The Great Commission

These passages cover Jesus turning up with all the apostles (and in some cases later on specifically for Thomas) and then breathing the Holy spirit on them and sending them out to preach the good news about the resurrection. The things that are important are:

• Jesus is raised (DUH).
  
• Jesus isn't a ghost - he is physically there.
  
• the Holy spirit is liberally and permanently handed out to all believers (this rocks!)
  
• His last command is to go out and make believers to all nations.

The Walk to Emmaus

This is when Jesus appears to the disciples on the road and walks with them as they morn - It takes a while for them to realise that He is Jesus. This is interesting as this is the only passage in which Cleopas is mentioned - I wonder how much he had to do in the early church. Also why does Jesus hide himself from them (make himself unrecognisable) You figure there must be a good reason. Maybe this goes along with the Thomas story to encourage us now to believe even though we didn't get the opportunity to see Him in the flesh. Whatever the reason I know that if I was Cleopas I would make darn sure that I knew what I was talking about before I got my name memorialised in the bible.

The Resurrection

This is the passage that means that not only are our sins paid for but that we are born again into a new life in Christ. This doesn't make us perfect (we will still make mistakes) but it does mean that we can now enter heaven, and have the Holy Spirit live in us. All very good stuff.
There are some differences between the accounts, but they all state that the women went to the tomb first, and the men came second, and that it all took place on the third day (Sunday morning). Three of the passages have angels that talk to the women, John (as usual) is the one that differs on this. If you are confused how Sunday morning is the third day it's to do with how the Jewish calendar counts days. A day begins at sunset, so Jesus died on Friday (day one) was still dead on Saturday (day two) and was resurrected on Sunday (day three)

The Burial of Jesus

This passage is where Joseph of Arimathea asks for Jesus' body and then buries Him. This is done in a bit of a rush as it was 3 when Jesus died and they had to get Him in the grave before sunset (when the Sabbath started). It's cool to see Joseph take on this role and risk questions from his peers, but I do kinda wonder why you didn't hear him speaking up before at the trial of Jesus. Maybe he was like the Roman guards and didn't realise until after Jesus had died. Whatever the reason he makes a stand now, and John talks of how Nicodemus another high up muckity-muck helps him. The authors all make sure that we know that the women see with their own eyes which tomb Jesus is placed in and that he is definitely there. This should remove any questions about whether they make back to the correct place after the Sabbath.

The Death of Jesus

with all references
Well this passage covers Jesus dying on the cross, and what He said and what happened. From this we know the following happened:

He cried out to God.

He was offered a drink.

He died.

The temple curtain split in two. The significance of this is that it symbolises how the curtain separated the inner sanctuary of the temple where only the priests were allowed to go from everyone else. His death splitting it in two shows that we now have direct access to God through Him and His death rather than only through a priest. This kinda makes the whole Roman Catholic confession thing redundant - you don't need a priest to confess or be made clean, you can go directly to God yourself in prayer.

The Roman soldiers there suddenly realise they made a big whoopsy in killing the Son of God.

The women in His life watched it all happen. I am unsure as to why this is specifically mentioned - maybe it's implying that most of the apostles didn't dare turn up for fear of association, maybe it's showing the importance of women in christian society, or maybe it's trying to show that the men weren't making this al up and that those women who witnessed His resurrection also witnessed His death.

Christ Crucified

Okay this is the big one the payment for our sins. This passage covers getting Jesus and the cross to Golgotha (which if you are interested was the name of a dinosaur in the 2000ad comic) and then getting Him up on the cross - you will get to read about his death in the next passage.
points of interest:

All four refer to the mocking of Jesus, by the crowd ,elders and even His fellow prisoners, who challenged Him to take himself down whilst quoting him saying he would destroy and rebuild the temple in three days - none of them (including the disciples realised that He was referring to His own physical body when He said temple.

All four refer to the sign that 'incorrectly' said here is the King of the Jews.

All but John refer to Simon helping Jesus to carry the cross to Golgotha, usually multiple references imply importance - but I am unsure why Simon and the fact that he was from Cyrene was important. Mark makes reference to Simon's sons Alexander & Rufus which probably means that they were at the time of it's writing well know disciples of Christ, or at least known to the audience for whom Mark was writing.

All but John refer to the wine He is offered, which was drugged - I am assuming that it was meant to dull the pain - but what do I know, what I do know is that Jesus refused it. To me that says that He knew he had to take our punishments for us, and that if He was going to do it he was going to do it right and make sure that we knew, that He knew exactly what he was doing (without excuses of being incapacitated)

All four refer to the gambling that took place for His tunic, and make reference to Psalms where it was predicted.

Luke is the only one who lets one of the other executed men off the hook, when he acknowledges Christ as the King of the Jews.

