Sermon: An abrupt gospel

You may have noticed that the gospel ended rather abruptly: it's hardly the stuff of Easter joy because, faced with the charge from the angels to tell the disciples that Jesus has risen from the dead and will meet them in Galilee, the gospel ends, "So the women went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid."

A lot of scholarly ink has been spilled over the thought of a lost ending to Mark's gospel. Did the end of the scroll fall off very early on so that whatever was the real ending of Mark is lost in the mists of time? Obviously some people in the early church thought that was the case, or at least that that ought to be the case, because there were at least two attempts to supply a tidier ending. You can find them at the end of the gospel, one called the shorter ending of Mark and one called the longer ending of Mark. The extra verses summarise what Matthew and Luke tell us of the resurrection appearances and both are clearly added by a different person because the language is different from Mark's distinctive style. It's as though some people in the early church couldn't live with the unfinished ending; perhaps we are more relaxed about it knowing, as we do, of an unfinished symphony and - in this Cathedral - of Bede's unfinished commentary on the gospel of John. If you attend Evensong on Bede's day in may you'll hear half of the story of the feeding of the five thousand, stopping just as abruptly as Mark's gospel stops, because that is where Bede had got to when he died. We are left hanging, gasping for the resolution that is not there - in the case of Bede's work on John we are left with the question at the feeding of the 5,000, "but what are they among so many?", in Mark's case with, "they were afraid" and in both cases we are forced to face the challenge of engaging with the unexpected absence of resolution.

But what if there wasn't a lost ending, if Mark's gospel really did end with frightened women fleeing? How does that fit with the way he tells the story of Jesus, and with his understanding of the resurrection?

For a long time Mark's gospel was thought to be a rather crude abbreviation of the longer accounts by Matthew and Luke, but now his is generally recognised to be the earliest gospel on which Matthew and Luke draw. Mark's gospel is the shortest with a wonderful, rather breathless, style and, far from being a rather disorganised account as was once disparagingly thought, he plots a good story. He has no account of Jesus' birth, he just launches is with John appearing from the wilderness proclaiming a baptism of repentance, followed quickly by Jesus who is baptised, tempted and begins his ministry in Galilee in the space of seven verses. Everything moves incredibly fast - Mark uses the word immediately eight times in the first chapter alone. The first half of Mark's gospel tells of how Jesus healed and taught and tried to get his disciples to understand who he was but without noticeable success, in fact Mark paints a very unsympathetic picture of the disciples as rather slow on the uptake, always getting the wrong end of the stick.

Chapter 8 is the hinge on which Mark's gospel turns. Mark concludes his account of Jesus' teaching and miracles with the restoration of sight to a blind man who is told to go straight home and not to go into the village where people were waiting to hear what Jesus had done for him. A blind man receives physical sight and is told not to spread the news. Mark then goes straight to the account of Jesus asking the disciples if, after all this time of following him around and seeing what he is doing and teaching, they have come to understand who he is. Peter responds with his confession of faith, of spiritual sight, "You are the Messiah" and, just as with the healed blind man, Jesus tells them - sternly orders them in fact - not to tell anyone about him. It's one of Mark's key story-telling devices: for the first half of the gospel the people around Jesus have had clues as to who he is and, when they finally work it out it's a secret, not to be spread abroad because the truth is to be revealed in action.

