If Mark’s ending creates discomfort and uncertainty, it is partly due to our knowledge of how the Easter story is told in the other Gospels.
The two disciples must have imagined a grander and nobler role for themselves than donkey detail. For this they left their fishing nets?
Sound alternatives
The British band Delirious has always been smart, drawing comparisons to U2, Radiohead and Blur. With the album The Mission Bell, the band shoots for added lyrical depth and force. “Our God Reigns,” a key-of-D dirge built around spare acoustic guitar, keyboards and thunderous percussion, may be the hardest-hitting piece, tacking issues like abortion and the AIDS pandemic. (“My Chinese take away/ Could pay for someone’s drugs.”) “Love Is a Miracle” alternates between smoldering, soulful verses and wide-open, gospel-flavored choruses, while “Paint the Town Red” rocks as hard as anything Delirious has ever cut.
After scripture scholar Phyllis Trible lectured on the story in Judges 19 about a woman who was gang-raped, murdered and dismembered, a woman came up to Trible weeping, saying that she too had been raped, and didn’t know the Bible contained "her" story. Rather than being offended by its inclusion, the woman felt blessed by it. “You never throw away any part of the Bible,” says Trible. “You never know when . . . it will relate to a reader.”