I have to say, this was an amazing year for sacred and secular holidays overlapping. First we started Lent with the overlap of Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day, which gave all sorts of great reflections on the nature of God’s love. And now, today, on Easter Sunday, it is April Fools Day. Which I just think is amazing because my relationship with God has always felt very playful, and I like the idea of the resurrection being Jesus popping back on the scene like, “surprise! Bet you thought I was dead!”
Adding to the humor of this coming together of Easter and April Fools Day is the fact that the assigned reading for this morning is the resurrection account from the Gospel of Mark. And the Gospel of Mark is by far the weirdest of all the resurrection accounts. I’d guess if I asked most of you to describe the scene on Easter morning, you’d talk about the women coming to the tomb, the stone being rolled away, and the angel telling the women that Jesus has risen. Then some of you might remember Jesus appearing to the women as they went to tell the disciples, or to Mary alone in the garden, or to the disciples on the road, or any number of the other post-resurrection appearances of Jesus. And while all of those are part of the Easter readings from other years or from later in this season, none of them are from Mark. As we just heard, the Gospel of Mark ends very abruptly, “and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
Wait, what? “They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” This was not the ending we had been built up to expect. Especially not from such a convicted narrator as Mark, who started with the bold proclamation “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” and then led us on this break-necked rush through the ministry of Jesus, punctuated by the refrains of immediately, so fast that by the time we got to the end of the first chapter, Jesus had already been baptized, tempted, called disciples, exorcised a demon, and healed not only Simon’s mother-in-law, but the whole town of Capernaum. How could something that started out with such promise end in this quiet fearful whimper?
It’s a weird ending. In fact, it’s such a weird ending that if you open your Bible at home; you may see a couple of additional verses set apart in brackets, titled “The Shorter Ending of Mark” and “The Longer Ending of Mark.” There will probably also be a note accompanying the brackets explaining that these additional verses are not in the oldest versions of Mark. Scholars almost universally agree that these endings were not original, but were added later by some scribe trying to smooth over the abruptness of this ending. Like us, some second century scribe came to the end of Mark’s Gospel and thought, wait a second, there is no way this ends like this. So he pulled on his knowledge of Luke and Acts to construct an ending that made more sense, one in which Jesus actually appears, and the disciples went out and spread the message of Jesus. That these additions were not written by the same person that wrote the rest of the Gospel is pretty obvious if you read them. Only an over-eager budding theologian would come up with a line like “afterward Jesus himself sent out through them… the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation.” Mark is known for its simple and direct prose, whoever tried to end the Gospel like that was clearly trying too hard.
Our second century compatriot might have been trying too hard, but I think he fell into the exact trap the original writer of Mark had set for him and us. Because throughout the Gospel of Mark, we the reader have been set up to expect something amazing. At his baptism, a voice from heaven proclaimed, this is my Son. Three times, Jesus told the disciples he would die and rise again. Moses and Elijah showed up on the mountain, and he argued with the Sadducees about resurrection, like we the reader knew something big was happening. So this whimper of an ending, with the women who came to the tomb slinking away in terror and amazement, telling nothing to no one, it just doesn’t feel like the ending we expect or deserve.
We also know it’s wrong. Because obviously, we’re here. We know that the disciples must have told someone Jesus rose from the dead, because someone told us. We know from Matthew, Luke, and John that Jesus appeared to the disciples, we know from Acts that the Spirit came at Pentecost and the message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee and into the whole world. We know that Mark’s ending is wrong. And so, like our second century scribe, we find ourselves confused, and maybe a little incensed, by this ending. Come on Mark, this isn’t how it ends!
And that, I think, was exactly Mark’s point. To get us to do exactly what this second century scribe did, and change the ending. We know it’s wrong. We know resurrection follows death, light follows dark, hope follows despair. Jesus taught us that, he set us up to believe it. He planted it within us as he traveled on the road, as he healed those in need, as he taught about his death and the life to come. We know the truth, Mark got it wrong, the disciples and the women could not have left in fear and told no one.
I think the intention of the writer of Mark’s Gospel was to get us so incensed by the abruptness of this ending that we, like the second century scribe, would find ourselves challenged to go out and change the ending. To not be like the disciples, not be like the women, to not slink away in fear and amazement, telling nothing to anyone, but instead to go out and tell the world, this is not how the story ends! The story doesn’t end in fear, it doesn’t end in terror, it ends in hope and life and joy. This wrong ending dares us to proclaim a different one, the one that we know to be true, the one where Jesus defeated death and sent the Spirit on the disciples to bring this message to the world.
After all, isn’t changing the ending exactly what resurrection is all about. Jesus had been telling his disciples throughout his ministry, I’m going to die and then three days later, I will rise again. And the disciples were like, nope, that’s not how the story of death ends. Death ends with death. Except in this case it doesn’t, because Jesus changed the ending. Changed the ending so that life always follows death, hope always follows despair, light always follows darkness. It is, as Paul called it, “the foolishness of the cross,” that the ending we expect is never the ending that we get when Jesus is around.
So if Jesus changed the ending, so that resurrection always follows death, and Mark is daring us to change the ending of his Gospel, to proclaim this new ending that Jesus has written, what other endings might Jesus be inviting us to rewrite? Maybe the ending where you don’t have anything to offer, that keeps you from showing up in the world? Or the ending of that relationship you thought couldn’t be mended. Maybe the ending where violence is an inevitable part of our world and there’s nothing we can do about it? Or that systemic poverty is just that, a system that cannot be changed? All of these are endings we have been conditioned to believe are inevitable, but what Jesus’ resurrection shows us, and the ending of Mark’s Gospel challenges us, is that endings are never as they seem. And if we don’t like the ending, if the ending doesn’t end in life, and hope, and resurrection, then Jesus has probably already changed it. All we need to do is heed Mark’s challenge and proclaim what we already know to be true. This is not really the end; it is only the beginning. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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