Sermon for the Feast of St. Mark
“They were afraid”
It marks, if you will pardon the pun, the ending of Mark’s Gospel at least in terms of what is known as the shorter ending since the earliest texts of his Gospel end at verse eight rather than verse twenty of Chapter 16. To be sure, the canonical gospel, the gospel that is authoritative for orthodox Christians, includes those additional twelve verses. The shorter ending does not mean that Mark does not believe in the doctrine of the resurrection or that the additional verses are somehow unrelated and disconnected to the rest of his gospel and unfaithful to it. The Gospels, after all, could only have come to be written in the light of the resurrection.
Still, what are we to make of that shorter ending? From a literary point of view, I think it is powerful and poignant ending, and theologically only serves to make the doctrinal point about the resurrection even more strongly. The resurrection has captured the imaginations of the gospel writers and compelled them to see things in a new light without which they would never have written what they have written.
The additional verses serve as an epilogue and as a further point of confirmation; whether as added by Mark or by someone else later on is entirely uncertain and unknowable, and, I must add, quite irrelevant to our understanding of the Christian Faith.
I like to think that the shorter ending expresses something of the character and experience of Mark. I like to think of him as the young man who ran away naked leaving his loin-cloth behind at the scene of the capture of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane by the temple authorities. We all betray Christ in one way or another; we all run away naked from the truth of our betrayals. But what happens when we are forced to confront those betrayals of our hearts in light of the empty tomb? Suddenly there is “trembling and astonishment” in which we become aware of something greater than ourselves, namely the power of God. It renders us silent, “they said nothing to anyone”. What could they say? “They were afraid”. I like to think that St. Mark is one who has had to confront his fears and his failings and in so doing has written his Gospel.
