The women at the tomb were surprised by Easter. Amazed and filled with wonder at Jesus' Easter eucatastrophe. And so are we.
This is an excerpt from Chapter 6 in Sinner Saint: A Surprising Primer to the Christian Life (1517 Publishing, 2025). Sinner Saint is available today from 1517 Publishing.
On its journey from Byzantium to Constantinople to Istanbul, this special place helps us understand the broader arc of Christian history, which goes on until Christ's return.

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We show up to this crowded sacred shindig on Sundays, all wings and halos and blue jeans, and shimmy our way into the sanctuary, late to church but not late to church, for how can we be late to a service that never ends?
The lavish nature of God’s love is indicated by the fact that He, as Father, is the author of our being adopted as sons and daughters through Holy Baptism.
On All Saints Day, the beatitudes remind us how God in Christ claims people, frail, humble, poor, mourning, and makes them His own.
When I hear my brother’s name, I will grieve a little. But I will also rejoice, for I know that he is with his Savior.
As our first parents had a bond with the animals, as Noah had animals with him in the reboot of creation after the flood, so after this old creation comes to an end, we will enjoy a new creation that includes animals.
Whatever theoretical or conceptual ideas to which we surrender in despair, the Christian faith offers something wholly different. It offers a person.
Stop and be enveloped by the unending grace of Christ and his beautiful teachings that touch every corner of life.
I had been taught and believed in a God who is love, but as I walked outside that night I did not see him. I saw the stars and I felt their indifference.
We’re messed up people with messed up bodies. All of us. Even Miss America gets hemorrhoids. The Fall mocks us in our own skin. We’re all walking sermons.
The 'church' is neither your mega-complex nor is it you alone with your own private devotions.
The Holy Spirit gathers us together and keeps the church in the true faith, and He does it all by way of the Gospel.
While the Holy Spirit does work within us, He always comes to us from the outside, through the external Word and Sacraments.