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181 Mark 16:9-20 Sermon 7 (April 5, 1994) A provocative and delightful treatment of the so-called “longer ending” of Mark—the twelve verses that were tacked on to the abrupt ending of the Gospel sometime in the second century C.E. Juel forcefully rejects the impoverished vision of Christian life that one finds in the longer ending. He instead urges his listeners to grapple with the original ending in which Jesus is absent and the women flee in silent terror from the empty tomb, for in this unsettling scene one in fact finds the promises of God to and for us. ——— I will confess that I have never before heard those words, which are identified in the New RSV as the “longer ending,” read in church. And I hope I never will again. Yet, throughout most of the history of the church, that’s the way Mark’s Gospel was concluded. One of God’s great gifts to modern folks, at least to those of us living in the last century and a half, was the discovery of ancient manuscripts that conclude Mark’s Gospel with verse 8, a verse that’s now become familiar. “And when they came out, they fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment held them fast; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” The problem is that only initiated readers with knowledge of critical signs know that the verses read today don’t belong in the Bible and wouldn’t be there except for editors too cowardly to bury them in the footnotes. Even initiated readers have difficulty leaving the ending alone. One artless scribe couldn’t, and his ending has perhaps been as responsible as anything for the silence of Mark’s Gospel in the history of the 182 Shaping the Scriptural Imagination church. After all, who wants to commend the reading of a book that ends with verses 9-20? After the long dark period of Lent, believers come to church hopeful for a word of promise . . . and what do they get? Whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned—good news! The vision of the future stretches us no farther than handling snakes and drinking poison. Some former students went to visit a little village in the Appalachians where, among some snake-handling Christians, a man had been bitten and had died. The news, of course, made national headlines. They spoke with one sweet, simple man who ran the gas station in town, who told them that his fondest hope in life was sometime to drink a whole jar of battery acid. Who wants such a book? Of course the worst thing about the ending is not the details, but the effort to control the story. People can’t leave the ending alone: it’s too unsettling. What terrified the women who went to the tomb, loaded down with spices to do their duty to the corpse, was that Jesus wasn’t there. There is comfort in being able to rely on something—death, at least—but with Jesus’ resurrection not even the grave turns out to be a solid foundation on which to build. As the Gospel ends, Jesus isn’t there. He’s nowhere to be seen. There’s not even the hem of a garment to touch. If we’re to extract the blessing from this story, some drastic measures will have to be taken. So the project begins. It starts with editors—if not by writing alternative endings, then at least by finding excuses to include them. When editors are unconvincing, theologians take up the challenge: spinning theories about why Jesus had to die, transforming the historical Jesus into the theoretical Christ, providing intellectual satisfaction for people invited to believe in a Jesus who has saved everyone in principle but never gets close enough to unsettle anyone in particular. It isn’t a nourishing fare, and if that’s what the church is up to, I’m willing to see the hand of God even in the work of the Jesus Seminar—people who, according to one member, see their task as rescuing Jesus from the theological spin doctors. When you reach the end of the story, Jesus isn’t there. There’s no way to lay hold of him. If you think courses in theology and Bible will give you some handles, you’re in for a terrible disappointment—even members of the...

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