Who is holding whom — and does your rescue depend on your grip? In the Anastasis Fresco from Istanbul's Chora Church, Professor Courtney Tomaselli guides us into a vigorous, almost breathtaking encounter with the risen Christ shattering the gates of death. This prayer begins with the most undeserving — and finds that they are the first ones raised.

Painted in the early fourteenth century on the walls of a burial chapel in Constantinople, the Anastasis Fresco from the Chora Church offers one of the most kinetic images of resurrection in all of Christian art. This is not the quiet, still resurrection of Western tradition — no empty tomb, no folded linen. Here, Christ blazes into the underworld in white robes, gates shattered beneath him, and seizes the dead by the wrists. He will not wait for them to reach back.

At the heart of the image is a startling theological claim: the first two souls Christ raises are Adam and Eve. Professor Courtney Tomaselli notes that their presence at the center of the composition is not incidental. They are the ones whose sin set all of this in motion. And so the artist places them here — wrists grasped, pulled upright from their sarcophagi — as a proclamation that no one stands beyond the reach of this rescue. If Christ turns first to them, he turns first to all of us. Flanking the scene are David, Solomon, Abel, and John the Baptist, the whole arc of sacred history gathered to witness the moment everything changes.

Look at the image and let yourself notice what draws your eye first. Perhaps it is the sheer force of Christ's posture — the way his entire body leans forward into the act of saving. Or perhaps it is Adam and Eve themselves, passive in his grip, their rescue entirely the work of another. Where do you place yourself in this scene? Are you among the witnesses? Are you in the sarcophagus? Are you, like Adam or Eve, someone who has felt the weight of your own failures — and suddenly find yourself being pulled upward anyway?

An ancient homily for Holy Saturday places words in the mouth of the risen Christ descending into the underworld: Arise, O human being, work of my hands. Not a suggestion. Not an invitation that depends on whether we feel worthy. A command spoken with love. What does it stir in you to be addressed that way — not as someone who earns their way out, but as someone being reclaimed? What in your own story, your own accumulated weight, might Christ be reaching into right now?

This fresco unsettled me in the best possible way. I kept returning to those wrists — Christ not waiting for a handshake, not offering a hand to be taken or left, but taking. There is something profoundly freeing in that. We are not saved by our grip. We are saved by his. May you know this week what it is to be held fast by the One who descended all the way down to find you. Be blessed.