Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
October 12, 2025

Sermon

Camille Cook Howe
Pastor

Jeremiah 29:1, 4–7
Luke 17:5–11

The Reverend Fred Craddock remembered an occasion at Emory Medical School when the first course entering medical students took was called “The Vision of a Healthy World.” The governing question of the course was “What would the world be like if it were an altogether healthy world?” Then, with that vision under their belts, medical students went into learning about bee stings and setting broken bones and treating cancer and things like that. Before focusing on the specific illness in front of them, the future doctors needed to imagine what might be possible.

The Gospel writers were also trying to get their readers to think bigger, to catch the vision of the kingdom of God, to see what might be possible if they followed Jesus and lived according to his Way. What would the world be like if it were an altogether healthy world? It would certainly not have many of the things we read about in the news — children experiencing hunger, elderly plagued with loneliness, immigrants living in fear, teenagers crushed by anxiety, families struggling to make ends meet, people estranged from loved ones, communities riddled with violence, wars that rage on year after year. The news is not where you go to catch the vision of the kingdom of God!

Jesus tried to help people imagine what the kingdom of God could be like through his capacious and thought-provoking parables. But it wasn’t just his preaching; Jesus also created encounters that changed what people believed was possible and gave them a vision of the kingdom of God on earth. When we meet Jesus today, the Gospel writer Luke tells us Jesus was “on the way to Jerusalem.” When scripture writers say “on the way to Jerusalem,” we are supposed to pick up on something there. That was not a mere travel detail in the story but a theological orientation. Jesus was “on the way to Jerusalem” where he would die on a cross, conquer death, and open salvation for God’s people. It is important for us to know that this is where Jesus was heading when we meet him in our story today.

Yet even though he was on this ultimate mission, Jesus made lots of stops along the way. He stopped to see the isolated woman at the well. He stopped to see the grieving father on the roadside. He stopped to see the shame-filled businessman hiding in the tree, and he stopped to see the blind beggar on the roadside. He stopped to see the group of ten lepers crying out for mercy. Even though Jesus was on an ultimate journey for humanity, he was also on a personal journey with humanity as well. Jesus wanted us to catch the vision for what the world could look like if it were to be reordered by the kingdom practices, kingdom values, kingdom truths. Jesus was on the way to open the kingdom of heaven for each of us, and he also was on a mission to bring about flourishing while we live our lives on this earth.

David Brooks, in his book How to Know a Person, writes about an epidemic of blindness we are experiencing. He says, “We live in an environment in which political animosities, technological dehumanization, and social breakdown undermine connection, strain friendships, erase intimacy, and foster distrust. We’re living in the middle of some sort of vast emotional, relational, and spiritual crisis. It is as if people across society have lost the ability to see and understand one another, thus producing a culture that can be brutalizing and isolating.”

In the village between Samaria and Galilee, the community had lost the ability to see and understand the lepers. As far as they were concerned, this was just a group of people to be avoided and shunned. But Jesus sees them, not just for the sores on their skin, but he sees how brutalizing and isolating their lives had become — their lives were far from the vision of the kingdom of God. Jesus wants more for them, and so he does something interesting. Notice he does not say immediately to the lepers, “Go, your faith has made you well.” Instead, Jesus says, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” Why did he do that? Levitical law provided a way in which lepers could be restored to the community if a priest would examine them and conduct a ritual of cleansing. Lepers were banned from society, estranged from their families, and cast aside physically, emotionally, and spiritually. And so Jesus intentionally sends them back into their communities to be seen and welcomed and included and reunited. Jesus wanted to offer full healing — not a quick fix but something life-changing. Jesus could heal the skin disease, but it was up to the communities themselves to live into the fullness of the life God intended for them.

This is where I think we need some work — the fullness of life side of the equation. It would be hard to imagine the Good Lord looking down upon us and thinking, “Wow, they are just thriving!” Rather God would see many places of suffering, division, exclusion, sorrow, animosity, and just downright hatred.

Earl Weaver was the manager of the Baltimore Orioles in the 1980s. Weaver holds records in the number of times he was ejected from games. Earl loved to bait the umpires and was especially known from one particular taunt. Whenever Earl disagreed with a call he would run out of the dugout and yell at the umpire, “Are you gonna get any better, or is this it?”

Sometimes, I imagine that is what God would be asking us about how we are going to live our lives and create our communities. Are we going to get any better, or will we continue to suffer with anxiety and loneliness and isolation? Are we going to get any better, or will we continue to allow politics to divide and make us self-righteous about our views? Are we going to get any better, or will we continue to make groups of people feel visible or marginalized? Are we going to get any better, or will we continue to live in estrangement from each other and from God?

Remember, I just wrapped up fifteen years in Washington, D.C., so I know something about division and suspicion and self-righteousness and estrangement. Every time there was a new president in office, it caused ripples — OK, waves — in my politically diverse congregation. There were always winners and losers after election night. I remember the week after an election, getting a phone call from a church member, a very active regular member, telling me she was no longer coming to church because she could not worship with “those” people. After some back and forth, she agreed to come to church on Sunday, but she said she was not going to look at them. She did come back to church, and she did actively walk around the sanctuary with her eyes fixed on the floor. She never fell over, but it was a little dangerous!

This a powerful illustration of what we often try to do — actively not see each other. And yet Jesus sent those lepers to be seen, because that was part of their healing — that was part of building up the kingdom of God on earth. Biblical scholar Joel Green points out that Luke, as an author, is often focused on recovery of sight, a recovery Green says, is always “of both sight and insight.” I guess right now we need both: we need a healing of sight and a healing of insight. Sight to remove the callouses from our eyes that we might see each other with fresh eyes and open hearts. And insight to understand that our division and discord and self-righteousness are leading us down a very awful path that is far from the path God intended for us.

“Are you gonna get any better, or is this it?” This is not it. We are going to get better. We are going to rebuild trust. We are going to grow in compassion. We are going to find ways to heal broken relationships. We are going to love our neighbors. Because while Jesus was on a mission to save humanity from our sins, Jesus was also on a mission to teach us how to love each other, teach us how to forgive each other, teach us how to share with each other — teach us to believe that we could further the work of God in our corners of the kingdom.

I want us to conclude by noting where Jesus sent the lepers. He did not send them back to their homes. He did not send them back to their places of work. He did not send them into the parks. He sent them to see the priest, because perhaps the religious community was the place this work of seeing and healing and welcoming and forgiving was to begin. Maybe it is church folk who need to change the rhetoric? Maybe it is places like Fourth Presbyterian Church that can model that all is not lost, all is not divided, all is not broken? Maybe it is time for us to start really believing the words of the prayer we utter so often: “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

May it be so. May it be so! Amen.

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church