This week we’re remembering that Eastertide goes beyond a single Easter-Bunny weekend, and the event we’re celebrating is one that changes everything. Perhaps this would be why Bob Carlton’s Via Crucis Grid Blog runs a week past Easter to include the Stations of the Resurrection. We do well to remember that the message of Easter doesn’t expire with the chocolate.

It’s hard to keep the wonder, the surprise of knowing Jesus dead, in the ground, and waiting without knowing what would happen next. Jesus gave the cues, but of course nobody got them until after the fact. After he explained it to them… as he did to the Emmaus disciples over a bit of bread and wine. We try, but we can’t do it of course. We always know, and we don’t forget—otherwise it wouldn’t even feature on the calendar. Would Lent then become an endless season with no relief? Indeed, sometimes we already focus so much on Lent that we lose our grip on Easter. At least, that’s what Tom Wright says (HT: Si Johnston). “When Easter stops being a surprise, it stops being Easter.”

Today in a kind of string of posts that attempt to place us on the scene with Jesus around the events of the Passion, thanks to Sonja at Calacirian, we get to consider a post in which we could be one of the “other” disciples… one that isn’t named, just quiet in the background, with all these thoughts running through our mind… until Jesus himself appears before us. He Is Alive! It really does change everything. More Tom Wright:

And if Easter is all about the surprise of new creation, there is every reason to suppose that it will ripple out into the world in ways we would never imagine. Gangsters and drug-dealers get radically converted and set on fire with God’s love, while pale churchmen drone their disbelief and warn against extremism.

It’s a good thing… because everything needed to change.