If you stick with the earliest manuscripts for Mark's gospel then the end is very abrupt - chapter 16 verse 8 leaves us with trembling and afraid women too scared to talk to anyone. Even with Mark's fast paced style, this hardly seems a fitting ending to the so-called 'greatest story every told'.
Incomplete though it may be, there is something appropriate about it. Mark started back in chapter one verse one with the phrase 'The beginning of the good news of Jesus the Messiah'. Now in chapter 16, Jesus has been born, has lived, died and risen again. The instructions in verse 7 are to gather the followers in Galilee, i.e. reconvene where we had left off, a place of mission and God's saving activity (just as in chapter one and onwards).
In other words 'the mission continues ...', and thus so will the good news that started in 1:1. To put in a nicely rounded ending to the book might actually miss this crucial point!
And what of the bewildered women? Well the death and resurrection massively shifted things up a gear in the scheme of God's purposes. Thats alot for anyone to take on board, and could rightly leave even the best of us speechless. The assumption is, however, that going forward we will not remain silent but instead play our part in the continuing mission, adding new chapters to the story that Mark began to document.
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