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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Rachel was the beloved wife, to be sure, but she was not the maternal link between Eve and Mary. That blessed position belonged to Leah.
Jesus’s freedom is different. It isn’t meant to indicate that the moorings which tether men and women to what is true, beautiful, and holy are unfastened, liberating them to do anything they please.
When sin comes out of the shadows and makes itself known, Christians can rest in and declare Christ's resurrection.
For sinners who cannot seem to get out of their own way, Dane brings to bear the gospel of Christ’s heart, which aerates one’s spiritual lungs with undiluted grace.
We do not have to endure the pain and suffering of this fallen existence forever, just for a little while.
But Jesus didn’t see it that way. He saw his arrest not as the kingdom’s program being thwarted but as it being “fulfilled.”
While baptism is a “once and for all” event that should not be repeated in the Christian’s life, the effects of baptism continue throughout the life of the believer.
With Jesus, troubles and sorrows, problems and worries, heartbreak and mourning are gathered up like left-over crumbs from a feast marking the celebration of victory over the enemy's forces.
The story of Juneteenth is one of living between proclamation and emancipation, and the story of the Christian faith is one of living in that same tension.
The only one truly blessed of God, who in himself is God’s incarnate makarios, surrounds himself with a multitude of the accursed, the non-makarios.
Only when we’re ready to accept the impossibility of human perfection can we move beyond the paralyzing myth that we are capable of anything good apart from Christ.
Despite what the Pharisees believed and advertised, Jesus was not intent upon deconstructing the fundamental tenets of the Old Testament law. Actually, he proceeds to do just the opposite.