St. Aidan's Anglican Church, Kansas City - Weekly Talks

Today we consider Mark 16:1-8 with the possibility that Mark, the author, ends his Gospel here. No one is really sure if Mark ended his Gospel or his ending is lost. At any rate, without going into textual criticism here, we imagine an abrupt ending with the last word being fear. The most repeated commandment in the whole Bible is "fear not". It is repeated 365 times! How do we transition from fear to faith? How do we, like the three women, move from the words of the young man in a white linen cloth saying, "He is not here. He has risen. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.” How do we get from "here" to "there"? Their journey to Galilee is our journey. Hope is the bridge that moves us from the tomb of fear and uncertainty to the place we "see him". Hope is a confident expectation of desired outcomes. This hope is eternal and an anchor of the soul. In the turbulent waters of this world,