Sermon: Easter

If you’re looking for a clean, happy, ending to this Jesus story, don’t bother looking to Mark. It’s like he finished his gospel in mid-sentence, as if the pen was ripped from his hands right before he got the his main point. The story feels stilted, stunted, smaller than it should be.

It looks like something’s missing. It doesn’t make sense to finish the gospel by saying,

”Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.”

You can almost hear the dot-dot-dot after the word “afraid.” There’s no resolution. The story sounds incomplete. This ending leaves us wanting more.

But this is where the earliest and most reliable manuscripts end the story. This is Mark’s final sentence. His conclusion. All that other stuff you find in your bibles after this verse wasn’t in the earliest known versions of this story.

For Mark, there’s no...(whole thing here)