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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Make no mistake, sinners are in fact being pursued by a most hideous beast called sin, death, and the devil, unleashed and striking continuously.
In the Old Testament all the world is narrowed down to the people of Israel, which is eventually narrowed down to One—Jesus! Jesus is Israel reduced to one in order that all the world might be saved through Him.
What we have in our reading is a picture of how God deals with a lack of understanding.
This voice of Jesus is the same voice which now beckons us to see anew how God in Christ is at work anywhere and everywhere.
If preaching can be a greater joy for myself and my people, who after all have to put up with us preachers, that is a win in my book. And I think preaching by heart can help to accomplish this.
Nothing stands against you. Only Christ stands now, and he is for you, more for you than you could ever know, for you like nothing else that has ever loved you.
On May 2nd, Cantate Sunday, in the year 1507, Luther celebrated his first Mass.
Perhaps the question that needs answering is, “How?” How can we run the race? How can we be good shepherds of the flock? How can we live and walk as part of the flock?
Today, Jesus comes as your Good Shepherd. You recognize His voice.
We gather and join in this great multitude because the Lamb is at its center, and the Lamb’s Kingdom ushers in the peaceable eternity of life resurrected.
In the Church, the cry is, “He loves,” and it is that message which transforms our worldviews from taking to giving, from radical individualism to trans-demographic inclusivism, from selfishness to selflessness, from “tolerate my rights” to “loving rightly together.”
What the gospel promises is not escape from our humanity, but resurrection from the dead.