Scriptures Mark 16:1-8, 1 Cor. 15:1-8 “There’s More to the Story!” preached by Michael Burkley, Easter, 2012
One morning back in 1993 I woke up with a terrible thought. I had dreamed that my Mom had died, and that
was real to me, and I grieved. As I moved part-way on from the half-sleep of dreams to the wakefulness of reality I
realize that I was dreaming and that my mother was still alive. The relief that brought me was achingly wonderful.
But then I came fully awake and realized what was really the dream and what was reality. I was dreaming the
joy, the loss was real. My Mom had died the day before. I lay back in my bed and wept.
I sometimes wonder what dreams the Disciples had in the nights between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.
Did Peter twist and twitch on his bed as he dreamed and relived his denial of Jesus? In the dark of the night did he
weep as looked once more into the eyes of Jesus and heard the rooster’s crow? Or maybe he dreamt of Jesus alive
and smiling and striding over the Galilean hills with Peter at his side.
None of us know. What we do know is that when they awoke on Sunday morning the reality of Jesus’ death was
still crushing down on them. Jesus, their Lord, had been murdered through a travesty of judicial misconduct and
cowardice, and they were still alive.
Nothing was further from their minds than the Resurrection. Jesus was dead, and that ended the matter at least as
far as his life. There was still something to be done for the dead. As we read in the Gospel of Mark today, three
women were on their way to Jesus’ tomb just as the sun was peeking over the horizon. They were going to complete
his burial by anointing his body with spices. They knew that there was a large stone covering the entrance to the
tomb, but love would find a way, and they knew that somehow they would get in and anoint Jesus’ body.
It so happened that they were wrong. They got into the tomb because the stone had been rolled aside, but they
didn’t get anoint his body because his body wasn’t there. But someone was there – a young man dressed in a white
robe – and they were alarmed, to put it mildly. “Don’t be afraid,” he said, “You’re looking for Jesus who was
crucified. He’s risen! He’s not here. Look were they laid him. The spot is empty. Now go and tell his disciples to
meet him in Galilee.”
They backed out of that tomb and high-tailed it out of there. Mark ends with them being terrified and saying
nothing about this to anyone. The Gospel ends with fear.
“Wait a minute, Pastor” you might say. “There’s more to the story than that. You can’t end with verse eight!
You’re leaving out the rest of the Gospel. You can’t do that!”
I wish I didn’t have to, but I do. Almost every scholar who studies the Gospel of Mark believes that Mark ends
with verse eight, with the women being silent because of their fear. Remember that the Gospels weren’t published
by a world-recognized publishing company, printing off thousands of exact copies. No, the original of Mark was
written out by hand and every copy of it for the next 1,400 years was written out by hand. The earliest copies of
Mark that we have don’t have this longer ending – they stop suddenly at verse eight. The earliest translations of the
Gospel of Mark that we have don’t have this longer ending – they stop suddenly at verse eight. But then after
hundreds of years someone wrote the longer ending you have in your Bibles, and someone else wrote another ending
different altogether. And from that time on a copy of Mark would have one ending or the other, sometimes both.
Someone had the same exact reaction we have to the gospel ending with fear and silence. They said, “There’s more
to the story than that!” and decided to do something about it.
The trouble is, what’s convenient and comfortable isn’t always the truth, and the truth is, almost certainly, that
Mark ends with fear and silence. Mark ended that way, but that’s not how the first Resurrection Day ended! Why
did Mark end with silence when there’s so much more than that? I think there’s a very good reason, and a challenge
in the answer to that.
We know what happened from the other Gospels. Those women did see the angels and empty tomb, and they
did run off in fear, and they didn’t tell what the angel told them to tell, but they told something. What did Mary say
to the Disciples? She cried, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put
him!” Not exactly the message the angel told them to say!
At that Peter and John run to the tomb and find it empty. John saw, he remembered what Jesus had said, and he
believed that Jesus was alive. Peter, well, we don’t know what Peter thought just then, ‘cause the Gospels don’t say.
They both leave the tomb and run back to the other disciples.
Mary has followed behind, grieving that her Lord was dead and she couldn’t even care for his body. When she
arrives she’s alone again and looks into the tomb a second time, just to see if something’s changed. Something has
changed. There are now two angels there, and they ask her why she’s crying. After all, they had already told her
that Jesus was alive. Still crying, she insists that someone has stolen Jesus’ body. She knew what had happened and
she wasn’t about to believe any so-called good news. She turns around and sees Jesus, but doesn’t really look at him
– tears blur her vision and custom keeps her from looking at the face of a unknown man. Jesus speaks to her and
calls her by name, “Mary,” he says. She looks up and sees Jesus alive and cries out “Rabboni,” which means my
honored and beloved teacher.
