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Most
people like things finished. To be sure, there have been some
very famous exceptions. Schubert’s Eighth Symphony is
“Unfinished”—in fact, it bears that title—and it often
appears on concert programs. Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler
each had unfinished symphonies that are played and enjoyed.
And there is that famous short story that ends with the hero
ready to open one of two doors, leaving the reader to decide
what he found behind the door he chose: “The Lady or the
Tiger.”
But
for the most part, we prefer things to be finished. My mother
used to get very upset with Hallmark Theater when it implied the ending without clearly describing what happened next. She
liked to know very clearly how it ended! Some people evidently
feel that way about music. I understand that you can buy
“complete” Schubert Eighth and Mahler Tenth Symphonies,
the endings of which have been added by musicologists who
either think they know what the composer wanted done or who
just couldn’t stand leaving it unfinished!
Something
of this nature seems to have happened with the Gospel of Mark.
If you read the King James or the New English translation, you
may not pick this up. But if your Bible has footnotes, or if
you read from a Revised Standard Version or some of the recent
translations, you will discover that the ending of Mark’s
Gospel is a bit uncertain. The footnotes will tell you that
while some ancient manuscripts have twenty verses in chapter
sixteen, some have only ten—and some of the oldest
manuscripts yet discovered end with verse eight, where our
lesson of the morning ended.
Clearly,
verse eight seems a strange place to stop, and many scholars
feel that the original ending of Mark was lost quite early.
Two later copyists, working in different areas, recognizing
the incompleteness and perhaps disturbed that this Gospel
ended on such a negative note, added a conclusion (somewhat in
the manner of those who felt compelled to finish Mahler’s
and Schubert’s symphonies). That ending was then continued
in later manuscripts. After all, we know the story of Easter
did not end with events as they were in verse eight! At that
point, no one has seen the risen Christ. All we have is an
empty tomb. And the story ends with Salome and the two Marys
being so afraid, they say nothing to anyone! Hardly the way to
end the Easter story when the Resurrection became the central
point of the preaching of the early church!
We
will probably never know the answer to the question of the
ending of Mark, this side of an interview with Mark himself.
But whatever Mark or ancient copyists may have done, there is
a profound appropriateness in the suggestion that the story of
Easter is incomplete.
Writing
the ending of the story is what the early Church was engaged
in doing. It has often been said that the strongest evidence
for the reality of the Resurrection is not what happened in a
garden on Sunday morning, but what happened in the streets and
market places of Jerusalem and Antioch and Ephesus and Corinth
and in the arenas of Rome in the months and years that
followed. It was in those places that the very men who had
denied and abandoned Christ, risked and finally laid down
their lives in testimony to the reality of the Resurrection.
And
the Church is still writing the ending of the Easter story
through the difference that Christ makes in lives and in the
difference his teachings make in the institutions and
structures of society.
That statement is equally true when we make it personal. There
is a very real sense in which it is up to each of us to write
our own ending. Life can be a story whose ending is wrapped in
uncertainty and fear, or it can be a story lived in trust and
confidence.
On
a summer’s walk a few years ago, I came upon a large moth
struggling to work its way out of its cocoon. As I watched it,
I found myself wanting help with its struggles. It would have
been an easy thing to do. I have a tiny pair of scissors on my
Swiss army knife. I could have cut the opening a little larger
and there would have been no need for so much struggle. But I
remembered that I had read some place that that was not a good
idea, so I continued to watch.
After
what seemed a long time—and if it seemed long to me, think
what it must have seemed given the shortness of insect life
spans—the rest of the body emerged. It was a shriveled
looking thing, with short, stunted wings that I was sure
could never bear a body the size of the one that had
come out of the cocoon. At first I thought I had witnessed the
birth of an abnormality of some kind. As I watched, the insect
continued to move and struggle, even though it was now free of
the cocoon. The creature kept moving and flexing those stubby
wings. Then I noticed that the body was growing smaller and
the wings were growing larger! The fluids in the body of the
insect were being pumped out into those stubby wings and they,
in turn, were spreading and growing. Enthralled, I watched the
creature change from what appeared to be a deformed and
helpless aberration, doomed to crawl its life away, into a
creature that was obviously destined to float upon the air.
Now,
I know that the Christian life is different from the life of
that moth. The ending of the moth’s story was written in its
genes and the struggle was the route to reach that goal. We
are not automatons in that way; we face choices and decisions
that can determine the outcome of our lives more than that
moth. But if we give our lives to Christ, there is a sense in
which the ending of the story is written on our hearts.
Don’t
hear me as promising that every day, in every way, everything
will get better and better. That is not what I am saying,
because that isn’t always so. You’ve heard the old cliché:
“They told me to cheer up, that things could be worse; so I
did, and sure enough they were.” Things don’t
always get better and better. Sometimes we are still alone.
Sometimes the job does not work out. Sometimes the cancer does
not go away. But ultimately, life is more than the
circumstances in which we find ourselves.
The
longer endings of the other gospels tell us that the joy came
when the women and the disciples experienced the Risen Christ.
Until that happened, they were right where Mark left them in
that shorter version: the joy still awaited.
I
am not claiming that in committing our lives to Christ, we
will know the details of our lives any more than my glance at
the closing pages of a book tells me all the characters that I
will meet, or the trials they will endure, or the travails
they may go through before they get there. But if the ending
is worthwhile, then the process becomes bearable and even
joyous.
In
the third chapter of The First Epistle of John we read:
“Behold we are now Children of God. It does not yet appear
what we shall be, but we know that when he appears, we shall
be like him.” (I John 3:1-2)
Isn’t
that a marvelous ending to the Easter story of life? John had
a peek at the end of the book! And while he did not know all
the development of the plot or all the characters that might
be encountered, he knew how the story would end!
A
few years ago, Noreen Towers, a pastor in the Methodist Church
of Australia, wrote in the International Christian Digest about
a time in her life when she had about reached the end of her
rope. She was disappointed; overwhelmed by a sense of
hopelessness. In a flood of tears, she said, she went to bed
not knowing how she could continue. When she awoke the next
morning, she heard some words ringing in her head. A voice
seemed to be saying: “Can you not trust my plan for you?”
She writes:
I
knew instantly that it was the voice of Jesus. I suddenly
understood how he had spoken to the disciples when he said,
“How little faith you have!” (Matt. 8:26) It was quite a
revelation to me that God actually had a plan for my life,
and that thought was to lift me up for weeks to come. But if
God knew what that plan was, I certainly could not see it.
Then I realized that I did not have to see the plan; I only
had to trust him. I rose from my bed a different person.
Nothing in my circumstances had changed outwardly that day,
but I had changed inwardly. For me, it was a resurrection
experience... (April 1987, p.19)
Ultimately,
the answer to the question of how the Gospel of Mark
originally ended probably does not matter a great deal. What
does matter is how the Easter story ends for us. Hearing about
an empty tomb can simply leave us uncertain and afraid. An
encounter with the Risen Christ brings joy and peace.
May
you meet Him here this Easter day—whether for the first time
or again—and let Him help you write the ending to the story.
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