Often times, we modern, scientifically-trained, critical-thinking types come at the miraculous occurrences in the Scriptures with a jaundiced eye. We look at things like the resurrection, and the authors of the Gospels who wrote about them, with an attitude something like, “Once upon a time people were stupid, but now we know better.”  And we can come up with some pretty persuasive-sounding rationalizations for how it could be anything but miraculously factual – like maybe it was a series of mass hallucinations brought on by a combination of emotional trauma and wishful thinking. And besides, each of the four Gospels has a slightly different account of the resurrection… and the earliest versions of the Gospel of Mark don’t have it at all. 

      I remember arguing about this way back in seminary. “Which one is the correct ending?” we wondered aloud and disputed amongst ourselves. But we couldn’t settle it. So we put it to one of our professors, figuring he would lay it to rest. And in his lilting Guianese accent, this is what he said:  Some of my friends go with Mark, some of my friends go with Matthews, others of my friends go with Luke or John… Me, I agree with my friends.”

      Spoken like a true Anglican. But how could all these different versions be true? Especially when it seems like the more time has passed between the event and the writing, the happier the ending seems to be.  Isn’t it more likely that there was some sort of ecclesiastical “spin doctoring” going on here: suppressing earlier endings that were less flattering to the disciples and young, still-figuring-it-all-out church, and substituting newer, more encouraging endings? 

      The only problem is – the same as with most such conspiracy stories – all of the various versions have been in circulating since very early on, and just about everyone who was anyone in the Church new about all of them.  And as far as we can tell, it wasn’t a big deal. In fact, seems like they wanted them in part because of the differences, and seemed to consider them all equally true.  How could that be?  What’s up with that?

      About the same time I was in seminary there was a movie out about a book that could have different endings.  Most of us who saw it then liked it so much that years later we have rented – or even purchased – it to share with our kids.  That movie, The NeverEnding Story, was about a bookish boy named Bastian Bux, who like all bookish boys with names like Bastian, was beset by bullies. Or… maybe he was a bookish boy because he was beset by bullies, going deep into his books as a way to escape from the harsh reality that was his everyday life.

      One day, while being chased by three bullies intent on beating him up and throwing him in a dumpster (their traditional after-school activity), Bastian takes refuge in a bookstore. The proprietor of the store, a wizened old man, takes pity on him and gives him an ancient storybook to read while hiding. Bastian becomes so absorbed in the story that when the bullies stop looking for him and move on, he “borrows” the book (steals it actually, though you get the impression that’s what the proprietor wants). Then he hides it in the attic of his school, where he goes every day to read it until the bullies leave.  But then a funny thing happens. First, it starts creating in him all sorts of heroic thoughts and feelings that he’d never felt before.  But then one day he is startled to find that these ever-strengthening thoughts and feelings, when he expresses them, actually influence the characters. He suddenly realizes that he might be able to change the outcome of the story – that he might even be essential to the outcome – and strangest of all, comes to believe that land and the people of the book are real. And thus he becomes a part of the story and saves the land and the people, not just from destruction but from nothingness. Now, if it had ended right there, the movie would have been well worth the price of admission, but it didn’t. Baskin emerges from the story with his character strengthened. And the characters of the story come back with him. And he faces down his bullies so powerfully that they throw themselves into the dumpster they meant to throw him into that day.

      So what does this have to do with Gospel? And what does it have to do with us?

      I think the readers of the Gospels related to the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection the same way Bastian related to the story in his ancient book. They didn’t just read the Gospel story… it entered them and changed them… and they entered it and changed it.  And since the story was about them and their church community, the changes it engendered in them made their way into their real world behavior… and changed the outcome of their story. Every time they encountered the resurrected Jesus – either in the real world or in the text – they were strengthened more and more, until the power of his love began to shine through them brightly, enabling them to have more and more of an impact on the world around them. Over time the story became less and less finished. How could they not go back and add a new ending with each successive Gospel?

      And what about us? Since the Church closed the canon of the New Testament in the middle of the second century, we no longer have the option of writing additional “last chapters” to any of the Gospels, at least not officially. But that doesn’t mean that our relationship to the story of Christ is any different from that of the disciples or the writers of the Gospels. The ancient book waits for us to open its cover, the story waits to pull us in, waits for us to realize that each one of us in his or her own way is indispensable to the plot, and that as each one of us joins in the story, as each one of us becomes a disciple, we change the ending, adding our new chapter to the last. And the story is as infectious as it ever was. It carries in its pages the resurrection infection: an infection that incubated in Jesus Christ, that was released by his resurrection, that has jumped from person to person down through the centuries to infect us and that will keep jumping from us to others and from them to others still, until all of humankind has been transformed into the image of God and the whole world has been absorbed into God’s Never-Ending Story.

      And best of all, it has no cure.