Tuesday 14 April – Full-stop

DAILY BYTE
Today’s Bible reading speaks of a time when Jesus’ followers were pretty devastated. Like all the other Messiah candidates it seems as if Jesus had failed. He had died and we know that death is like a full-stop. Isn’t it?
Well, that’s certainly what the disciples originally thought. We have plenty of evidence that they only understood Jesus’ references to his coming death and resurrection in hindsight. So when Jesus died on the cross and was buried in his tomb, the disciples were crushed. All their hopes and dreams in Jesus the Messiah had been extinguished along with his last, gasping breath.
Like all the other followers of all the other failed Messiahs (remember yesterday), they were contemplating a bleak future, hoping that they too wouldn’t be violently wiped out and wondering just what the heck to do now. Because death is this full-stop. Isn’t it?
I mean, death is large. Death is huge. Death has this all encompassing grip on almost every human being. We know that inevitably it is coming for us, and so we fear it.
In studies done on human fear, it has been discovered that the fear of death seems to be at the bottom of all our other fears. We long to somehow escape it and its terrible life-stopping grip. So we have all these stories – fairy tales, legends and fables about life elixirs and fountains of youth.
Yet the reality is that we cannot escape death. It is too huge, too big, too inevitable.
This is why one dark, grey ‘full-stop’ kind of morning we find a small group of woman going to visit a tomb. A place where they expected to find death casting its icy grip over one who had brought such life and hope to others. And I guess, they thought that all hope had been extinguished with that life.
However, upon arrival, they found an empty tomb and an angel who brings them these words of comfort, ‘Don’t be afraid, because Jesus has risen, he is not here in this place of death, go and tell everyone the Good News.’
And then Mark’s Gospel does a fascinatingly strange thing. Barely a sentence later … it ends. In fact, the Gospel in the original Greek ends mid-sentence – ‘the woman went out from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them, they said nothing to anyone, they were afraid for …’
And that’s how it originally ended. With a preposition, NOT a full-stop!
Get it?
I think this ending is a work of genius. Inspired. Later, some ancient Christians tried to give this Gospel a ‘proper’ ending and you can see it marked as such in your Bibles, but the style of writing is clearly different.
The English translation also tried to solve the problem of this ‘incomplete’ Gospel by moving the preposition – ‘they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.’ This solves the problem with a proper sentence and a full-stop. But what if the original author never meant for there to be a full-stop, because they wanted to make clear that death was NOT going to have the final word.
The genius of Mark’s Gospel is that it doesn’t wrap up the Easter story neatly, but leaves us somewhat on tenterhooks. It leaves us hanging because we are meant to enter into the story for ourselves at this point. Our lives are meant to meet up within it. This story is not complete until we participate in it!
Easter never happened.
It’s always happening.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Lord God, the Good News announced by the angel that morning was that death is no longer a full-stop to us, but more of a comma. It separates us, but only in a way that brings us into something new. Thank you Almighty God for saving us from death and sin. Amen.
FOCUS VERSE
Mark 16. 1-8 NRSV

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?" When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, "Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. 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." 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