So they (that’s Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus and Salome) went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
This final sentence in this morning’s Gospel that we just heard isn’t just the last line in Mark’s account of what happened on the first Easter morning. It’s the last line in Mark’s Gospel period. Curtain down. Which means that in what is believed to be the oldest version we have of the Easter story, the risen Christ does not appear. Anywhere.
Not cooking breakfast on the beach or showing his scars to Thomas in the Upper Room. Not falling in with travelers on the Emmaus road. Not commissioning his followers to make disciples of all nations. Matthew, Luke and John all go on, from the empty tomb, to describe actual encounters with the resurrected Jesus.
Mark ends with three brokenhearted women having to take a stranger’s word for it. Women who are so freaked out at the idea that “he has been raised”, they can’t even talk about it. It is kind of a disturbing ending, right?
Well, yes. So much so that early editors actually felt compelled to add more. Open up any Bible, and you’ll discover two additional chunks of text after this final line of Mark’s, one labeled a “shorter” ending and the other a “longer” ending, neither of which is found in the earliest manuscripts. It seems no one wanted to be left on that morning, with the disciples still in hiding and three women fleeing...(read more)
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