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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Our only hope in life and death is that God loves sinners, who fail and forget constantly, with a love that is just as constant.
If you want something empty, the tomb is the way to go. The point of the manger is that Jesus was in it. The point of the cross is that Jesus was on it.
Your loving Lord is not oblivious to your pain and sadness.
The point Luther made, again and again, was that distance between God and sinners is collapsed when the crucified Christ himself comes to sinners through a preacher.
The promise here is that God is present with us in our troubles, issuing commands to save us before we ask. God does not ignore our suffering and cries.
We cannot love first. Therefore God comes, takes hold of the heart, and says: "Learn to know me."
This is the patient love of God. He is stubborn about the salvation of sinners. He will not be rushed even if his name is mocked, and the trustworthiness of his promises are called into question.
This world of unbearable grief and accidental calamity is being renewed and, soon, will be completely bereft of every pernicious foe.
It is precisely from the cross that the glory of God shines most brightly into our lives, as dark and sinister as Golgotha appears from a sinful distance. Cross trumps crisis.
Men and women are all caught in the universal machine of suffering that chews people up and spits them out. And in their respective griefs and fears, they are all wondering if God sees them, hears them, knows them.
Love turns out to be not simply a thing or action, but a characteristic of God himself.
He also took our own history and suffered all the agony and pain of our own lives.