I have long been fascinated with Holy Week and the ways the Gospel writers describe the events leading up to Jesus’ death, particularly the places where their accounts don’t align. Over time, those differences have become more gift than stumbling block.
In seminary, I learned to approach the Gospels academically, after years of reading them only devotionally. I won’t pretend that shift was easy. Growing up in conservative church circles, I held an all-or-nothing view of Biblical truth, and learning to let go of that rigidity was its own kind of conversion.
One thing you don’t typically learn in Sunday School is that the original versions of the Gospels aren’t preserved from antiquity. Instead, we have versions that often differ, with scribe’s notes, clarifying thoughts, and alterations to the text present in different manuscripts.
Now, many of these changes are very small and have no meaningful impact on the text or its interpretation. This month’s Christian Century includes a feature story on one of the biggest changes: the altered ending of Mark’s Gospel. In the oldest manuscripts we have, Mark ends with verse 8 of chapter 16. Unlike the other Gospels, the story ends without the risen Christ appearing.
In her article, Danielle Tumminio Hansen, writes that she really wishes that editors had resisted the temptation to add the eleven verses that make up the balance of Mark’s closing chapter. She offers an interesting perspective on the original version that, while more nuanced, largely aligns with mine.
I’ve long thought that Mark’s Gospel—as originally authored—wasn’t meant to be the end of the story. The Gospel was meant to be experienced and processed in community, especially as most people were illiterate. Hansen argues that the original ending allows the Gospel to speak into the trauma that would have been present on that Sunday morning so long ago, as well as among its first audiences living under an oppressive Roman state.
Hansen writes that the original ending speaks directly into trauma and grief; those despondent moments when words fail, and all that remains is what she calls “a daring promise to go and ‘see’ Jesus in some way that makes no sense.” The added verses, she argues, short-circuit that raw, unresolved experience by tidying it into meaning too quickly.
If you have a few minutes this week, I suggest you read her entire article, as it may offer a different way to see this familiar story.
In any case, I hope you will find some time this week to linger with Jesus, his disciples and closest friends, resisting the pull of your thoughts toward the resolution Easter provides.
As Steven Tyler of Aerosmith once sang, “Life’s a journey, not a destination.” Put theologically, the light of Easter is only visible to those who have waited in the dark.
