One evening in the middle of April 1919 Siegfried Sassoon was feeling, as he put it, “dull-minded and depressed, for no assignable reason. It was a sultry spring night, and after sitting lethargically for about three hours after dinner, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing for it but to take my useless brain to bed.” On his way to bed he paused, and “as though from nowhere” a few words floated into his head:

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields; on—on—and out of sight.

Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away . . . O, but Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless, the singing will never be done.

For Sassoon that was “an expression of release, and signified a thankfulness for liberation from the war years which came to the surface with the advent of spring” (Sassoon 1945: 140-41). And for members of the Christian community, is it not in similar vein an expression of what one might call the Easter spirit? If feelings are of the essence of human existence—and they are—and if Easter is at the very least about the feeling of liberation and transition from winter to spring, then to enter into the world of Sassoon’s poem is to enter into the world of resurrection people.

The darkness, the horror, the wanton writing off of human life that was the Great War need no present amplification. But an exploration of the darkness, the horror, and the loss of good human life with which Mark’s story of Jesus ends is needed if we are to enter into the world of that Gospel, and to read its ending as a Sassoon-like celebration of the extravagant divine reversal that was signaled one morning at the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth.

But let us set the scene for the story of Jesus as told by Mark. As a literary piece, the Gospel could have ended quite impressively with Mark 15:39: “Now when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, ‘Truly this man was God’s Son!’” What could be more resonant than a final concession by the commander of the murderous execution squad, the representative of the opponents of Jesus, that what Jesus had said and what Marcan Christians believed about him was in spite of everything right and true? In a Gospel peppered with christological one-liners, “Truly this man was God’s Son!” is not only typical but also in need of no sequel or supplement. In a Gospel introduced by an affirmation of Jesus’ divine Sonship (1:1), what could be more appropriate than that it should end with an admission of that same divine Sonship? A compelling inclusion indeed! Following this line of thought, we recall that Mark left his readers without any narrative of appearances of the risen Jesus, but instead chose to invest in memories of what Jesus had said in advance about resurrection. Had he left his readers without a narrative of what happened at the tomb, but chosen instead to rely on what Jesus had said in advance, they could not have complained. And nor could we!

That should make us all the more impressed that Mark did not do what, within his own frame of reference, he certainly could have done. And not only so, his way of bringing the story to what we might call a second conclusion is signaled with some care. (1) A hitherto unmentioned group of women appear in the wings, passively watching the crucifixion sequence of events, and then again passively watching the burial, before finally taking center stage as active players in the drama at the tomb. They are the human thread binding the “crucified . . . buried . . . raised” sequence into a three-in-one unity. Within that unity, however, it becomes clear that Mark wants to encourage a special intensity of concentration upon the third story in the sequence. Those who were attached at the end of the first and second episodes, and who have watched—doing nothing—and watched again—doing nothing—now swing into action. (2) The second story connects with the first via the person of the centurion, but in and of itself that story has no Christian theological content. It is no more than preparatory—thoroughly preparatory, in that it is careful about the when, where, and how of the burial, but still preparatory. (3) The alert and discerning reader can detect literary tensions within the third story, a fact that suggests Mark has been creatively at work upon it. Here his Christian theological convictions come to the surface. This is where he exploited the potential of a story he had inherited. This is where we may discern why he did not end his Gospel with the reluctant admission of the leading executioner, “Truly this man was God’s Son!” And we, for our part, may hope through the discovery and separation of tradition and redaction to enter his mind, and thus to follow through the story of Jesus to its climax and completion.

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