Nothing To See Here.
In this episode, we look at the shorter ending of the Gospel of Mark, which doesn’t present Jesus alive after his resurrection. As “alarming” as that seems, it is actually consistent with the Gospel of Mark as a whole, in which Jesus’ death on the cross is the preamble to his return in glory.
In the Gospel of Mark with the so-called shorter ending, the hearer is taken from Jesus’ death on the cross to the expectation of his coming in glory, with little or nothing happening in between. That’s how the narrative moves, and it moves that way intentionally. We might hear the shorter ending and think we are being cheated out of something because it doesn’t depict Jesus alive after his crucifixion. However the value of going from crucifixion to return is that the hearer stays grounded on what is expected of him. Paul in 1 Corinthians speaks abundantly about the cross and how our submission to it though baptism controls the way we act. Significantly, any discussion of the resurrection in that letter is deferred till chapter 15, the penultimate chapter. He does this on purpose, since there is little to teach about resurrection (other than de facto accepting it), but there is much to teach about how to conduct oneself in the world now as a slave of Jesus, the Christ, the Son of man who was both crucified in submission to the will of God, and who will come again “in the glory of his father with the holy angels.” We see, then, in Mark’s gospel, that Jesus’ death on the cross is the preamble to his return in glory.
