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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Jerusalem, temple, and king, all three bespoke of Yahweh’s kingship, as well as of His Kingdom and presence on earth and all the blessings bound up with it.
On Good Friday, poetic justice is satisfied. Poetic mercy is all which remains.
On this Maundy Thursday, in particular, let the “for you” of Christ’s gifts dominate.
Simon carried the cross, but Jesus was carried by the cross to death.
Out there the instincts to protect yourself from embarrassment, ridicule, and rejection can easily overcome you as they did Peter. Our only hope is in Peter’s Lord.
Betrayed. It is a word which chills the soul and sickens the stomach. To be betrayed is to have a friend turn on you, treating you as an enemy.
Passion Week preaching is not simply preaching about the events leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion but to announce to the world how through this single death, sins are answered for, and God is reconciled with humanity.
The LORD vindicates His people in the midst of their misery and despair—for this He has come.
The image on Palm Sunday is about something so primordial, so powerful and ancient, so deep, that it would shatter any kind of limits. It would break through any attempt to restrain it.
In the middle of the cosmic, creedal story, Paul places us, you and me, and all of those who belong by faith to Christ.
Preaching the inseparability of Jesus and Jerusalem is to proclaim God’s Messiah and the fulfillment of the Scriptures.
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.