As soon as Peter has confessed who Jesus is, Jesus teaches them that he must suffer, be rejected and killed, and after three days rise. It's as though Jesus is saying, "Finally you can see who I am, the Messiah. But now you've grasped that, you've got to learn to think again about what kind of Messiah I am, because the Messiah will not come in powerful triumph but will suffer and die, and rise again." And then the second half of Mark's gospel begins with the call to the crowd and his disciples to take up their cross and follow him, before leading into the extended account of Jesus' own passion and death. The tension builds and under pressure Peter, who has confessed that Jesus is the Messiah at the end of the first half of the gospel, now denies that he knows Jesus. Another disciple, forgetting that the Messiah must suffer and die, fights back and cuts off the ear of one of the slaves accompanying those sent to arrest Jesus. The way that Mark tells the story, the disciples still haven't got the message about Jesus and what must happen to him. So by the time of the crucifixion there were women around the cross but no sign of the disciples who have apparently abandoned Jesus. There's also an enigmatic reference to a young man who is wearing nothing but a linen cloth and flees naked when they grab him. Some people think this is a reference to Mark himself, but there is at least one scholarly paper proving this cannot be the case without indicating who it might be instead. It's another of Mark's enigmas.

In the light of a gospel that is all about disciples trying to grasp who Jesus is, which they do by the middle of the gospel at which point they are sworn to secrecy, and what must happen to the Messiah, which they fail to understand right to the end and instead abandon him, even fleeing naked, perhaps the abrupt ending of Mark is not so out of place.

Some of the women go to the tomb just after sunrise, the stone is rolled away and they find a young man in a white robe (could this be the young man who had fled naked? Scholars can't agree) who tells them not to be alarmed - a natural reaction that any of us would have had in those circumstances. Then the young man says "He was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. He is going ahead of you to Galilee and there you will see him just as he told you." There are echoes of what Jesus had said when Peter finally recognised Jesus was the Messiah, he would "undergo great suffering, be killed and after three days rise again. If you want to be my followers, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me." Just as the first half of Mark's gospel ended with the description of what would happen to Jesus and the call to follow him, so the second half of Mark's gospel ends with the description of what had happened to Jesus and the call to follow him.

And, just as the disciples had abandoned Jesus earlier in the story, the women flee, full of terror and amazement, that potent mix of emotions which will stop anyone acting rationally. What is Mark doing here? He's reminding us, as he has reminded us throughout, that the gospel was proclaimed among ordinary human people who took time to realise the radical message of God here on earth among them, among us. The disciples had got it wrong at times, now the women get it wrong.

We've had Lenten disciplines, can I suggest an Easter discipline: that you read the gospel of Mark through at one sitting, it will take you about an hour. He began his gospel abruptly, "The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: "Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight."'" The gospel which began with a messenger commanding people to prepare for the Lord's coming, includes half way through a command to disciples to take up their cross and follow Jesus, ends with some of those followers commanded to tell the disciples that Jesus is going in front of them and they must follow to Galilee. Always in Mark's gospel there is movement and the drive is forward. And it is but a beginning of the good news, it is not the whole story. The readers of the gospel would know the sequel because they were part of it.

Mark has no resurrection appearance of Jesus to the disciples: not for them the tangible evidence of his risen body. This Easter we have heard stories from other gospels where Jesus appeared to his disciples and sooner or later - often later - they recognised him. Seeing Jesus was not always the immediate answer to the disciples' fears and confusions. In fact, the longer ending of Mark which someone has added has two references to the disciples not believing the people who claimed to have seen Jesus risen from the dead and then Jesus telling them off for their stubbornness in not believing the witnesses. Seeing is not always believing; faith is part of the resurrection equation.

Instead of the certainty of what politicians call a knock down argument, in Mark the challenge to the disciples is always to let Jesus turn their previous certainties on their head. So it's hardly surprising that the gospel ends with another conundrum: that Jesus was securely buried but the tomb is empty. The women's reaction is fear, but so what? Mark leaves us with the challenge of an empty tomb and the implication that what happened next was left in the hands of terrified women and male disciples who hadn't even been brave or devoted enough to make it to the tomb. But, in the light of the way Mark tells the whole story, that gives us and the whole church hope because this is the raw material Jesus has worked with all the time. God's good news didn't depend on the disciples' readiness and doesn't depend on ours, but God's grace catches us up in the story wherever we are. God's good news doesn't need all the ends neatly tied up, the resurrection breaks into a world of loose ends.