Now it is not an angel but Jesus himself who tells her to go and spread the news, and she does, with joy and hope
and voice. “I have seen the Lord!” There is no fear in her now.
Why didn’t Mark tell it the way the others Gospels did? Why not end with joy instead of fear? He certainly
knew the rest of the story. Tradition has it that Mark was written in Rome sometime shortly after Peter died, about
65 AD. Peter knew about the Resurrection – he had seen Jesus. Paul wrote to the Corinthians ten years before, that
Jesus didn’t only die for our sins but he also rose from the dead and showed himself to Peter and the other apostles
and to more than 500 believers at one time, and finally even to himself. There were lots of witnesses to the
Resurrection, lots of stories to tell, so why didn’t Mark write an ending that satisfies?
I’ll finally answer that question. Mark wrote to believers who knew about the Resurrection, but he also wrote to
believers who were scared. The Roman Empire was turning against the Christians. Peter had been crucified –
upside down – by the Romans. Paul had been either beheaded or strangled. They could have denied Jesus and gone
free, but they followed their resurrected Lord even into death. It’s was beginning to be a very dangerous thing to be
a Christian. Mark wrote to those believers in the way that he did so that they would be offended because the whole
story hadn’t been told. He wrote it that way so that people would collar him, grab him by the lapels of his robe – if
robes had lapels, and say, “Why didn’t you tell the whole story?”
When they asked him that question Mark would probably grin and tell them something like this. “You know the
story; you care about it. The world doesn’t know it, and doesn’t care. They’re not going to learn about Jesus from
reading my story, because they’ll never read it. The only story of the Gospel that those out in the world will ever
hear is the story told by you and by your life. Don’t count on Mary to tell the story. Don’t count on Peter or Paul
either – they’re dead, but you are alive. Those women were afraid when they were convinced that Jesus was dead,
but they were fearless when they knew he was alive. You know that he is alive. Don’t be afraid. I didn’t write a
conclusion, because that wouldn’t leave room for you. Go out and tell the story, this story that will never end, and
the world will be changed.”
Two weeks before my mother died, my sister talked to her about Jesus. All her life my mother thought that she
was good enough – that God certainly would accept her because of her good intentions and her good enough
practices. But as my sister talked to her about Jesus dying for her and rising for her – to give her life with God,
something changed in my mother. A week later as I talked to my mom she told me about her time with my sister.
She said, “All my life I’ve thought that it was about how good I am. Now I know that it’s not about how good I am
but about how good God is.” She gave her life to the Lord, and when she died she moved into life by the grace of
God poured out for her in Jesus, her Resurrected Lord. So even though I grieved that she had died, it was not a
dream that she still lived, it is the truth. Thanks be to God.
My mother had heard this story all of her life, but her hearing was just words read on a page or spoken from a
pulpit. God was at work in her, but she didn’t know it. The work of God only spoke to her and gave life to her when
someone cared enough for her to share Jesus, who he is, what he did for her.
Perhaps you’ve heard this Gospel story all of your life, in print and from pulpit, but it has all seemed rather
distant and unreal to you. You might come to church, but that really doesn’t touch the depths of your soul, the center
of your life. Maybe you’ve heard a contrary message from some believer, one that hurt you and made you reject the
words and say, “I’m certainly better than that idiot.” If that’s happened to you, I apologize to you, for it should not
have happened. You probably are better, kinder, nicer than the person who hurt you, but the Gospel isn’t about how
good you or I are, but about how good God is and how full of life God is and how giving God is. I am glad that you
are here today if you are not convinced of the truth of the Gospel. May this day be a turning point for you as we
share with you the Gospel of Jesus, the Lord of Life, of Jesus alive.
That’s the message, I believe, that we are to take away from the Gospel of Mark and its conclusion that leaves so
much unconcluded. We who believe that Jesus is alive and call him our Lord and Savior, have been given the task,
despite our worries, in the face of our fears, of telling the never ending story of Jesus who died and rose again from
the dead, of sharing him so the world might be saved. Our world needs to hear the full story, and we might be the
only Bible someone will ever read. Let’s give them the truth of Jesus, the greatest story ever told.