Nobody knows for sure who actually wrote the Gospel of Mark because the book itself never says. Some claim that it is the same John Mark who turns up later in the Book of Acts as a missionary traveling companion of the Apostle Paul. Others speculate that, perhaps, it’s the young man who was there in Gethsemane the night Jesus is arrested, and who somehow manages to wrestle free from the soldiers—but not without leaving behind the linen cloth he was wearing, so that he goes scampering off, scared to death and naked as the day he was born! Mark is the only gospel writer who reports that strange incident; and since it’s the kind of thing you’d most likely remember if it happened to you, it could well be autobiographical. Who knows?

One thing seems certain; whoever Mark was, he wrote his gospel as if he was in a hurry to get the story down as quickly as possible. Hence, he leaves out a great deal. There’s nothing about Jesus’ birth, for example—no angel Gabriel, no startled shepherds, no wise men, no Herod, no star. There’s precious little about Jesus’ continued run-ins with the Pharisees, no Sermon on the Mount, no Lord’s Prayer, and only four parables. The word “immediately” becomes one of Mark’s favorites. He uses it three times more than Matthew or Luke, and fifteen times more than John!

But as frantic as the pace is in Mark’s Gospel, when the end finally comes, even he has to slow down. Almost half of his gospel is devoted to that last week in Jerusalem. And when Jesus is nailed to the cross, Mark actually takes the time to give us both his last words, and the language in which he spoke them—“Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani”—which Mark translates, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Only Matthew has the stomach to corroborate that. Luke and John either didn’t recall our Lord saying those words, or what is more likely, couldn’t quite bring themselves to report it.

Still, if you ask me, the most intriguing aspect of Mark’s Gospel is where he chooses to stop. Three women go the tomb first thing Easter morning and find it empty. A young man, dressed in white, informs them rather matter-of-factly, “Jesus is not here. He has been raised. Go tell the disciples that he will meet them in Galilee.” At which point, the women flee the cemetery as if the place had been set on fire—and, in a sense, I suppose it had been. Like the burning bush of old, or the pillar of fire that guided the Israelites through the wilderness, the world was now ablaze with the glory of God!

However, as Mark makes clear, these women are not running out of excitement or amazement, or even because “good news travels fast.” The reason for this early, Easter morning sprint, says Mark, is because the women are scared; and as a result, “they said nothing to anyone.” End of story. End of gospel.

Of course, later editors would come to view this ending as being far too abrupt—and frankly, somewhat anticlimactic—and so, they took it upon themselves to add a dozen extra verses, just to round things off and give the story a more fitting conclusion. However, I am inclined to believe that Mark ended the gospel exactly where he intended. Sure, the women may have run off, filled with fear; but the point is—Fear doesn’t have the last word; God does! “Jesus of Nazareth has been raised from the dead,” says the young man in dazzling white. That’s the last word; and when you think about it, what more really needs to be said? So Mark put down his pen, then and there, and stopped writing—almost as if he was subtly saying to all of us, “Okay, enough reading … now it’s time for you to respond!”