Luke23:43 43And Jesus replied, "I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise." hmm now that's a statement of contention - what exactly do 'today' and 'paradise' mean - if he descends to the dead to rise again on the third day? My personal explanation (which can probably be shot full of holes if you try) is that as God exists outside of time (He created the universe, and before there was matter you couldn't have time - as time is a measure of matter changing) He could effectively rise from the dead in three days, and still be in Paradise with the thief today. After all He's with all of us all the time isn't He!!?

Finally in case you didn't know the disciple whom Jesus loved referred to in John, is John himself.

The Soldiers Mock Jesus

This passage again refers to the battalion but this time I am more inclined to believe it as other translations use a different word between the two passages, also as they were at the Roman barracks there's a good chance that both those on and off duty would turn up for this 'entertainment' and having at least a battalion available to govern Jerusalem would make sense. The Luke passage isn't a literal parallel as it takes place before hand and is carried out by Herod and his men, but I wanted to point out that both gentiles and Jews took a part in the mocking of Jesus. I think a lot of this to me symbolises that just as both Jews and Gentiles shunned, mocked, punished, and crucified Jesus so we all share in His sacrificial love, forgiveness, and most importantly salvation through His death and resurrection

Jesus Trial before Pilate

Okay now this one can be pretty complex and too be honest I'm not sure if I have it all figured out. The Jewish Sanhedrin had to get rid of Jesus without it looking like it was their fault (as Jesus was very popular amongst the people). So they went to the Roman governor to have him carry out the punishment. When he was told what Jesus was accused of (claiming he was the King of the Jews) he asked Jesus if that was true, Jesus said it was and then Pilate found him innocent, he thought just to be on the safe side and to appease the Sanhedrin he would have Jesus flogged and be done with it. Of course if you have seen the passion then you know that 'just a flogging' is a little bit of an understatement, and doesn't really express what exactly a flogging was back then.
However this wasn't good enough for the Sanhedrin, they needed to shut Jesus up if they wanted to continue to run things their way. So they get the crowd all roiled up so that they ask for Jesus to be crucified, and ask for the release of Barabas - who was known as a murderer, and definitely guilty of the crimes he had committed against the Jews and Romans. Pilate wanting to avoid a lot of bloodshed as Jerusalem was probably pretty full at the time due to everyone visiting for Passover (think Thanksgiving/Christmas type family gatherings) decides it's a lot easier to give in to the crowd and have just one man die instead of many. He tries to offset this decision back on the people by washing his hands (literally) of the problem in front of the people, who gladly accept the responsibility. He then sends Jesus off for flogging and crucifixion.

This passage shows me the following things:

Following public opinion doesn't result in the right thing being done.

The people called for Jesus blood to be on there heads - they didn't realise that it was going to be that that washed them clean.

Crowds are stoooooopid, they will chant whatever someone else starts.

Washing your hands is pretty ineffective at removing the guilt of have an innocent man put to death.

I also have the following questions:

Was Pilate guilty or not? (probably - he could have said no protected an innocent man and taken on the resulting issues from that)

Why was Jesus silent - could he have spoken more about himself and salvation in front of a large crowd? (I believe this may be due to prophecy, and him being led like a quiet lamb to the slaughter)

What is the relevance of Herod and Pilate becoming friends because of this issue?

Even the best can fail

Here is Peter's denial of Jesus, although there is discussion about how many times the cock crows we do know for sure that there were 3 denials and that directly following the 3rd the cock crowd. This of course causes Peter to breakdown as he realises that he has just done the one thing he promised Jesus that he would never do. At least he recognises this failure and shows regret for it - many of us don't even acknowledge failure let alone accept the failure as ours. This however was probably the best thing to ever increase Peters faith and deteremination, as now that he has failed he is determined not to let it happen again.

Kangaroo court

Jesus is taken to Caiaphas, and 'witnesses' are brought forward to provide charges against him, of course the priests didn't even manage to organise this right and their statements are contradictorary, finally thought they ask Jesus if he is the son of God - to which of course there is only one reply.

The Kiss of death

The sting now takes place, as Jesus knows that it is going to happen it really isn't much of a sting. If this doesn't prove what Jesus is ready to do for us and that he volunteered for this what does. If you saw some one coming with a bunch of armed thugs that you know want to capture you, would you stand around and wait to be kissed by the man you already knew was going to betray you? No I didn't think so. John makes reference to a Battalion of Roman soldiers - as this ran between 300-600 men I thinks this is a mistranslation as I can't see Pilate assigning that many men to pick up one 'criminal' especially as the point was to do it out of the public eye when Jesus was alone. Apparently this is limited to a few translations as others have it as band, which doesn't have a defined size that I could find. I guess you would have to check the original Greek to verify exactly what this says.
This passage also has a record of Jesus performing plastic surgery and reattaching the soldiers ear after it is cut off - I don't know about you but if I was Malchus and had my ear reattached by the son of God I would definitely be changing my opinion of Him, and changing sides.
Finally with all these temple guards and Roman soldiers about, you would definitely expect some of the others to be captured along with Jesus, after all you don't want to leave any ring leaders lying around now do you. God performs another miracle here in that they all escape just as Jesus had predicted.