The church lives a complicated existence. We often feel the sting of decline: how church attendance decreases, finance dwindles, and enthusiasm diminishes. Yet, studies such as one conducted by the Barna Group, tell a story of renewed engagement with Jesus-centered spirituality and theological inquiry, particularly in the young adult population.1 And while it is true that many churches have closed in recent years, many have also been planted.
Likewise, in recent decades, large mainline denominations in the US (such as the United Methodist Church and the Southern Baptist Convention) have experienced painful internal rupture. Yet, last year in 2025, the World Council of Churches observed the 1700th anniversary of the first Christian ecumenical council with a celebration of and commitment to more visible unity between diverse parts of the body of Christ.2 And over the course of the last sixty years, the church has witnessed the slow and hard work of reconciliation between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.
The conclusion we draw from these paradoxical testimonies is clear, albeit ironic: the church is messy. And yet, acknowledgement of our own messiness might be more lifegiving than we suppose. When we think about not just what the church is, but when the church is, messy becomes a little less shameful and a little more matter-of-fact.
This insight was sparked from reading The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture by Scott Belsky. Belsky’s book might seem a strange place to find inspiration for preaching and faith. His book focuses on start-up companies and entrepreneurial projects rather than churches and seminaries! And yet, St. Augustine reminds us that “all truth belongs to God.” We are wise to accept truth wherever we encounter it. Belsky observes that a lot of attention is placed on beginnings and endings. The beginning is usually marked by excitement and adrenaline. The ending of a project is a time to celebrate success, like selling a company for a large profit or a design being accepted for widespread use. But the middle of any venture—building a company, raising a family, or writing a book—comprises the biggest and most important part of the undertaking. It is also the least glamorous, the most frightening, and requires the most effort.
Writes Belsky, “the middle is the least discussed part of any enterprise.” His advice is that we acknowledge and accept when we are: “The middle isn’t pretty, but it is … full of essential realizations to finish whatever it is you set out to start. It’s time we start talking about it.”3
Theologically, we might think of the church essentially as Jesus’s own “messy middle.” Consider that the Christian faith starts with quite a bit of drama and adrenaline (crucifixion and resurrection seem fairly dramatic). And the eschatological finish line of the church is for Christ to return and for God to redeem the world in an ultimate sense. This ending also never fails to capture the Christian imagination. And so, the middle part of God’s project in Jesus is the church, striving to discern how to bear witness to the gospel, and often failing at it.
Less we pathologize the middle and only think of it as a place of mistakes and tedium, we should remember that the holy work the church has been called to is that of proclamation. And proclamation is ever only a “middle” activity. Preaching always takes place between what God has done and what God demands to be done. So, while the middle is certainly messy and riddled with mistakes, it is no less holy for the very reason that God has called us to it.
In the gospel narratives, Jesus demonstrates this notion of proclamation by consistently grounding his message on God’s prior established faithfulness and by simultaneously pointing toward the coming kingdom of God. Luke’s Gospel in particular highlights this by Jesus’s repetition of the word “today” in his proclamations to all kinds of people. “Today” is always in the middle, always existing between yesterday and tomorrow, between past promises and future hope.
The beauty of the word “today” in any story is that it can apply to two different times: today in the story and today when the story is told. As such, each of Jesus’s pronouncements on “today” in the Gospel of Luke has the capability of breaking out of the story proper and into whatever “today” readers find themselves. In each of the following four Lukan uses of “today,” we see the potential for Jesus’s proclamation to reach across time and challenge the church to hear a different story. While we tend to read all these passages and interpret “today” as the mere description of when certain events happen (fulfilling Scripture, betrayal, etc.), this method asks that we flip it around and see “today” as the object being described by the events. To hear Jesus tell it, you would think that today was a pretty important day.
Upon returning from the wilderness and being tempted by the devil, Jesus preaches in his hometown of Nazareth and reads from the Isaiah scroll—a fitting passage for a prophet beginning his public ministry:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (4:18-19).
