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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The mother of this prophet is visited by the Mother of God. In the coming together of these two pregnant women, we see the coming together of the old and the new.
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.
We are like the spoiled children of kings who spit in the face of paupers on the street. We have been given so much, yet we treasure so little.
He loved me, to be sure, but in a very nondescript, emotionally detached way, which is the way my grandfather loved him.
There has only been one baptism in the history of the world: the baptism of Jesus. “One Lord, one faith, one baptism.”
It doesn’t matter how good you seem to be, you’ll always be able to find someone who seems better than you. We’re addicted to comparing, measuring, quantifying, and judging.
Whether she realized it or not, this Egyptian woman was at war with the Lord of Israel. Her will was pitted against His will. Her desires were battling God’s desires. Joseph was caught in the crossfire.
As C. S. Lewis, in "The Magician’s Nephew", has Aslan sing the world and all its beautiful intricacies into existence, so the Lion of the tribe of Judah, our Lord Jesus, hymns the heavens and earth into being.
Over the course of her career, Madonna has demonstrated an incredible commitment to reinvention, keeping herself relevant under the critical eye that accompanies the culture of constant change in the world of music and art.
Is God the perfect loving father for whom we have all longed; or is he an angry, blood-thirsty deity who can only be appeased by the torture and death of his own child?
Here’s what lurks beneath this seemingly righteous behavior: they wanted to make a name for themselves, these tower-builders.
But in that quest for thou shalts and thou shalt nots, you’ll miss what really matters. You’ll trample the cross while racing for the tablets of stone. From the tale of Achan's theft, you’ll rob yourself of Jesus.