Hopeless Ending—endless Hope - Mark 16:1-8 Series

Mark 16:1 When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Sa-lome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body. 2 Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb 3 and they asked each other, "Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?" 4 But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. 5 As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. 6 "Don't be alarmed," he said. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has been raised! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.'" 8 Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

Introduction: Bad Endings

Have you ever watched a movie that had such a bad ending that it made you regret even watching the movie in the first place? Which movie has the worst ending you’ve ever seen? I think if you gathered all Bible commentators together in a giant room and asked, “Which book of the Bible has the worst ending?” it would be unanimous. Mark—winner by a mile. Almost nobody likes the ending of Mark.

If you ask for the best ending, Revelation might come out on top. That’s a fantastic ending. So satisfying. But Mark—the Church has always struggled with his ending, even as early as the 100’s, not that long after it was written. The Church has been so unsatisfied with the ending of Mark, there have been multiple efforts to fix it. There’s a longer one that’s probably printed in your Bible, but scholars are almost unanimous that nothing we have after v.8 was written by Mark.

But there is still debate over whether Mark intended more. Many scholars say either the real ending got lost or Mark died before he could finish up. There’s no manuscript ev-idence for that—they just argue that no one in his right mind would end a gospel with verse 8.

Mark 16:8 Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

The end.

What kind of ending is that?

I’ll tell you what kind of ending it is—it’s the ending God gave us. It’s what we have. And even if Mark did write more, the Holy Spirit didn’t see fit to preserve it for us.

And if we just study what God gave us instead of second-guessing it… , I think we’ll find that these eight verses are a powerful and brilliant way to end the book. And ending it this way provides a crucial insight that we don’t get as clearly with the other gospels but that we desperately need.

Part 1: The Quest for the “Historical” Jesus

Let me just show you how Mark organizes the material, and you can judge for your-self. Mark tells the story in 5 distinct sections. We’ll go through each one and then step back and see how they’re arranged. Section 1 is the first verse.

Mark 16:1 When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body.

Unbelief

It’s the first day of the week and they’re expecting to find his corpse. There is a fa-mous book by Albert Schweitzer titled The Quest for the Historical Jesus. When the liber-als say, “the historical Jesus,” what they mean is the real man as opposed to the mythical Christ of faith. The Christ of faith who came from heaven and performed miracles and rose from the dead—that’s all myth. But Schweitzer and other liberals are on a quest to discov-er the normal, natural man, who was just a regular human being with nothing supernatural about him and who is dead and gone.

I bring that up because the title of Schweitzer’s book could be the title of verse 1. Why do the women buy spices? Because they are on a quest to find the same kind of Jesus as Albert Schweitzer—a man who died and stayed dead.

That’s unbelief. Jesus said he’d rise, he said it would happen on the third day… , he said it plainly and clearly, and here these women expect to find his dead body in the tomb on the third day. They loved him; they just didn’t trust him. They didn’t believe his words.