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.
We needn’t fear statistics and studies as palm readings into a certain future. God is God, and his Spirit is alive through his Word.

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It is good to remember that this true story, is also beautiful.
Who we are buried with matters. But there is no need to go out and find a dead prophet so you can join him six feet under.
When you are stripped down to nothing, desperate, lowly, you will again know what she knows: the crumbs are enough, Jesus is enough, for you.
If there were ever any doubt about God's commitment to humanity, the incarnation removed that doubt. God became a man forever. And thus he is our brother, our kinsman redeemer, the God who would move heaven and earth to save us.
Sometimes it’s important to go far away to learn of holy places back home.
Luther recognized that in the penitential psalms, God gives us the words to cry out to Him in our distress, lament our sins, and confess trust in the promise of His righteousness in which alone is our sure and certain hope.
You might not know it, but every Christian hopes for the day when their faith will die. Really. I promise. Faith’s death is our celebration.
Here, robed in Word and Sacrament, is your King, infant though He be, come out of eternity into time to bring you out of time and into eternity.
You are not in debt to sin. You don’t owe it anything. There’s no reason for you to serve it.
Christ is present in the pure preaching of the gospel. And if Christ is present, then we have entered into the domain of the sacraments.
Viewing the Word as a unified theological narrative prevents us from treating the Scriptures like a cage match between competing theological systems, with prophets duking it out with apostles, and psalmists with evangelists, all supposedly fighting for their voice to be heard.
Not only does God reveal the identity of Jesus in this season through what we see and hear Jesus doing and saying, but God also reveals His gracious will through Jesus despite what we see and hear.