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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Out of His mind indeed, as He took our place between murderers and received the insults and torture of humanity.
Your Big Brother, Yeshua… Joshua… Jesus, has done all things for your salvation.
Mordor’s bleak existence and the successful salvific mission of Frodo and Samwise is what makes Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings such a psychologically enjoyable epic.
There are a few occasions in the Bible where the curtain lifts, and we get to peer into the inner workings of the Divine Court.
When it comes to this world, our beds are most often a mess even when we do our best to make them in the morning.
There in that moment, the waters of baptism reached down deep into the forsaken path of the grave with a man whose body and mind could no longer hold onto any reality otherwise.
In Martin Luther's Small Catechism he borrows a line from St. Augustine about what defines a "god."
We are called to proclaim the life, death, and resurrection of the Answer incarnate, Jesus Christ, and in love respond to the questions that inevitably arise against it.
When we focus on God's self-giving Word, when we turn our attention to Golgotha, we are shown a wholly different way of viewing the Commandments.
There is just something about the idea of not being ‘under Law’ that sets off all kinds of alarms in the minds of many Christians.
Because of Jesus, we don’t have to pretty up anything ugly thing in life.
Come to the feast where evil and good, wise and foolish, shameful and shaming are welcomed as citizens of the kingdom.