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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I grew up with a great deal of guilt. It still keeps me up at night. For one reason or another, I was convinced I hadn’t done enough to be loved by God.
You don’t have to wait any long stretch of time for me to find my way back to guilty. Though I am absolved of my sins–and I cling to, and believe that with all my heart–there’s something inside of me that thirsts for the darkness.
Have you ever grown despondent from trying so hard to stop behaving in certain destructive ways, but always failing?
The devil is effective with this attack because it calls out all the things a Christian sinner experiences as simultaneous sinner and saint.
There was another criminal next to Christ the day he died. He was aware of who Jesus was, and why he was there.
We can leave all the stuff of life behind, because our great treasure God flaunts before the world on Calvary.
Why was Jesus crucified? Not to save victims, but to save sinners.
We spend the first nine months of our lives in utter darkness. There are no tiny fluorescent bulbs beaming from the ceiling of the womb, no fetal flashlights, not even a pinprick of illumination.
700 years before the first Noel, the prophet Isaiah prophesied that Christ would bear our grief and deliver us in grace. Scholars often refer to Isaiah 52:13-53:12 as the "fifth gospel" because it describes both that Christ was crucified and why Christ was crucified with incredible detail.
I could’ve stopped it, but I didn’t. I'm surprised that I didn’t turn my back to receive a pat as I let loose from lips, how good and saintly I was. What a reminder, that we are all susceptible to looking for the adulation of others.
Good people like fist-pounding on the pulpit about the bad things that bad people do in this bad world of ours. It makes them feel better about themselves.
In response to one of my recent posts on social media, a beloved agnostic friend of mine commented, in part, “What’s with all you religious folk feeling like you’re sinners?