What Happened After Easter??

I love to recount things that happen in my life (obviously). I can wax on and on about the ordinary things of life.  But when the really big things happen – the huge holidays or the intense emotional experiences – I have a much more difficult time writing about them.  Something about the overwhelming nature of those events strain my mind too much and I cannot find the language to encapsulate the entirety of the experience.  I’d much rather to go back and tell you about the funny note my daughter wrote me, or the time when the boys pulled a goofy prank on me.

It’s struck me this year that the build up to Resurrection Sunday in the Bible is long and drawn out.  The Gospel writers include all kinds of details during Holy Week, giving us whole long speeches and prayers that Jesus said.

But then He rises from the dead and the fanfare is a little lacking.  After the angel’s proclamation, the rest of the story feels a little muted.  Weren’t the disciples going berserk??  Didn’t that event change EVERYTHING??!  I realize the Greek language does not have an exclamation point as part of its punctuation, but wouldn’t one of the writers invented one at that point?!

On average, the four Gospel writers wrote about 6 chapters each just about the one week leading up to Jesus’ death; regarding the several weeks after His resurrection before His ascension, they wrote an average of just over 1 chapter.  Very little is said about what Jesus did in those almost 7 weeks…. And yet those must have been very exciting weeks, don’t you think?

So my theory is that the Gospel writers may have been a little like me – completely overwhelmed by the hugeness of what had happened, to the point of not being able to find words to describe it all.  (When that happens to me, I just end up posting pictures on my blog instead of words, but of course Matthew, Mark, Luke and John did not have that option.)

We’re left then with what was not written, with the empty space, like the empty tomb, telling us just how incredible that time was. 

John, the disciple that appeared to have the highest Emotional Quotient of the group, did record more than the others about the days that followed the Resurrection, but even his account is sparse.  Instead of including more of the weighty teaching that Christ may have given, or expounding on the spiritual immensity of what had occurred, he chose to include a few snippets of Jesus showing up and interacting with the disciples in very tangible, day-to-day types of ways.  We see Jesus eating breakfast on a beach, having some one-on-one conversations with Thomas and Peter, generally providing some physical comfort to His friends.

But then John ends his account with these words, “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”  (21:25)

Here, then, is just one more reason to long for the days of Heaven, when we can hear all of the untold stories of what Jesus said and did that we have not heard yet!  And, we can ask the disciples in person just what they were thinking and feeling and doing for those few remarkable months after the resurrection. 

By then, surely they’ll have the words to describe it all to us, no longer being bound by the constraints of our earthly languages, right?  Or maybe there will be a video recording we can just watch. 

Can’t wait!