Jesus turns Scripture recitation into preaching by commenting on the passage: “today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing …” (4:21). He is not merely reading the words but enacting them. As the final line from Isaiah declares that he “proclaims the year of the Lord’s favor,” Jesus, in effect, tells the audience, “Consider it proclaimed!”
Now, I challenge us to consider how we understand the word “fulfilled.” The Greek word here πληρóω (pleroō) means “to fill, make full, or fulfill.” Unfortunately, often when we use the term “fulfill” we mean something to be over or finished. For example, when we say that we have “fulfilled” an obligation, we mean that we have satisfied and so concluded it.
But when we look at one of the possible connotations of the word pleroō, one nuance of this word means to make pregnant.4 What if, rather than understanding “fulfilled” as indicating that Scripture has reached its endpoint, we might imagine Jesus’s words as filling Isaiah’s promise anew—making it pregnant with meaning and new possibility for those who hear it?
We should notice that Jesus says that Isaiah’s words find this fullness not in Jesus speaking them, but in the people “hearing them.” If fulfillment occurs in the hearing of the Scripture (and in the Bible, hearing usually implies active reception), then fulfillment is not merely an event locked in the past. It happens whenever Scripture meets listeners in their own present circumstances.
Thus, this story in Luke finds even fuller meaning when it describes what happens right now when readers experience this passage. Such perspective helps combat the myth of decline, that the church’s beginning was pristine and then everything went downhill afterward. Luke’s emphasis on today communicates to whomever is reading that their historical situation—in the middle—can be viewed as a time of even further divine revelation and fuller meaning of Scripture.
The next passage where Jesus speaks the word “today” is in Luke 19, the story of a tax collector named Zacchaeus. After Jesus dines with this tax collector— both a Roman collaborator and notorious cheat and thus loathed by his community—Zacchaeus moves to repair the damaged relationship between himself and his neighbors. He declares that he will repay everyone he has cheated many times over; in addition, he will give a portion of his money to the poor.
Upon this declaration, Jesus makes his own declaration: “today salvation has come to this house.” What does Jesus mean that salvation has arrived today? The Greek word for salvation (soterion) also means “healing” or “restoration to wholeness/wellness.” We might argue that Zacchaeus’s relationship with his community is being healed. But in the story, Zaccheaus has not actually done these righteous acts yet, only declared an intention. Often, Christians see Jesus’s death as the definition of salvation; yet in this story, Jesus has not yet reached Jerusalem and his cross.
So, what is salvific about the “today” that occurred in Jericho? When we examine salvation throughout Luke’s Gospel, it seems to best describe the physical presence of Jesus (Luke 2:30; 3:6; 19:9). In other words, Jesus sitting himself down at the table, eating and drinking, talking and laughing brings about God’s salvation today.
Readers would do well to recognize a pattern: presence and fellowship that culminate in a meal that signals salvation. In a few short chapters, Jesus will sit again at the table, this time with his disciples. He will eat and drink, pray and sing. And he will establish a practice for his followers to reenact this meal (22:14-23). That meal—the Eucharist—becomes the hallmark of Christian worship and the enduring symbol of salvation.5
In this practice, Jesus claims that the followers will remember him. We might think of remembering as recognizing the presence of someone who is considered absent. When the risen Jesus meets two of his disciples on the road to Emmaus, they only finally recognize him when they sit at table with the bread and wine (24:28-32).
The salvation that comes in the presence of Jesus is still created in this “today.” The words to Zacchaeus—that today salvation sat down at this table—reaches across time and speaks the same truth to those still recreating that moment. As communities of faith sit at table with each other and recognize the physical presence of Jesus in bread and wine, in song and prayer, “today” salvation comes to their homes. Today becomes the middle moment, sometime between Zaccheaus’s table and the feast Isaiah imagines at the culmination of God’s reign:
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear (Isa 25:6).
Here we see the wholeness and restoration that the word soteria conveys. Each Eucharist meal, every chair pulled up to the table, points forward to God’s vision for all to eat together.
