Mark 16:1-8
“Five
more minutes, folks. Five more minutes.”
No
three words have filled my heart with such dread as “five more minutes.” Why
would an announcement of time cause such consternation in my soul? Out of
context it makes no sense. It is the context that makes the difference.
“Five
more minutes,” were the words I would hear during an exam. “Five more minutes,”
was spoken by the test proctor to let all of us taking the exam know that our
time was almost over. When I was taking a straightforward question and answer
test, hearing “five more minutes,” did not bother me all that much. It was when
I was writing an essay that the announcement, “five more minutes,” made my
heart constrict within my chest.
Why?
Generally, I’m a good essay writer. As long as I’ve studied and know the
information I am supposed to, I can usually organize my thoughts quickly and
write them down cohesively and cogently. Yet hearing, “five more minutes,”
would make me realize that I had to wrap things up and wrap them up quickly. I
needed to make my point, draw a conclusion and be done already. I know that I
have ended several essays abruptly because of the words, “five more minutes.” I
know that I have missed some finer points I hoped to make because the
announcement that my time was almost done made me rush to get to the ending.
Reading
these eight verses in Mark’s gospel makes me wonder if Mark wasn’t under some
time constraint; even if it was of his own making. Although we have two other
endings to Mark’s gospel: the shorter and the longer; it is widely believed by
scholars that this is the original ending to Mark’s telling of the story of
Jesus.
To
say that the ending is abrupt is an understatement. There is no happy ending.
There is no neat conclusion with all the loose ends tied up in a pretty bow. We
don’t even get another appearance from Jesus. Just these three women and a
young man dressed in white. Was he an angel? It would seem so, but the text
does not state that specifically. What is made clear is that the women did not
do what the young man instructed them to do. They did not run right off to tell
the disciples and Peter the good news. Instead, fright made them mute. They
were overcome and overwhelmed by the young man’s appearance and message. They
ran away in terror and amazement; telling no one what they had seen or heard.
No,
this is not a tidy ending. Matthew and Luke must have concurred on that point –
their gospels end more conclusively. Whoever the scribes or monks or editors were
who added the shorter and the longer endings, they must not have been satisfied
with the way Mark left it either. Perhaps Mark heard his own version of “five
more minutes,” and rushed to finish. Or perhaps this was exactly the kind of
ending – or lack thereof – that he was going for.
Mark’s
version of the good news is open-ended because so is the good news. The good
news of the gospel did not end with the resurrection or even the ascension. It
did not end with the women running to tell the disciples or the disciples
checking the story out for themselves. It did not end with the upper room at
Pentecost or in the early churches Paul helped bring to fruition. The good
news, the gospel does not end. If it had an ending, it really wouldn’t be the
good news of God, would it?
I
resonate with Mark’s gospel the most of all four – one because his version of
Jesus is the most human, and two, because when it comes to getting what Jesus
was trying to tell them, the disciples fail spectacularly most of the time. As
do I. Mark was brutally honest about the disciples’ failings. In verse 8, the
women do not fare much better. But I don’t believe that Mark was trying to
disparage them. All of them were afraid. All of them were amazed and terrified
by the good news Jesus told them. Mark understood this. I think Mark recognized
that it would take generations of people to begin to get a glimpse of what
Jesus came and did, of who he truly was and is. I think Mark realized that the
good news would not be good news if it ended with the people in the original
story. For all his immediacy and urgency, I don’t believe Mark finished his
gospel because of some time limit. I think he left it where it was so that the
next generation of disciples – those people he originally wrote the gospel for and
us – could pick up the story and take it into the future.
But
here’s the thing: the news of Jesus’ resurrection did spread. Perhaps the women
shook themselves and did what the young man requested after all. Perhaps they
went to the disciples and to Peter and told them what they had heard, what they
had seen. Maybe they got it together enough to remember what Jesus had told
them, and they reminded the disciples of his words as well.
It’s
possible that what was supposed to happen did happen. They woke up from their
amazement and terror and took the good news to Galilee .
They met Jesus there. They made sure the word of the Lord was spread and far
and wide. Maybe the reality was closer to the shorter and longer ending then we
realize. Maybe it wasn’t. But whatever the ending was of Mark’s particular
chapter, the story goes on and on. Some refer to the story of Jesus as the
greatest story ever told. I think of it more as the unending story. Each of us
contributes sentences and paragraphs. Each of us adds to the unfolding
narrative.
Jesus
told them he would meet them in Galilee . And he tells us
that as well. What is Galilee anyway? Jesus was not
asking them to have coffee with him at the Galilean IHOP. Jesus was telling them
to meet him in the place where the marginalized were found. Galilee
was the place of the poor, the oppressed, the forgotten, the lost and the
lonely. There, he told them, among those folks, that was where they would meet
him.
Just
as Jesus told them, Jesus tells us. We are also called to go to our Galilees.
We are also called to put ourselves in the midst of the least of these. Jesus
tells us that it is there, on the margins, where we will meet him. Jesus told
us this. He has been telling us this all along. And the good news, the gospel,
the story of God and God’s Son and God’s people, continues whenever we shake
ourselves out of our fear and amazement, and go to Galilee .
The resurrection happens again and again, whenever hope rises out of despair,
whenever joy rises out of sorrow, whenever we recognize the holy in the midst
of the ordinary, whenever we let go of our fear and make our way to Galilee .
It is there we see Jesus. It is there we meet the risen Lord. It is there we
understand that God has done and is doing and will do a new and wonderful
thing. He is risen! Death does not win. The bonds of sin are broken. He. Is.
Risen!
Let
all of God’s children, tellers of God’s good news, say “Alleluia!” Amen.
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