There are many questions about Mark 16:9-20. These verses don’t appear in the earliest versions of Mark’s Gospel, and this has led some scholars to dismiss these verses as being from Mark, and simply added by some scribe later on, perhaps to give Mark’s Gospel a smoother ending. Whatever the case may be, Mark 16:14-20 is consistent with the story of Jesus as told by Mark, particularly with the last verse,
So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and proclaimed the good news everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that accompanied it” (vs. 19-20a)
The heart of following Jesus is to tell His story, and to invite people into that story. The commission is dependent, not on human wisdom and savvy but on the very presence of God in His people, through the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit. When Jesus ascended back to the Father, He left a small group of people who would witness to the reality of Jesus and bear witness to what it means to have the God of all creation in charge of one’s life. This responsibility and privilege has rested with each generation, and it falls to us in our generation.
In his book, Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller says,
“I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.
After that I liked jazz music.
Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.
“Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.” Perhaps Miller’s story is a parable of what it means to witness to the life transforming love of God. The way we live, the words we speak, the commitments of our lives are lived so that others may see something in us that resonates in them, and in their watching us love Jesus, that can come to love Him, too. There are no guarantees but maybe God is more caught that taught.
Whatever the case may be, the early church took Jesus seriously, and shared the Good News wherever it went. People came to believe in Jesus and kept the story going. Today, two thousand years later and half a world away from where it all began, people are coming alive in the one who was raised up from the dead. Here’s to keeping the story alive in our towns at this time. ~~ Jesus is Lord ~~
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