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One of the striking things about the Easter and post-Easter narratives in the New Testament is that they are largely about incomprehension: which is to say that, in the canonical Gospels, the early Church admitted that it took some time for the first Christian believers to understand what had happened in the Resurrection and how what had happened changed everything.
In Roman Pilgrimage: The Station Churches (Basic Books), I draw on insights from Anglican biblical scholar N.T. Wright and Pope Benedict XVI to explore the first Christians’ unfolding comprehension of Easter and how it exploded their ideas of history and their place in history.
So, what changed after Easter?
Understanding of history
The disciples’ understanding of history changed. The first Jesus community lived in expectation of the “last days,” even while Jesus walked among them in his public ministry, but they thought the “last days” involved a history-ending cataclysm.