The gospel narratives do not downplay the disciples’ failures. This is especially true of Peter, who not only denies following Jesus but even knowing him. So, it is fitting that Jesus’s next use of “today” refers to failure:
“Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat,32 but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”33 And he said to him, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death!”34 Jesus said, “I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow today, until you have denied three times that you know me” (22:31-34)
While all the other gospel writers record the story of Peter’s denial, none of the other gospel writers use the word “today” in their telling of it.6 Jesus clearly states that he does not want Peter to fail; in fact, Jesus prays for his disciples to stand firm. And then Jesus says, “when you have turned back”. So, while certainly not desiring his friends to desert him, Jesus acknowledges its inevitability. Even Jesus’s most faithful followers will fail in their commitments. They will stray from the gospel and its path.
But Jesus doesn’t stop at the certainty of Peter’s failure. Here, Greek verb forms help us appreciate the energy in Jesus’s encouragement of Peter. When Jesus says that he prays that Peter’s trust “might not fail,” Jesus speaks in the subjunctive mood. The subjunctive mood describes a possibility, something that has potential to happen but has not yet occurred. When Jesus says “once you have turned back,” he uses the aorist verb form which points to simple, completed action. In other words, Jesus grammatically expresses more confidence in Peter’s repentance than in Peter’s faithlessness!
Finally, after being reestablished, Jesus calls Peter to “strengthen your brothers and sisters.” This verb, strengthen, is in the imperative, a command. Jesus does not merely predict Peter’s failure, but he also assures Peter that his failure will not be the final word about him. Later, in Luke’s telling of the resurrection story, the other disciples tell this story to the two disciples who encounter Jesus on the road to Emmaus: “They were saying, ‘The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!’” (24:34). The reader is never told what happened in that encounter between Peter and the risen Jesus. But when we read Luke’s sequel, the Acts of the Apostles, we see Peter as an empowered preacher and a courageous leader.
The church boasts a host of failure stories throughout its tenure—many of which resemble the initial ones: cowardice, betrayal, exploitation, desire for power. We would be remiss to ignore the fact that Jesus describes “today” as a time when his followers will falter in their commitment and fail in their responsibility. But failure is not the final word on today—not then, and not now.
To the reader, this exchange between Peter and Jesus suggests that Jesus not only desires the Church’s faith and trust, but Jesus entrusts the Church with his presence and power regardless! What more could bolster the Church’s resolve in the messy middle than to know that even when their faith in Christ falters, he continues to keep faith with them?
Luke 23:43 marks the final “today” spoken by Jesus in Luke’s gospel—a word from the cross to a criminal on another cross: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” A common interpretation of this verse is that Jesus promises the thief that he will be with Jesus in heaven after he dies. But there is more going on here than a comment on the afterlife.
In the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament), “paradise” (πᾰρᾰ́δεισος, paradesios) is the word for the Garden of Eden—the birthplace of humanity and its partnership with the Lord God (Gen 2:5). Jesus’s words promising the criminal a place in Eden evoke a beginning, odd considering the people on crosses are meeting their ending. When we look at how Luke builds Jesus’s identity throughout the Gospel and then look at the aftermath of the crucifixion, we will see how “truly” these words ring for the church, both then and now.
Throughout the gospel narrative, Luke consistently reinforces Jesus’s identity as the “new Adam.” In Luke’s telling of the birth narrative, Jesus is declared a savior for “all people” (2:10). Thereafter, his genealogy traces him back to Adam— the first human (3:38). Immediately declared a descendent of Adam, Jesus resists the devil’s temptations to stray from God’s desire for human beings: worship of God and care for the world (4:1-13). Now, on the cross, Jesus himself declares the intention of returning to the place and posture that humans were created for.
Luke takes great pains to demonstrate that Jesus’s crucifixion is a direct result of Jesus’s faithful obedience to God. Jesus does not cry out that God has abandoned him but instead forgives those who execute him (23:34). And as soon as Jesus dies, the centurion does not utter the sarcastic comment that Mark has him say, “surely this was God’s son,” but rather, “this man was righteous” (23:47). Someone finally got it right.
