Mark 16:8b
Mark has two possible endings. Almost certainly, what is now commonly called the shorter ending, and which I have here termed verse 8b, is the original. It leaves things up in the air, and maybe rightly so. However, it would seem that the relatively early church felt that a bit more needed to be said, and so verses 9 to 20 were assembled and added, giving a little more detail to the Easter event.
However, perhaps it should have been enough to leave things with the message just beginning to get out.
The women were told to tell the disciples, with Peter given a special mention, what they had experienced. They do so and, through this embryonic Christian community, Jesus sends out the wonderful message of salvation. I wonder whether Jesus is able to work through us as readily as ought to be the case. I wonder how we would have responded on the first Easter Day.
So, as Leith Fisher (Will you follow me?) points out – “the gospel ends with this final clash between the announcement of the Jesus who goes before into Galilee, which fills us with hope, and the portrayal of the women’s consternation and fear. To the end there is an unresolved ambiguity. …. Mark typically leaves us with a question, a question which will send us back to the gospel to read more carefully between the lines. More significantly, he leaves us with a question requiring an answer in our lives now.”
It is certainly an unfinished story.
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