how unsatisfying Mark’s ending is. After all, the women at the tomb received a) a clear “good news signal” and b) were given simple, concrete instructions. Yet they flee the tomb in terror, saying nothing to anyone. We talked yesterday about the power of fear to cripple our actions and mute our speech, so this isn’t really about the failure of these particular disciples; there’s no guarantee we would have done any better. Moreover, we have to assume they eventually told someone or we wouldn’t be talking about it two thousand years later. So it’s more that Mark’s whole way of ending his story is unsatisfying.
And that’s only the half of it.
The other way in which Mark’s ending disappoints is that, well, it’s a resurrection account with no appearance of Jesus, the one said to have been resurrected. That, it seems, is a problem, a big problem.
And we’re not the first to feel this way. None of the other four evangelists follow suit. Even Matthew, who hews so closely to Mark throughout the gospel and particularly during the passion narrative, takes the story further and closes with Jesus giving final instructions to his disciples.
But it’s not just the later evangelists who take a different view of what constitutes a satisfying end to a gospel. Someone else – and maybe multiple people – also find Mark’s end disappointing. That’s why your Bible doesn’t end with the verse we’re at. It goes on. Interestingly, none of the earliest copies of Mark’s gospel – we have no originals – have these extra verses but instead end just where we did. Most likely then, some years later a monk or some other person reading and copying Mark’s gospel not only found it dissatisfying but decided to fix it.
So let’s look the first of two alternative endings to Mark:
And all that had been commanded them they told briefly to those around Peter. And afterwards Jesus himself sent out through them, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation.
There, you see, all better. J But while it ties everything up in a neat bow, it sounds nothing like the rest of Mark and so misses his point.
But what is that point?
Prayer: Dear God, help us to live in the tension – of the gospel, in our lives, and with the people we care about but never fully understand – confident that you are there, in the middle of it all, with us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
It took a couple of decades of the ambiguity that accompanies parish life, but Mark’s Easter has become my favorite. I’ve come to believe that Mark tells the story in this way, not to keep us guessing, but because suspense, or rather being suspended, is where we live. Easter comes in the tension between what is and what will be, between present heartache and a promise whispered from an empty tomb—And there are no guarantees, and there is no tangible proof. But if this stuff is true, these unseen things change everything.