Magazine letter April 2024
When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought aromatic spices so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, at sunrise, they went to the tomb. They had been asking each other, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled back. Then as they went into the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has been raised! He is not here. Look, there is the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples, even Peter, that he is going ahead of you into Galilee. You will see him there, just as he told you.
Then they went out and ran from the tomb, for terror and bewilderment had seized them. And they said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid. Mark 16.1-8
So ends the Gospel of Mark, to many a short and unsatisfying end to the Gospel – the Greek even ends on a preposition (very bad Greek!). Several other later endings were added by other hands but Mark’s true account ends here with the women too afraid to speak of what they saw.
A young man appears, in the white robe of a martyr, calling the disciples back to Galilee to continue the work there. Will the disciples follow Jesus there, or will they run in the other direction? What happens next is left for the disciples (and that includes us) to decide. Will they/we be silent like the three women?
Whether or not the disciples see Jesus again depends on whether they renew their commitment to the journey. Jesus goes before us summoning us to the way of the kingdom – the way of compassionate living. And that is the hardest ending of all; not defeat, not victory, but a challenge to follow, a call to respond, to join him in his work.
The “problem” with Mark’s ending is precisely because he refuses to resolve the story for us; he means to leave us to wrestle with whether or not the women at the tomb (and we ourselves) overcame their fear in order to proclaim the new beginning in Galilee. To provide a neat closure to the narrative will allow the reader to finally remain passive; the story would be self-contained and in no need of a response from us. As it stands the story can only truly resume if we take up the way of Jesus, a response only possible because Jesus continues to go before us.
The power of Mark’s Gospel ultimately lies in not what he tells his readers but what he asks of them. Mark offers no proof, no end. Did Jesus reappear to his disciples? We are not told. For Mark the resurrection is not an answer but the final question. To follow as a disciple is the only way that the truth of the resurrection will be preserved and lived out.
A holy and happy Eastertide to you all,
William