“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.”
In seminary I had this one professor who was a stickler for her own rules. One of those rules was that if she gave you a length for your paper, you had better never, ever go over that length. If you did, she would simply throw the extra pages away and write at the bottom of what was left, “Paper ends abruptly.”
Whenever I read the Gospel of Mark and get to this ending, I think of that professor. In the original, oldest versions of the Gospel of Mark, it ends abruptly, like we've just heard, and it ends weirdly, too.
First off, it's the only Gospel where Jesus doesn't put in a post-resurrection appearance.
Second, in other Gospels, it's the women who are heroic at the end, who go and tell the apostles to buck up and stop cowering – that Jesus is risen... but here they are afraid and run away.
I can dig this.
I mean, they have just had horrible days. The man they loved was brutally murdered, and now they are having to sneak around, early in the morning to go to the cemetery to pay their respects. And when they get there, here's this guy, an angel maybe, standing beside Jesus' empty tomb sort of nonchalantly saying that everything is just great, Jesus is gone on a road trip to Galilee, and by the way, he's resurrected. It's no wonder the women are afraid, and it's no wonder they don't tell anybody. They probably think they've gone nuts and are sure others will think they are nuts, too.
Well, what kind of Easter story is that? It seems incomplete, unfinished, and so, through the years, well-meaning Christian writers have tried to finish Mark’s Gospel for him because they just couldn't abide this ending. But the way they tried to do it was even more unsatisfactory. In fact it was kind of weird, like watching an episode of some show on TV where they show you upcoming highlights at the end...just a bunch of unrelated scenes to match up with the other Gospels.
So, down through the ages, we have this...abrupt ending. The question is why? Why would Mark end his Gospel this way? He didn't have someone giving him a deadline or a page limit. He could've gone on. Why end it with fear but no Jesus? Why were these women running away to hide rather than running forward to proclaim the good news? Did he just get bored? Did he get distracted and move on to other things? I dunno. But this year, I'm thinking that maybe, just maybe there's a purpose with Mark and not just weirdness.
I remember hearing a story about a classical composer...I think it was Franz Liszt. His wife used to get him out of bed in the morning by playing the first seven notes of a scale on the downstairs piano: do re mi fa so la ti…. And then she would go back to the kitchen to finish cooking breakfast. Liszt would try to ignore it, but finally he couldn't stand it, and he would throw on his robe, stumble down the stairs, and play that last note: do! And by then his breakfast would be ready, and he would begin his day.
I think there's something in all of us that craves that kind of resolution, of completion. We simply cannot abide the unfinished work, and if we can, we'll do something about it.
[singing] “Christ the Lord is risen today! A-aa-a-a-le-lu-u…”. See how weird it is? You filled it in, didn't you? You just had to finish it in your mind, didn't you? I think that’s what Mark was doing, I think he was telling the story of Easter with the ending left off so that we will have to tumble out of bed on Easter morning and finish it.
Y'all, all year we've been listening to Mark, we've been listening to all the times Jesus does something and then tells his disciples NOT to tell anyone who he is or what he has done. “Tell no one,” “Be silent,” “Don't tell anyone until the Son of Man is risen from the dead.” And here, at this tomb, this man is telling the women that Jesus loves, “Go! Tell everyone.” Now that he's risen from the dead, there's no need to keep silent, no reason not to tell.
But his followers “went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” They were afraid. And the work is unfinished.
Except ... except there's someone else who has seen and heard everything Jesus has said and done in this gospel. Someone else who heard Jesus' predictions and then watched as they came true. Someone else who listened to the amazing news at the empty tomb and heard the order to go and tell. You. And you. And you. And me. Everyone who hears Mark's Gospel preached on this wonderful Easter morning.
Mark isn't terrible at endings after all. Come to find out, he's brilliant, and he invites US into the story, to pick up where these women left off and, indeed, go and tell of Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified, has been raised, and is going ahead to meet us, just as he promised. Mark has given us an open-ended gospel that threatens to end in failure, precisely to place the burden of responsibility for telling the good news squarely on OUR shoulders.
Life as a Christian will not always be easy. It will be challenging to live as an outsider in this world where insider power and influence and hypocracy hold such sway. But this is the opportunity Mark gives us. A story where WE get to decide on the ending. WE get to proclaim the Good News. The news that God meets us precisely at the point where things seem the worst, where things are scariest, not merely to fix things, but to redeem them -- and us! --
...turning what looks like an bad ending into a new beginning and taking what looks like a failure and offering it back to us salvation. We may not always see it, may not always understand it, but God will be there. And it is up to us to proclaim that this story doesn't end, not where Mark left off, but continues into our own lives.
On this Easter Day, I give thanks for each of you -- for your faith, for your commitment, for your struggles, and for your willingness to put yourself on the line to offer a word that is still as fragile and as powerful as it was when Jesus rose again early in the morning so long ago.
So sing it with me: “Christ the Lord is risen today! A-a-a-a-a-le-lu-u-ia!”