Mark 16:1-8 page 1

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When Pepsi-Cola was launched in China, its marketing managers wondered why its famous slogan, 'Come alive with Pepsi ' was not achieving the impact that it had achieved elsewhere in the world. It was discovered that the translator had rendered it: 'Pepsi brings your relatives back from the dead.'
[Peter Graystone, Ready Salted, p66 #204]

And so to our account of the resurrection from Mark's Gospel. It's the shortest of all the Gospel accounts, from the shortest Gospel. After a lot of detail about Jesus' betrayal, suffering and death comes just this brief account of the resurrection. It seems to parallel the three times in Mark that Jesus prophesied his passion. Each time he gives a lot of detail about his suffering and then only briefly at the end of each prophecy says that he will be raised from the dead.

Just enough light at the end of a dark tunnel, it seems. And so appropriate, therefore, for the first readers of Mark's Gospel, who were probably Christians in Rome facing persecution under the Emperor Nero.

With such a brief conclusion it is no wonder that other people have tried to add longer endings to Mark, and you can see a couple of the attempts in most Bibles. However I think the Gospel really does end here, with just eight verses about the Resurrection, because sometimes that's all we need or all we can cope with when we are in darkness - some light at the end of the tunnel.

There are three aspects of the Resurrection in these eight verses of Mark 16 that I see as giving us that light and hope.

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Copyright © David D Faulkner, 2006 except where other sources are attributed or noted as inspiration.