In Jesus’s death and resurrection humanity gets a chance to start over. One event in Luke’s final chapter confirms this. When the two disciples going to Emmaus recognize the resurrected Jesus, it is in the context of a meal: “Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him” (24:31). Luke’s language mimics the language used for another meal, in Gen. 3 when Adam and Eve eat of the forbidden fruit: “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked” (3:7). In the saving presence of Jesus, who has returned to the garden via the cross, Eden is reclaimed and the story of humankind reset.
This rebirth was possible because Jesus committed to suffering for it, just as any birth comes through pain. Throughout Luke’s Gospel, Jesus consistently describes himself as a “suffering messiah” (9:22; 17:25; 22:15; 24:26; 24:46). Tasked with rebooting humankind, Jesus understood that the only way was through suffering, ultimately the cross.
This “today” might be the hardest one for the church to hear right now— that to be included in this work of new humanity, we must be willing to suffer and sacrifice for it. We are called to follow Jesus in obedience to God, rendering our privilege, preference, and power—both individually and collectively. In a culture that prioritizes comfort and convenience, this message is a hard sell.
But the good news for the church is that “today” is both the day of the cross and of the garden. And we follow someone who knows the way to both.
Having heard the words of Jesus “today,” we now reflect again on the very “middle” assignment of proclamation. The task of preaching in and to the middle becomes more expansive as well when we establish the church as the middle of Jesus’s mission. A few things become more possible.
First, we might draw on a wider range of Scripture in worship and proclamation. Sermons and Bible studies are often confined to a list of usual (uncomplicated or compromising) suspects with which preachers are both familiar and comfortable. But understanding our own identity as complicated makes space for biblical stories and songs that are equally complex (and often downright sketchy!). Exploring texts of “heroes of the faith” whose moral choices are often unheroic might encourage the church as it wrestles with its own failings. Voicing the songs of violent lament and divine betrayal might increase the church’s capacity for empathy and emotional intelligence.
Second, this acknowledgment of our messy “middle-ness” reminds us that the call to proclamation is not the call to problem-solving, question-answering, or complication-untangling. Preaching is bearing witness to the work God has done and continues to do in a messy world and through a messy church. We create so much needless stress (not to mention boring sermons) by assuming that our job is to fix the problems and clear the fog. From our survey of Jesus’s proclamations of “today,” it is clear that Jesus himself did not, in fact, clear everything up. We would do well to remember another of Jesus’s sayings, “Servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them” (John 13:16).
Third, we might preach more pastorally. This perspective might better help us calibrate our anxiety—and therefore our hearers’—about the current circumstances in which the church finds itself (mainly because it is the same situation in which the church has always been!). Ironically, we might be able to comment when things go wrong that we are precisely where we are meant to be—the middle is messy! For example, what if a preacher discussed evangelism, benevolence, or activism with the leading question: “Why is this the perfect time to do what God has asked?” Such a shift may go far in calming the church’s nervous system.
Fourth, such proclamation reproduces itself. By making space for and addressing the inevitable mess, preachers educate hearers to articulate their own messy stories of sin and salvation, of fear and possibility. Scottish theologian P. T. Forsyth noted: “The one great preacher in history, I would contend, is the Church. And the first business of the individual preacher is to enable the Church to preach.” To be a proclaiming community, it must be an honest one, leaning into the difficulties. Preachers who tell the truth about the church coach the church itself to preach authentically.
Finally and most importantly, we—this proclaiming community—might also better discern and celebrate the presence of Christ, who is not bound to the today in the text but remains with us in every “today.” Rather than either defer God’s goodness to the future or mourn over our decline since the supposedly glorious past, we can receive the gift of our present time with gladness as further opportunity to mediate Jesus’s presence and manifest the good news today. Jesus entrusted this middle time to his church: “This is the day that the lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 118:24). The middle may indeed be difficult and a bit disheveled … but it is ours.
Clarendon Press, 1940. s.v. “πληρόω.”
