I wonder how you feel about unresolved endings?  Personally, I have to tell you that I feel resolution is overrated when it comes to endings anyway.  The Sopranos is widely thought to be one of the best series in television history.  It ended with Tony and his family sitting in a NJ restaurant with “Don’t Stop Believing” playing on the booth jukebox.  Cut to black.  Some thought this was great.  What happened?  Who knows?  Others felt cheated.  How does it end?  Who knows? 

Musically, a song is unresolved when it doesn’t end with the tonic chord.  Here’s an example of a song we like at Blythwood called “Blessed Be the Name.”  We are expecting the A at the end.  We’re left hanging, as it were, on the D. We are left suspended. No resolution.

And I have to tell you, I love that kind of ending.  We are left in a state of expectancy, and this is a good state to be in.  To live in Christ is to live in a posture of expectancy.  It’s Easter Sunday, and we’ve heard Mark 16:1-8.  We said at the beginning of Lent, when we began our journey through Mark, that this passage is generally considered to be the original ending of Mark.  Whether Mark intended it this way or the ending was lost or destroyed somehow.  The other endings that we have in our Bibles are thought to be additions.  How could Mark have ended his good news with “and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid?”  We are going to see that this is not a problem.  There are many problems in this world, and you and I may have problems (well, I do anyway), but the original ending of Mark is not one of them.

On the day that Christ is raised, it’s not about an ending.  It’s never been about an ending.  About closure.  “He has been raised!” is the truth that we celebrate this day.  If we wanted it to be about closure, death would be the end. You can’t get much more closed than that.  You can’t get much more closed than a corpse in a sealed tomb.

It’s not about an ending.  Someone has said that the truth of the resurrection means that for the follower of Christ, nothing is ever the end.  To follow Christ means that it’s never been about and is never about an ending.  It’s always about expectancy.  This is the good news that Mark leaves us within 16:1-8.  This is where the story ended on Friday.  (15:44-47)  One could be forgiven for thinking it was the end.  Dead is dead after all.

These faithful women have never left Jesus.  We hadn’t heard very much about them until Friday.  Mark was focused on the 12 disciples and in the end, their failure.  We found this out, though, on Friday. (15:40-41) Thank God for faithful women.

16:1-2  A new day dawns.  Expect the day.  Expect light.  As an old song goes, Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.  (Ps 30:5)  The words echo down through the years, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. (Mal 4:2) We sing it every Christmas – Light and life to all he brings, ris’n with healing in his wings.  You shall go out leaping like calves from a stall (what a wonderful image for spring).  Expect the sun.  Expect the Son to bring about far more than we ever expected.  The women thought they would need to anoint Jesus’ body with spices.  This was something that was done to bodies to cover the smell of decomposition.  It was done for the benefit of others who would be using/visiting the tomb.  Even now, the women are serving.  They had heard Jesus say, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” (9:35) 

They’re making plans which will never have to come to fruition. They are asking a question, wondering about how something is going to happen – “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?”  They had no need to worry and no need to wonder how.  They hear and see good news.  16:4-6.

This is a story of death that does not end with death.  This is a story of human failure that need not end with failure.  We can assume that this young man is an angel, a messenger.  We can’t put the good news any more plainly.  “He has been raised!”  Jesus.  The Messiah.  The Christ.  The Son of Man.  The Son of God.  The King of kings.  He has been raised, and he has gone ahead to Galilee.  Jesus who faithfully follows God’s will even to death, and is exalted (lifted high) through suffering and through death to make the way for all things to be reconciled with God (brought back to God); Jesus who shows that the way to reconciliation is self-sacrificing other-serving love; the risen Jesus who has defeated death and the powers that would separate us from God.  In this Jesus, God has stepped radically and decisively into time and history in such a way that human existence has been always and forever transformed.

Death does not have the final say.  Failure need not have the final say.  He has been raised.  Look at the place where they laid him.  We’ve heard.  We’ve seen.  Now go and tell.  “But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” (16:7)

The women fail at this point.  “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” The women finally fail.  Terror and amazement seized them.    I read once that in the Irish language, one doesn’t say “I am said.”  One says, “Sadness is on me.”  It means that you’re not identified with the emotion, but that the emotion is on you at least for a while.  I think that’s good.  These women are not characterized by or to be identified by terror and amazement, but it has seized them.  They said nothing to anyone.  All disciples fail.  All disciples fail to speak or fail to act.  All disciples may be restored and renewed.  Even Peter.  Even me.  Even you.

