This is a time of new beginnings. Here in Massachusetts, Spring is just beginning to spring. Easter is upon us. Baseball is back. The school year is drawing to a close, but that means that summer is just around the corner and already on the minds of most students, teachers, and professors.

It is especially a time of new beginnings for me, personally. Just one month ago, my son was born. Just one week ago, my comprehensive exams finally concluded, which means that the dissertation process is beginning. As our second year in our new home begins, we have met some neighbors and new friendships are budding like the leaves on the trees.

New beginnings, and Easter in particular, bring to mind a couple of texts that have long been important to me and seem to increase in significance as I reflect upon them year after year and beginning after beginning. The first is the Easter account from Mark’s gospel and the second is an aphorism from Martin Heidegger’s What is thinking?. I want to share these with you here and I invite you to share texts of new beginnings here, also. This will be a two-part blog post. I’ll reflect on Mark’s gospel here and Heidegger’s “gospel” in the next post.

The common lectionary this year draws upon John’s gospel (20:1-18) and Matthew’s gospel (28:1-10). For most Christians, these texts tell us, more or less, what we expect to hear: the tomb was empty, this freaked everyone out, but they then ran and told everyone the great news. This is not what we find in Mark’s enigmatic text, though. In Mark 16, Mary, Mary, and Salome find the tomb of Jesus to be open and a young man in a white robe is there to tell that that Jesus has been raised. The young man then sends them to Galilee.

The Greek word “apostle” means “one who is sent,” and so these three women are the first apostles – though that is not typically how the church treats them. It is interesting that they are sent to Galilee. Galilee is where Jesus’ ministry began and here the women are being sent back to the beginning. There are numerous ways to interpret the text, but it seems to me that the women are being sent back to the beginning so that they can begin the ministry again – so that they can walk the path that Jesus has laid forth. They are not simply messengers, but apostles – those who are sent to back to the beginning so that they can begin again.

The next verse (Mark 16:8) is undoubtedly one of my favorite biblical verses and it is one that comes to mind anytime I embark on a new beginning. Mark ends his gospel with these two sentences (RSV): “And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to any one, for they were afraid.” The original Greek text is even more striking. The last two words are “εφοβουντο γαρ” (ephobounto gar), which literally translate as “afraid for” or “afraid because.” (The root of the Greek word gives us the English word “phobia.”) The syntax of the sentence is also interesting. In Greek, word order is more conventional than grammatically necessary, so it is OK to end a sentence with the word “for/because,” but it is certainly odd to do so. Both the grammar and the content of this final sentence in Mark’s gospel are different from what we might expect. The text was so troubling for early Christians, in fact, that early copies of the text added a few more verses.

The text itself (without the added verses) raises more than a few big questions. First, did Mark write more than has been lost? Was he interrupted before he even finished his sentence? (There was, in fact, an ancient tradition that argued that Mark was seized from his writing desk, so to speak, and martyred before he finished). Second, how can this be the end of the gospel? If “they said nothing to anyone,” then how did the other disciples (or Mark, or anyone else) find out? Third – and most significant to me – why were they so afraid? What were they afraid of? Matthew 28:8, in contrast, tells us what we expect to hear – they were afraid, but also filled with great joy and “they ran to tell his disciples.” But that is not what we find in Mark’s account. They said nothing to anyone because they were afraid (εφοβουντο γαρ).

I love questions. I find questions to be far more interesting and compelling than answers. I am tempted, in fact, to stop right here, as Mark does, leaving us with many questions. However, I’ll resist that temptation and offer here a first response which leans toward my next post. This is just my (current) interpretation of the text, and I invite you to share yours, too.

Mark 16:8 is an ending that points us to the beginning. It remains open, like a gap (γαρ), that can only be filled by going back to the beginning and walking the path that has been revealed to us. The path is not one to be walked by “followers” (disciples), since the one to be followed has gone away, but by apostles—by those who are sent. It is a path (odos) that only “I” can walk. Jesus has not given us a “way” (odos, path) so much as a “way” (odos, method/manner/style/paradigm). We know where the path begins – with the death of self and selfishness and the birth of the spirit in baptism (Mark 1). We know where the path ends – death on the cross (Mark 15). And we know something about the middle of the path (Mark 8:34 – “If anyone wants to become my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”). The path begins, then, with one kind of death of self and it ends with another kind of death of self – but in between these deaths, it gives life to righteousness and justice.

εφοβουντο γαρ – the women are “afraid because.” Because of what? Because they know what this new beginning entails. They are afraid because they know what they must do and where the path inevitably ends. It is one thing to follow Jesus around and watch. It is one thing to sit down and read Mark’s gospel. It is one thing to sit in the pew – or even in the pulpit – and listen or speak about the path (early believers did not call their religion “Christianity” but ho odos – “the path”). It is quite another, though, to end the following, to end the watching, to end the reading, to end the speaking and listening, and then embark upon a new beginning, knowing what must be done. It is one thing to see injustice, to see oppression, to see poverty, to see violence. It is quite a different thing embark upon a beginning that does not only resist these, but actively fights against them. If we do not know why Mary, Mary, and Salome were afraid, then we must go back and read Mark’s gospel again and again until we not only understand why they are afraid, but begin to share their fear. Becoming afraid, will we run away and say nothing to anyone? Or will we go to Galilee, take up our cross, and walk the path that only “we” can walk, knowing where the path must end if we walk it well?

And so, here I am in this liminal state of beginnings. My newborn son is just beginning to become. My exams are over and my dissertation is beginning to become. Every moment I devote to my dissertation (shaping it, molding it, guiding it) is a moment I cannot spend with my newborn son and my two-year old daughter (shaping them, molding them, guiding them). And so I sit and ask myself, “So what? What does it matter? Does it matter at all?” My fear is, on the one hand, that it will not matter. If I cannot answer the questions “so what?” and “what does it matter?” then the answer to the third question (“Does it matter?”) almost certainly becomes “no.” And so I must answer them. But my fear, on the other hand, is that it will matter – that it will make some shadow of a difference or have some kind of an impact. The tension between these two fears is the tension with which Mark’s gospel leaves us (or, at least, me). It is the tension that marks every new beginning – a fear that the endeavor will not matter, and a fear that it will matter a great deal.

This, to me at least, is a significant part of the Easter message. It is a new beginning that does not “undo” or forget Good Friday, but a beginning that puts us on the path, that calls us to the path, that sends us (apostello) on the path that inevitably leads to Good Friday. If the path “matters” then we, like Mary, Mary, and Salome, will be afraid. It is a path flanked by nihilism and providence. Or, perhaps better, the path is the coincidence of the opposites of nihilism and providence. Better still, it is a path where the fear of nihilism and the fear of providence coincide and it is for this reason that we name the path: Hope.