We have just celebrated ‘Hope for the Illawarra’. In a few weeks we celebrate ‘Hope for the world’. Across the Easter weekend we experience afresh the hope and joy of Christ’s love and victory. It’s the greatest story ever told. An ‘unfinished’ story.
There are four historically reliably accounts of Jesus’ life: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. As biographies, they are unusually skewed. Two recount the birth of Jesus – the other two are content to introduce Christ differently. There’s very little mention of his upbringing (only Luke gives an incident from Jesus’ childhood). But all four cover his final week in great detail. All four are showing us that the cross and empty tomb are the most important part of the story that every person needs to be transformed by. Mark’s account has a particular style that invites every hearer (you and me included) to finish Christ’s story in our lives.
Mark 16 is an unfinished story. The women are shown the evidence in verse 6 – ‘see he is not here’. Mary, Mary and Salome are explicitly told in verse 7 ‘Go and tell his disciples and Peter’. What do they do? Verse 8: ‘Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.’ It’s such an anticlimax, that in the following centuries, other writers cobbled together an extended ending with all the things they think should’ve happened – Mary Magdalene tells the disciples, Jesus meets with them, then powerfully commissions them to make his good news known and they obey. People added more because it’s how we think it should end.
That’s the beauty of Mark’s unfinished story. It personally engages. Mark really leaves it hanging in verse 8. In the original, the sentence finishes with the preposition ‘for’. We have ‘for they were afraid’, the original goes ‘they were afraid FOR…’ It’s left hanging, making us engage. We can’t handle the ‘unresolved chord’. We want to finish the story.
This Easter, God is offering hope. He’s calling you to finish the story in your life. Jesus has risen and is still at work. How will the good news of Hope finish in your life?
Will you ‘See and be afraid?’ You know that Jesus is alive. But you are afraid to give him control of every moment in your life. You aren’t willing to obey his direction because you think it will cost too much, or others will think you foolish. Like the women at that point, you’ve seen and are afraid.
Or will you ‘see and tell’. Will you finish this gospel the way you know it should end: so gripped by the risen Christ that you live trusting Him, live obeying Him, live making Him known? The news of sin and death’s defeat – real hope – is too good to keep to yourself. Who will you tell?
Let’s keep the enthusiasm from ‘Hope for the Illawarra’ to bring. Invite your workmates, family and friends:
In Him,
Mark Smith
Senior Minister | Congregational Pastor 8am, 10am, 5pm & 7pm
