You can understand why these monks felt unsatisfied with the original ending. You can understand why they felt the need to add just a little bit more. The original ending of Mark, like Sheldon Cooper’s tasks, just feels so unsatisfying. “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.” It is so much more satisfying to read of Jesus’ appearances to his disciples and the actions of these same disciples as they went out to spread the Good News of Jesus’ resurrection. Did Mark make a mistake? Was he simply really bad at endings? Did he have writer’s block and therefore walked away from his manuscript, leaving it unfinished and incomplete? Why would Mark leave his story hanging on this moment of failure and disappointment?
Well, I don’t think it was a mistake. I don’t think Mark had writer’s block. And I don’t think Mark was trying to drive us crazy. I think he was trying to make a point. I think he knew that no story about death and resurrection could possibly have a neat and tidy ending. I think he knew and wanted us, the readers, to know that the resurrection is not the end of the story. This isn’t a fairy tale where everything is tied up neatly and everyone lives happily ever after. Mark knows and wants us to know that the resurrection is only the beginning. The story doesn’t end with the empty tomb. The story is only just getting started. And you and me, and everyone who hears this story throughout time and space is being invited by Mark to jump into the story and to take up our part in continuing it. Resurrection isn’t a conclusion, it is an invitation.
Mark gives us a clue to this in the very first verse of his Gospel. His opening sentence is almost as abrupt and awkward as his closing sentence: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” He doesn’t give us a long genealogy of Jesus like we find in Matthew. He doesn’t give us the compelling story of shepherds, angels, and a new family together in a stable as we find in Luke. We don’t get the theologically beautiful hymn about the Word made flesh as found in John. Nope. Mark jumps right in and tells us his entire point. This story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection is only the beginning of the good news of what God has done and what God is still doing for the world through Jesus Christ, and we—you and me—we have a part to play.
God, the God who came into this world as one of us, the God who lived, suffered and died as one of us, the God who came to show us that what He intends for the world is for everyone to have enough—food, shelter, clothing, freedom, health care, justice—this God wasn’t done when Jesus walked out of the tomb. This God is just beginning. This God will meet us at precisely the point where things seem the worst, not merely to fix things, but to redeem them, and us, turning what looks like an ending into a new beginning and taking what looks like a failure and offering it back to us as an opportunity.
Mark’s question to us is this: Will we run away in fear, or will we take this opportunity of new life and join in with God in this new beginning? Eventually the women who ran from the tomb, must have overcome their fear and told others of what they had seen. Otherwise Mark would never have known the story. We would never have known the story. We too often fear the new beginnings that God offers to us. We too often fear the opportunities God gives to us to join in with Him in solidarity with those who do not have enough. To get out of our seats and join in the story means that we too will have to set aside the familiar, the known, the comfortable and share with others the good news of Jesus’ complete identification with the poor, the outcast, the widowed, the orphaned, the prisoner and the sick. We too will have to risk some of our own security that we might bring some security and peace to all.
This story, the story of Jesus death and resurrection, did not end 2000 years ago. This is a story with no ending. As long as there are people on earth continuing to tell the story and to join in the story as it continues to unfold, then the story goes on. Will you be a part of it?
I close with the well-known poem by Teresa of Avila:
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.