We can bring our troubles, griefs, sorrows, and sins to Jesus, who meets us smack dab in the middle of our messy mob.
Confession isn’t a detour in the liturgy. It’s the doorway.
American religion did not become optional because the gospel failed. It became optional because religion slowly redefined itself around usefulness.

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Free speech isn't dead yet, and when it comes to the proclamation of the gospel, it never will be.
The point of Revelation is to reveal consolation in Jesus, not to revel in chaos and confusion.
The good news for Jacob is that God humbled himself so that he could lose a wrestling match to a man with a dislocated hip so that he could give him a new name.
Despite the fact that this could sound strange to modern ears, Luther has an important reason for saying what he does about the Commandments.
The Christian must always remember that personal piety and liturgical uniformity are by no means the marks of true religion.
We don't associate the word "regret" with anything "good," but God does.
Erasmus and the Unintended Reformation
This is an excerpt from the Chapter 12 of Hitchhiking with the Prophets: A Ride Through the Salvation Story of the Old Testament written by Chad Bird (1517 Publishing, 2024). Now available!
It is Jesus himself who is the ladder by which sinners get to God, not by them climbing up but by God climbing down.
If your faith is rooted in the gospel of Zion, in the good news of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection on your behalf, you are already a member of the “heavenly Jerusalem”
This is an excerpt from “Confession and Absolution” by John T. Pless in Common Places in Theology: A Curated Collection of Essays from Lutheran Quarterly, edited by Mark Mattes, (1517 Publishing 2023).
This is an excerpt from the introduction of Hitchhiking with Prophets: A Ride Through the Salvation Story of the Old Testament written by Chad Bird (1517 Publishing, 2024). Now available for preorder.