What, then, must Mark achieve in his Easter story?
He ends at 16:8, and sends his readers back – not least in their liturgical cycle of readings – to Galilee: to Jesus’ first appearance after Mark’s own prologue. There the readers shall discover not just the earthly Jesus, but the heavenly Son of Man who has fought in his life on earth the battle whose triumph he should be seen celebrating in visions of heaven. Mark has programmatically confused heaven and earth; for only so can he tease his readers into understanding what he believes must be understood. Mark’s whole Gospel is a parable; and those who heard it in his day as a straightforward narrative were those, in Mark’s own terms, outside. His Easter story is not written as evidence, to persuade his readers of Jesus’ resurrection; it sends them back to the story’s start, to see unveiled there the Jesus, at once earthly and risen, whom they had not recognized before.