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.

All Articles

Your church is not healthy. If they were healthy, they wouldn’t need someone to heal them.
You can talk to me about how Jesus is really forgiving and how you want me around, but what happens when things don’t change in a month?
We pray for God to deliver us from ourselves. To forgive us, for Jesus’s sake, when we do evil.
Christianity is not a solo endeavor. Not a private relationship between Jesus and me.
The angriest people I meet are former Christians.
Put to death by God's Word of Law, we are then raised to new life by God's Word of Gospel.
Jesus is many things. He’s an example. He’s a teacher. He’s a great thinker and philosopher. But He’s also so much more, and He’s one thing above all else: He is Jesus, Savior.
He reminds them how his love is truly marvelous and unconditional, but then, he looks them in the eyes, and says they ought to do better because of his love.
Who was this Jesus, who could do such things?
If you don’t believe Jesus Christ—that is, God in the man born of the Virgin Mary—died for the sins of the world, then you can’t evangelize.
I’m still laughing now as hard as I laughed back then. And the salve that he gave me in that moment still works some strange magic on me to this day.
Though they have never left the church, they have been lost all the while.