How on earth could the last page of the first manuscript of Mark’s gospel have gone missing? Was the author scribbling furiously by the light of a guttering candle when the heavy hand of authority descended on his shoulder and a centurion pronounced the first century equivalent of ‘What’s all this then?’ Was Mark arrested before he could end the story properly? Or did his housekeeper inadvertently tear off the last page to light the fire with, and like so many authors he always meant to get round to rewriting it but never did so? Or did the sacristan of the local house church find himself having reluctantly to announce one morning that ‘Our second lesson has been eaten by mice and the author has moved to Asia Minor so no-one knows what he wrote.’
It is certainly the case that many of the best ancient manuscripts end at 16:8 where our second lesson ended. It is clear that the subsequent verses printed in our Bibles are written by a different hand and provide a rough and later summary of what we find in the other gospels. It is also undoubtedly the case that the copies of Mark’s gospel which were available to Matthew and Luke when they wrote their gospels ended at this point, as both of them follow Mark closely to this moment and then go their separate ways in relating the events of the resurrection. And that in brief is a summary of one of the most debated questions in New Testament scholarship. Did Mark intend to end with these words or did his original ending get lost? And if he did end here how on earth did he intend his audience to react to the idea that the first people to hear about the resurrection ran away and said nothing because they were terrified? If this is indeed the ending to the first account of the good news about Jesus Christ the Son of God, then it makes considerable demands on us as readers of the good news. How then are we to read this ending? Of course we begin by assuming that this is a straightforward account of what happened. But even at that level things are puzzling. Why didn’t the women realise in advance they would need some men to help move the stone? And why did they react in such terror to the young man and his message? When Matthew gives his version of this event he radically changes what Mark says, turning the women’s panic into joy as they rush off to tell the disciples. Clearly Matthew found Mark’s account too puzzling. And then if we have a good memory for what has gone before, we will know that Jesus had told the disciples in Bethany that the unknown women who poured expensive perfume all over him had prepared his body for burial. So strictly speaking the women’s journey to the tomb was unnecessary. They also seem to have forgotten the various occasions on which Jesus told them that he would rise again.
However, as soon as we start thinking about what has gone before we may begin to make a few more connections. For a start there is the young man. The last young man to have appeared in the story was the curious and anonymous figure who runs away from the arrest in Gethsemane, wearing only a linen cloth that was seized by the soldiers as he fled. We may remember that another linen cloth was used to wrap up the dead body of Jesus. The young man in the tomb is wearing a white robe. He reminds the women that Jesus had told the disciples that he would go ahead of them into Galilee where they would see him. The young man makes a particular point of telling them that they should remind Peter as well as the disciples. It was of course Peter who swore he would never abandon Jesus and now we presume he is somewhere in hiding.
If we look back to where Jesus first said these words referred to by the young man we see that they followed on from his warning that they like sheep would all be scattered when the shepherd is attacked. But like a shepherd he will lead them back to Galilee. It is all the more ironic therefore that the women now panic and run away from the sepulchre like frightened sheep.
So what are we to make of all this? Clearly Mark and his audience know about the resurrection various stories were already in circulation, summarised by Paul in one Corinthians, some fifteen years previously. Clearly again Mark has no hesitation writing about the miraculous his gospel is full of such stories. So we must assume that Mark was trying to convey to his audience something about the character of faith in the resurrection. This text is we might say history on the way to being sermon narrative becoming proclamation. And Mark’s sermon isn’t an easy one to digest. As Austin Farrer once wrote, ‘The act of God always overthrows human expectation: the cross defeats our hope: the resurrection terrifies our despair.’
How then might Mark have wanted his first audience to react? Mark’s story is full of irony. People say and do things, the full significance of which they fail to grasp. They disciples mean to be heroes but go into hiding. A young man in white announces the best of all good news and the women are speechless. The first lesson in all this must be that where God is at work human beings will always be thrown of course, not knowing how to react or what to say. There is no way in which you can be prepared for crucifixion or resurrection and in both cases you are likely to run away. To accept that is to begin to hear the good news. Precisely because the resurrection was beginning to become accepted history in Mark’s congregation a thing of the past so perhaps they needed to be reminded of the shocking facts in order to see what it truly means to be grasped by the living glory of the risen Lord. If they and we fail to hear the story rightly then we will simply repeat it’s failures. So then how are we to interpret these references to a young man and linen cloth and a white robe? In the temple priests who failed to stay awake on duty on duty had their robes taken from them. In the book of Revelation John is told that the Christ comes as a thief in the night the faithful must stay awake and watch for fear of losing their garments. The disciples in Gethsemane fall asleep and one of them looses his linen cloth and flees naked. Ironically a linen cloth is used to wrap up the dead body of the Jesus to shield its nakedness. And yet this body is about to be robed in the honour of immortality and the radiance of glory. The young man who announces the good news is dressed in the white robe, the colour of transfiguration, and sitting in the place of honour on the right side. And once again the robe is significant for these are the robes of those who bear witness even to death, who fill the courts of heaven with singing in the book of Revelation.
The young man seems to be the type of the redeemed martyr. He slept, fled, lost his linen cloth. But through the resurrection he has been restored with the white robe of glory. And what the young man bears witness to is the beginning again of the story, the possibility of forgiveness and a fresh start. The community of the disciples and Peter is to be reinstated and the journey is to begin again in Galilee. But before it can begin the women will have to overcome their fear and speak. And at this point the story is thrown open to the reader. Will we flee and remain silent or will we follow and speak? Will we commit ourselves to the journey and so be able to see Jesus for ourselves in the community of the faithful that is called to live his risen life in the world?
In the young man’s message to the women there is a resonance with some words in one of the 20th centuries most famous poems.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
The disciples are to return to Galilee and know it for the first time because they have been changed by the gospel of the crucified and risen one. It is a condition that as the poem says, ‘costs not less than everything’ but, ‘all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well’ for he is risen and goes before us.
Stephen Tucker