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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As long as we hold tight to a life that was never ours to possess in the first place, so long as we refuse to lay down our life so others can live, Jesus can't do a thing for us.
Forty days after His resurrection from the dead, Jesus ascended.
The fact is no one dies with dignity.
This is the night from when all those nights receive their light. For this is the night when Christ, the Life arose from the dead.
The story of Christ crucified has a happy ending. Jesus has conquered the grave. He beat the death rap.
Like her Lord, the Church has dirt under her nails, the smell of coffin wood on her clothes, and a hunger in her belly.
Then He went to the coffin. He touched it, like a carpenter sizing up the piece of wood He plans to turn into some sort of new creation, running His hand down its side.
Sometimes, I wish I was much older. Old enough to realize that my best, most influential, and productive days are behind me so that I could speak completely and openly about my life, my triumphs, and most of all, my struggles.
It is the strangest of morgues—people arrive dead as doornails and leave alive.
So it is with my little garden as well; dead, so it would seem. Nothing. Barren.
Over and over, generation after generation, sinners repeat the same mistake. "How is it possible that God can be a man," we ask.
Should we consider the tomb of Jesus completely empty, or just somewhat empty?