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

The language of faith speaks promise and persecution, hope and trial, victory and pain. The language of the world may well speak the former, but rarely the latter.
You might not know it, but every Christian hopes for the day when their faith will die. Really. I promise. Faith’s death is our celebration.
God's power and works are awesome and cannot be stifled. His grace and mercy will be heard above the growls and howls of those who deny Christ Jesus is God and Savior
Our children are not our own, but even more, our children are born in need. They are sinful, from conception and from birth.
The church’s song goes on and on, singing and ringing down to us today.
Christ has received the mark of law that we might be marked with the gospel, with the sign of his holy cross on our heads and hearts as redeemed children of God.
This Christmas season we are thankful that even though we “fallers” are unable to climb up to God, he came down the ladder to us.
So what, if anything, makes us different from those who are waiting on the grassy knoll in Dallas, TX? Can we be any more sure of our belief in the resurrection?
“The days are coming,” and God said it. God, who kept his promise that Christ would come at Christmas.
If Jesus is indeed the same yesterday, today, and forever, everything his enfleshment brings is already assured: life, salvation, and forgiveness.
That's how true faith talks. It doesn't talk about itself. It says "Thank you!" to the one who gives healing and salvation.
The church is the only place God promises to lift us out of ourselves not in order to become more like God but so that we may finally be freed from our obsession with becoming little gods.