“The traditional Gospel reading for Easter Sunday is John 20:1-18, where Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb early on the first day of the week, while it is still dark. You know that story. It’s a good one. It’s the surprise ending of the greatest story every told,” begins Jim Somerville, Pastor of Richmond’s First Baptist Church and Co-Founder of A Sermon for Every Sunday. Today’s sermon comes from Mark 16:1-8, which also presents the events of the resurrection, but in “a much less satisfying way.” The ending seems incomplete, unfinished. The women flee the tomb and “say nothing to anyone because they were so afraid.” The question is why. Why would Mark end his Gospel this way? “I have a theory,” Somerville says. “If this story is going to be resolved, if it’s ever going to have a happy ending, it will be up to us.”
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