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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Jonathan saw in David a reflection of who he himself was. This recognition pulled him outside himself and bound him to another.
Throughout the Old Testament, the seas and fish were symbols of the Gentiles. When Jesus ate fish, and called fishermen, he showed us that the mission to the Gentiles was about to begin in earnest.
Matthew’s account of Jesus's baptism is only 5 verses and about 100 Greek words long, but multiple Hebrew stories are swimming right below the surface.
Is there ever a time when someone needs to be re-baptized? Not if we believe that God is the one who does the baptizing.
Rather than making resolutions about how we’re going to accomplish great things in 2020, let's do something different: resolve how to do well at failure.
Jesus has not put on human nature like a shirt and pair of pants, easily stripped off to be a naked God again. No, from the moment of his conception onward, into the everlasting future, God is also human.
Mary’s virginity has to do with the story of a jackass king, two growling enemies, a young lady, and a big, bad Assyrian dog.
If you're blocking Jesus, then for the love of God, get out of the way. Let Jesus show.
In the wilderness, God reaches down to show us that the only life is in one place: where there is water.
There is no evidence whatsoever that Christmas was or is, by some outlandish stretch of the imagination, a pagan holiday, or a semi-pagan holiday, or that it doesn’t pass the “smell test” for paganism.
Come, Lord Jesus, and steal our navel-gazing worship, and replace it with love for our adversaries, ears to listen and mouths to shut up, and hearts brimming with compassion for all.
Any day of thanksgiving is a confessional day—a day of expressing a short creed that sums up our entire existence: God gives, we receive. Thanksgiving as a day of confession becomes very obvious when we look at it from a Hebrew perspective.