Tonight we are exploring the Passion and Resurrection narrative in the Gospel of Mark in Mark 14-16. The most ancient versions of the Gospel end with 16:8 (and even the medieval versions footnoted that the remainder of the Gospel was of doubtful authenticity). I have attached N. T. Wright’s analysis of Mark 16 from his book The Resurrection of the Son of God. pp.613-631. His discussion is a defense of the veracity of Mark’s account and why he believes that a more complete original ending has been lost. If you have the time, please read this chapter.
Our present Gospel of Mark ends with the simple command to the women to go to the male disciples, the ones who fled and denied Christ and who were too afraid to show up at the Cross or the Tomb, and tell them to go to Galilee. This is not so much an ending, as a beginning. Like the Great Commission in Matthew’s Gospel, so the command to go to Galilee is directed not only at the characters in the story but, more specifically, to us the readers of the story. A short video of Bishop Michael Curry’s understanding of what it means for us “To go to Galilee” is HERE. Curry explores what it means for us to leave the comfort and familiarity of Jerusalem and to go to the backwater, chaotic, and diverse land of Galilee. Attached is the sermon upon which the video is based.
Dinner is at 6. The menu is pizza. Discussion about 6:45. Please watch the video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A00hDTnmUQM). Hope to see you here.
But there will be no gloom for her that was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he will make glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.
Isaiah 9:1.