So we come to the so-called problem of Mark’s ending.  The women are silent.  It’s ironic, really.  Jesus had spent a lot of time telling people not to speak of him earlier. “See that you say nothing to anyone” after a leper is cleansed. “He strictly ordered them that no one should know this,” after a dead girl is brought to life (a prelude to a resurrection).  Now’s the time to speak!  Tell!  Tell!  Go!  Tell!  People aren’t speaking!  There’s no problem here.  The women did not remain silent.  While it had fallen on them, terror was not their identity.  We don’t need a long ending to know that they did not keep silent.  We don’t need to look at Matthew, Luke and John to know that they did not keep silent.  Everything has happened just as Jesus told them.  Just as Jesus had promised.  The donkey colt last week.  The betrayal.  The handing over.  The death.  The resurrection.  You’ve heard me say that I know the truth of Jesus’ promises personally because I have known them in my life.  Promises of presence.  Promises of peace.  Promises of transformation, of new life.  Do you know what else he told them?  He said, “You will all become deserters.” (14:27)  You will all fail me.  He doesn’t leave it there, though, or say “Bunch of no goods.”  He says, “But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.” (14:27)  Our failure is not the end because there is the promise of restoration.  The promise of renewal.  Jesus told his followers of a time to come when they would be handed over to councils and beaten and brought to governors and kings because of him.  He told them of a time when they were not to worry about what to say, but to say whatever is given to them to say because it will be the Holy Spirit speaking.  The women did not remain silent.  The disciples did not remain silent.

But we end with the suspension.  We can be ok with that.  The thing about suspension is that it leaves you expecting something.

As followers of Christ, we are called to live in a permanent state of expectancy.  Of hope.  Of the confident expectation of the goodness of God.  It’s the opposite of “same old same old” or even worse despair – the complete and utter absence of the hope of anything good.  We may like all loose ends tied up, “and they lived happily ever after,” because we don’t like not knowing.  There will be lots we don’t know, but we know and live in Jesus’ promises.  When we come to 16:8, we recognize that Mark has left us with a question/challenge/invitation.  What are we going to do with this good news – “He has been raised, he is not here.”  Even if we dismiss him, we can’t contain him any more than the tomb could.  Jesus is always going before us and promises to meet us, and Jesus continues to make the call – “Follow me.”    

It’s never been about an ending.  At the end of the whole story, God’s voice is heard saying, “Look, I am making all things new.”  It’s always been about expectancy.  The basic life stance of the follower of Christ.  Expectancy.  Expecting to see God in our day-to-day.  Expecting to know God’s promises of being made new, of peace, of joy, of “God with us”, in our day-to-day.  Expecting the day.  Expecting light.  Expecting the Son.

Accepting the invitation each day to go to Galilee and meet him there.  It’s for all disciples.  Those who have failed and are unsure of the way back.  Those who have faithfully followed but on whom fear has fallen and made us silent.  Each of us has failed Jesus. That need not be the end/non-end of our story.  Let us not wallow or withdraw into our failures.  Jesus does not abandon us in our failure.  Let us go back to Galilee.  Let us go back to where we started.  It’s where we started our Lenten journey back at the beginning of March.  We said we’re going back to Galilee.  We finish in the same place.  Let us go to Galilee, for he is going before us and will meet us there.

This is our invitation this Easter Sunday, and it’s a joyful one, my friends.  Let us go back to the place where we first met him.  Let us go back to the place where he first called us, and we dropped everything to follow.  Let us go back to the place where we saw him heal and make whole and bring new life.  Let us go back to the place where Jesus healed us and freed us from the chains of sin and death.  He’s going before us and will meet us there in the everydayness of our lives, and we can all go along together.  Don’t you want to go?

The story doesn’t end, and the question is always before us.  Whether we first answered Jesus’ call years ago or we’re answering it for the first time today, may the good news story of grace and light and life continue to be told by each and every one of us, and may this be true for us all.  He is risen, beloved sisters and brothers.

Amen