Mark 16:1-8The Resurrection of Jesus
When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?’ When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered 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 of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.’Sothey went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
“So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” That is a quite a way to end a Gospel. Jesus had died and his most loyal followers, the women who stayed and witnessed as he died on the cross when the other disciples ran away, went to the tomb where his body was laid, to tend to him out of love and according to Jewish tradition. When they arrived at the tomb, they found not his body, but a living young man, dressed in dazzling clothes, who told them something incredible and awe-inspiring and terrifying. He said, “Do not be alarmed”... now where have I heard that before? Yes. The Bible. Emissaries of God tell people not to be afraid all of the time. “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here.” This part seems like good news but also very weird news and also kind of unreal news.
The young man goes on: “But, go tell his disciples and Peter that he was going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” Back in chapter 14, Jesus had said that he would meet them in Galilee once he was raised up. Maybe this shouldn’t have been such a surprise. But, it sure seems like it was. The women, loyal to the end, fled from the tomb “for terror and amazement had seized them.” This Gospel tells us that, unlike the other three, the women tell no one because they were afraid. The Resurrection, the New Life, the Good News, we have been waiting on has finally happened. Some trusted people even saw it and would likely be trusted as witnesses if they shared what they saw. But, they had, only days before, watched their friend be murdered. And, Resurrection seemed too good to be true.
Fear is a reasonable response to this event. Overwhelm is a reasonable response to this even. As a human who knows other humans, I can empathize with the fear and understand why they might not tell anybody what they saw. But, I also like to tell stories. It’s part of my job and it’s also a thing I just like to do. And, I’ve learned a few things about telling stories over the years. One of the most important ones is that people don’t usually like them to be as open-ended as this version of the resurrection story is. A lot of people want to have clear and tidy answers to all the questions that came up earlier in the story. Running away in fear is not tidy. Choosing not to tell people about the miraculous thing you witnessed is not neat. Having a Resurrection without anyone talking about the resurrection feels incomplete. The story feels unfinished, like the News isn’t Good yet.
To be fair, there is very little about death and resurrection that is neat and tidy. Perhaps that's part of why the author of Mark stops telling the story right here. As I said, fear and uncertainty are reasonable responses to the dangerous and miraculous events they have witnessed. It makes sense that this story has loose ends. State-sponsored violence often leaves people with loose ends. Ruptures in friend groups and religious communities often leave loose ends. But, it is hard to tell a story about the Good News with loose ends. And, this is a complicated resurrection account where we, the readers, never see Jesus again, and, the women, the first ones to hear that he is risen, are too afraid to tell someone else. As I said before, this is quite a way to end a Gospel.
As it turns out, I am merely one more in a long line of readers and preachers to wonder about the ending of this resurrection account. If you were to open your Bible to Mark 16 right now, you would see two more endings that some unsatisfied readers added after what is most likely the oldest version of the story, that is, the part that Kate read at the beginning of worship today. Scholars are pretty sure that starting sometime around the second century, readers and hearers of this Gospel get increasingly nervous about the ending where the women don’t share what they have witnessed. It looks like two possible more clear and more tidy endings have been added. First, somebody added a part where the women stopped being scared and told Peter like they were supposed to. And, then another scribe, maybe having read the versions of the resurrection story in Matthew, Luke, and John, where a resurrected Jesus appears to the disciples, added some stories where Jesus appears to his followers, preaches a little more, and then ascends into heaven. This author also adds a little bit about how Jesus’ followers went on to preach the Gospel, offering a final vision of the disciples being unafraid and Jesus continuing to work through them. These new endings sound far more like a victorious resurrection in the face of death than three terrified women running out of a tomb.
As someone who tells stories for a living, I can't really blame the scribes who added these new endings to the Gospel story. I understand this impulse to improve on a story by tying up loose ends and providing satisfying ends to the stories of the main characters. I also understand the impulse to try to finish the story on an optimistic note. After such a grueling and tragedy-filled story, in the midst of real-world tragedy in our own lives and the broader world we live in, we could use a happy ending and some new life and a story about renewed hope for people who thought that they had lost everything. I mean, don't many of us hope that something good will happen once these women set out for the tomb? Especially if we have heard Easter stories before. We know that something wonderful can happen. It can be jarring when we read this gospel account carefully and realize that it ends in fear and trembling instead of confidence and joy.
I have told you this before but I think about it whenever I return to Mark’s account of the Resurrection. When I was in seminary, we spent some time comparing the resurrection stories in the Gospels in my New Testament class. When we read the part where the women were so afraid that they said nothing to anyone, my professor said, "Well, they must have told someone. Or else we wouldn't be reading it." Remember, the Gospel of Mark is probably the oldest gospel. Other Gospel writers used Mark as a source for their own story-telling. If the women were the only witnesses to the Resurrection as the author of Mark claims and they didn't tell anybody what they saw, how did the author of Mark know about it in order to write it down? I was reading a commentary by Ira Driggers and he talked about how Paul knew about the Resurrection when he wrote the letter that we know as 1st Corinthians. 1st Corinthians was written before the Gospel of Mark was even compiled. If the women never told anybody about the resurrection, how did Paul know about it to talk about it in his letter to Corinth? If the women were so scared that they never told anybody, how are you and I sitting here, singing "Christ the Lord is Risen Today," working to follow Christ in our time as they did during theirs? The women must have told someone. Or else we wouldn't be hearing about it today.
I have learned in my life that some truth takes a while to tell. Sometimes you have to sit with the fear and the amazement for a while. Sometimes you have to make a plan and figure out how to tell the people you know need to know the truth. Even if the truth is beautiful and powerful and world-changing in the best possible ways, that doesn’t mean you know how to share it. At least not at first… and especially if there is a risk to your safety or you worry about your ability to continue to be a part of a community that might doubt the truth you are telling them. Some truth takes a while to tell. But, you can’t let that fact alone keep you from telling it. They must have told somebody and we are here, right now, because they figure out how to talk about the powerful thing they witnessed.
And, we are called to continue to share the story that we have inherited from them. We, too, will preach the Good News of love and justice. We, too, will love our neighbor and seek reconciliation. We, too, will live like we are God’s beloved and make sure that the rest of the world knows they are beloved, too. Mark’s Gospel is open-ended because the story is not yet finished. Christ is still walking and working in this world. It’s just now up to us to step into the story and speak of a love that conquers death and a hope that lives in justice. And, like the disciples, we may be afraid. Like the women witnesses, we may take a while to figure out how to tell the truth. Thank God for this Gospel that shows us that we can be afraid and misunderstand and still have a place with Jesus. These women must have told someone. Now we can, too.
:
- Ira Brent Driggers: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/resurrection-of-our-lord-2/commentary-on-mark-161-8-7
- Anna Carter Florence: http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=2249
- Karoline Lewis: http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?m=4377&post=3574
- Tom Long: https://www.religion-online.org/article/dangling-gospel-mark-161-8/
