It is the shortest account of the resurrection—only eight verses long. It is also the strangest account. It records no appearances of the Risen Christ. It ends with the women running from the tomb in fear. Having been traumatized by what they experienced, they told no one about it.
The story of the resurrection in the gospel of Mark is so strange that other people wrote what they considered a more appropriate ending. There is a short ending that follows verse 8 and a longer ending—beginning with verse 9—that reflects the resurrection stories found in the gospels of Luke and John.
What if the strange ending of Mark’s gospel was by design? What might the gospel writer have been trying to say with this seemingly abbreviated, strange ending? What is its meaning for us on this Easter Sunday?
The abrupt ending leaves the end of the gospel hanging, waiting to be written. The implication is that we, the readers, have to write the ending. It is as though the biblical writer is saying “Write your own ending.” We write that ending by how we respond to the story—by what we do.
The heart of the story is found in the words of the young man dressed in white. “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you” (Mark 16:6-7).
There was no encounter with the Risen Christ to confirm what the young man said. All they had were his words. “He has been raised; he is not here.” The only evidence that what he said was true was “there is the place they laid him.” Confirmation that what he said was true would come when they acted on what he said. “He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.” They would see the Risen Christ when they did what the young man said to do.
In the first part of his gospel, the gospel writer told a story of a woman who was healed when she acted on what she believed to be true. The woman suffered from a condition in which she had been hemorrhaging for twelve years. Her condition kept her physically depleted. It isolated her from the community as it made her ritually unclean. Her pursuit of medical help had cost her everything she had. Having heard about how Jesus healed people, she thought, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well” (Mark 5:28). Believing Jesus could heal her, she slipped up behind him in the crowd and touched the hem of his cloak. Immediately, she was healed. Jesus, sensing “that power had gone forth from him" (Mark 5:30), turned to see who had touched his cloak. When the woman came forward, Jesus said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease” (Mark 5:34). This story shows us what faith looks like. Faith is believing something to be true, then acting on that belief.
The young man’s instructions challenged the women to act in faith. “He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.”
The gospel of Mark also tells the story of a blind man whose healing required a second touch. The writer used the blind man as a metaphor for the disciples. His story is their story. The man was blind, unable to see. In the first half of the gospel, the disciples were blind. They did not recognize who Jesus was. They struggled to understand what he taught. The man was healed of his blindness with Jesus’s first touch, but not completely. He could see, but not clearly. “I can see people, but they look like trees, walking” (Mark 8:24). In order for him to see clearly, Jesus had to touch his eyes a second time. Only then was he was completely healed. In the second half of the gospel, the disciples recognized Jesus as the Messiah (Mark 8:29). They could see, but—like the blind man after the first touch—they did not see clearly. They struggled to understand or accept what Jesus taught about what he would experience in Jerusalem. They struggled to understand what was involved in being a disciple. They needed a second touch. The resurrection offered the second touch.
We live as Jesus’s disciples by embracing what he taught, allowing his teachings to shape our lives. As his disciples, we write the ending to the gospel by acting on what he said.
In other words, we write the ending to the gospel through faith. We believe what Jesus taught and act on it. We allow his teachings to shape how we live.
Being a disciple—like believing in the resurrection—is an act of faith. What Jesus taught goes against the way the world trained us to think and live—what Jesus called “the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod” (Mark 8:15). To be a disciple is to live out of a servant spirit (Mark 9:35) rather than the self-serving, what’s-in-it-for-me, do-whatever-it-takes-to-get-ahead spirit that drives the way the world functions. To be a disciple is to use power to serve, addressing the needs of others (Mark 10:42-45) rather than the way the world uses power—over, down against others, for personal benefit at their expense. To be a disciple is to be out of step with the world.
Faith is believing something to be true, then acting on it. It is embracing what Jesus taught, allowing it to shape how we think and live.
We write the ending to the gospel of Mark by being Jesus’s disciples who put into practice what he taught—who do what he said.
This Easter, we have the opportunity to write
our own ending to the story of Jesus’s resurrection.
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