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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Pentecost is a flashback. It drives us back to the past. It also propels us forward into the future.
The glimpse of this final vision of healing has healed us before, it heals us here and now, and it will heal us again.
Just as the disciples on the road to Emmaus recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread, so we, through the working of the Holy Spirit, recognize our Lord in the Word and Sacraments.
1517 would not exist without the leadership, friendship, and faithfulness of Pastor Ron Hodel.
There is someone outside of I, someone outside of you, that our faith and hope is in.
Now, in the New Testament, the number for the Church remains twelve as Jesus calls twelve Apostles to be trained by Him to carry out the ministry following His ascension.
So, we pray. Not just in times of need, but we pray at all times. Because this is part of what it means to be saved.
There were no discussions, no committee meetings, no master planning, he and his group simply went to Macedonia.
What you are doing for your hearers is sparking their imagination to live in, to dwell in, the images you are conjuring in their mind’s eye.
Jesus opens for us a way to walk through suffering and to sing our song of salvation as we talk to our heavenly Father.
Make no mistake, sinners are in fact being pursued by a most hideous beast called sin, death, and the devil, unleashed and striking continuously.
In the Old Testament all the world is narrowed down to the people of Israel, which is eventually narrowed down to One—Jesus! Jesus is Israel reduced to one in order that all the world might be saved through Him.