In a time when touching a leper made one unclean, he touched lepers and they were healed. When working on the sabbath was forbidden, he healed on the sabbath. When the touching of dead bodies made one ceremonially impure, he touched the dead and raised them to life. Loved by the common people, he became a threat to the power of the religious leaders and to the political stability of a land occupied by Roman invaders. Betrayed by one of his own followers, he fell into the hands of his enemies. They tried him, charged him with crimes he did not commit, and executed him by nailing him to a cross. The story should have ended at that point. It did not.

The following Sunday morning, a woman named Mary Magdelene came to Jesus' downcast followers with the news that she had found their master's tomb empty and that she had seen him alive. They ran to the tomb and found it empty, but there was no sign of their teacher. In the days that followed, he appeared to them in locked rooms and beside the sea where he had first called them. Before vanishing into heaven, he met with them one last time and charged them with the impossible task of taking his story to all the nations of the earth.