Sally A. Brown, Professor Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary
Mark’s gospel ends with Easter morning (Mk 16:1-8). Three women carry burial spices to the tomb “early in the morning, when the sun had risen.” They are relieved, at first, when they see from a distance that the immense stone closing the tomb has been rolled aside. But they are instantly alarmed to find a young man in white sitting inside. He speaks to them: “Do not be alarmed,” he says. “Jesus, who was crucified, has been raised. He is not here.” He shows them the empty niche. Instructions follow: they are to alert “the disciples and Peter” that “he goes before you to Galilee; there you shall see him, just as he told you.” In Mark, we find no male disciples running to the tomb and meeting angels, no comforting words from Jesus to a tearful Mary in the garden, no appearances of the risen Lord. After the young man’s speech, there is silence, except for the sound of three sets of running footsteps fading into the distance. The women tell no one. Perhaps they thought it was a set-up, a ruse contrived by the authorities who killed Jesus to trap any of his hapless followers who might, out of grief, venture near the tomb. In any case, even these loyal women, the last watchers at the cross (15:40-41) fail, in the end, to trust Jesus’ promises: that he would be raised after death, and that they would all meet again in Galilee, as the young man has just reminded them.
Mark’s ending is disconcerting narratively and theologically, but also grammatically. It ends with a preposition, gar, “for.” Mark ends so raggedly, in fact, that since antiquity, scholars have suggested that the original ending has gone missing. As early as the 2nd century, well-intended scribes supplied what they deemed to be satisfactory endings; but, short or long, their un-Markan vocabulary and style betrays them. Today, they are relegated to the footnotes in most editions. “Gar” stands.
Not all Mark’s interpreters find his ragged ending unsatisfying. Some argue that this is a stroke of genius in a gospel designed for dramatic oral transmission. Mark’s dangling preposition leaves a tense silence in the theatre. Have the actors forgotten their lines? Is there no response to the earth-shattering possibilities that the young man’s announcement implies? For if he is telling the truth, the universe as we have known it has just cracked open. It is enough to raise goosebumps on our skin and set our hearts racing. No wonder the women ran! As preacher Timothy Simpson said to his flock one Easter morning, preaching what proved to be the final sermon of his too-short life: “If … the dead are raised… what else in the world is going to happen? If the dead don’t stay in their graves, then everything else is about to change. “* Wait a minute: Jesus promised this would happen, didn’t he? Shouldn’t somebody be saying something about now? Will you get up and say it, or should I?
Now, 2000 years later, on Easter morning, you and I will get up like generations of preachers before us to tell loyal church members and dressed-up visitors the news that Christ is risen; the world has cracked open, and it will never be the same. I suspect that ninety-eight percent of our Easter Sunday listeners hear this, but like the women, hurry out the door to check and see that the world is still normal—still a place where the dead stay safely dead. Ninety-eight percent of them will tell no one. But God bless the two percent. They will go out into the world and dare to see the cosmos as irreversibly ruptured by newness. Jesus who was crucified is risen, the Firstborn of God’s new creation. God’s renewal of all things has begun, and by the grace of God, in the power of the Holy Spirit, God’s remaking of the world is unstoppable. Christ is risen indeed! Will you say it, or shall I?
*Timothy F. Simpson, “Called to an Eastering Presence”, Journal for Preachers , 39:3, (2016):17-19.
Insights into Biblical Greek Grammar and Syntax 