Sermon: Walking to Wholeness

St. Columba's Inverness, CA

October 12, 2025

22nd Sunday After Pentecost

Luke 17:11-19

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It’s good to be back with you. The last time I was here was in July, but this time, my family is with me. My kids are seeing Inverness for the first time, and it feels a little like watching them meet part of my heart. It’s a gift to be among you again, this community that has taught me what faithful presence looks like, what it means to care deeply for one another and for the creation God so loves. And yet, even in such beloved places, we are not immune to the uncertainty that seems to mark our time.

We live in a time when so much feels fragile. Every week seems to bring a new headline that makes us wonder what kind of future we’re walking into. The economic and political realities of our nation keep us up at night. The planet groans with fires, floods, and storms that don’t follow old patterns. We see injustice deepen, divisions widen, and so many people are afraid, angry, or simply exhausted.

It feels like we’re all walking somewhere between what we’ve known and what’s coming next—standing in the gap between stability and change, between fear and hope. And that’s exactly where today’s gospel begins: in between.

Luke tells us that Jesus is traveling through the region between Samaria and Galilee. That phrase always catches my attention: the region between. It’s a liminal space, a borderland, neither here nor there. That’s where the outcasts live, where those who don’t fit anywhere end up. And that’s where Jesus chooses to go.

There, Jesus meets people who have been cut off from their communities because of leprosy. In Jesus’ time, “leprosy” was a range of skin conditions regarded with deep ritual fear. The concern wasn’t only about physical disease; it was about ritual impurity, about the boundaries that separated the clean from the unclean, the holy from the profane.

Leviticus 13 and 14 lay out, in painstaking detail, what was to be done with those afflicted. A priest would examine the person, not to heal them, but to declare them unclean. From that point forward, they lived outside the camp, cut off from home, family, synagogue, and everything that made life communal and sacred.

And here’s the part that’s easy to overlook: the burden of separation fell entirely on the afflicted person. They had to keep themselves apart. They had to warn others away, were commanded to tear their clothes, cover their upper lips, and cry out “Unclean! Unclean!” It was not just exclusion; it was self-exclusion. This was a system in which the very people most in need of compassion bore the responsibility for protecting everyone else. Imagine what that does to the soul, to live every day having to announce your own unworthiness.

Theologian and leprosy activist Paul Brand once wrote that leprosy is not primarily about decay; it’s about disconnection. The disease kills the nerve endings, leaving people unable to feel pain. They can burn or cut themselves and never know it. So even the body loses awareness of its own suffering.

Think about that: the disease itself disconnects the person from their body, and the social system disconnects them from their community. They are doubly exiled, separated from others and from themselves. Their lives are the definition of living in between — between sickness and healing, isolation and belonging, life and death. They lived every day wondering what tomorrow would bring, whether they’d be seen or avoided, whether they’d ever be whole again.

When they see Jesus approaching, they call out to him. They don’t ask directly to be healed; they cry out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” That word “mercy” — eleos in Greek — means far more than pity. It carries the sense of covenant love, steadfast compassion, what the Hebrew Scriptures call hesed. It’s a word about relationship. They are calling out not just for a cure, but for return, for re-connection, for the chance to live as whole people again.

And what does Jesus do? He doesn’t touch them, doesn’t speak a word of healing. Instead, he gives them a command: “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” He tells them to go to the very ones who had once declared them unclean. The command itself is an act of trust. They are being told, “Live as though healing is already happening.” They have to walk into the world that once rejected them, believing that the God who called them out is now calling them home.

The law required a priest to certify that someone had been cleansed before they could rejoin the community. Normally, the priest came to the person. But Jesus reverses this. He sends them as if they’re already healed. It’s an invitation to act in faith.

And as they go, the text says, “they were made clean.” I imagine those ten lepers, still covered in sores, walking toward the priests because Jesus told them to go. They didn’t yet know they were healed. They simply started walking. And in that trust-filled movement, healing came. The miracle happens on the way—in the movement, in the trusting, in the step of obedience before there’s any proof.

Faith, in this story, isn’t an abstract belief. It’s embodied trust. It’s putting one foot in front of the other before you know how it will turn out. Jesus doesn’t give them certainty. He gives them direction.

The early church father Gregory of Nyssa once said that “to be in faith is to be always on the move, always stretching forward, never fully arriving.” He called this movement epektasis—the soul’s endless stretching toward God. Faith, for Gregory, wasn’t about possessing answers but about walking in desire—moving toward the mystery of God, even when we cannot see what’s ahead. More often than not, that’s what our spiritual life looks like—taking the next step, trusting that grace meets us on the road.

And that, I think, describes so much of our lives right now.

For some, that might mean continuing to care for the earth even when the damage feels irreparable. For others, it might mean working for justice when progress seems slow. For me, it’s meant staying on this road toward ordained ministry, trusting that God’s call is not a mistake, even when it feels costly or unclear.

My family here will tell you that the road has been costly for me and for them. For the last five years, they’ve endured the hard road with me as I’ve been taking one step after the other—into three seminary degree programs, internships, and multiple jobs. And on each leg of the journey, I have been told the same thing: this is not a guarantee of ordination.

Honestly, entering vocational ministry in these days feels kind of like running into a burning building. It seems mad to be rushing into a shrinking church while the world is shaking and yet… the Spirit keeps nudging: Go. Keep walking.

For me, the personal and spiritual growth of these past five years walking in faith has been unsurpassed, and I must often remind myself to stay focused on that, not the outcome or destination.

Like those lepers on the road, we must keep walking—believing that God meets us in the going, not just in the arriving.

Then comes the turn in the story. One of them, a Samaritan, when he sees that he’s been healed, stops mid-journey and turns around. Luke says he “turned back, praising God with a loud voice.”

Here we see clearly that this story is not about physical healing, but spiritual transformation. That word “turned” is the same word Luke often uses for repentance, for turning back toward God. This isn’t just a detour; it’s conversion.

The other nine continue toward the temple to fulfill the ritual law. But this one realizes something deeper has happened. His healing is not only about getting his life back; it’s about entering into a new relationship with the One who healed him. He falls at Jesus’ feet, a posture of worship, and gives glory to God.

And Jesus asks, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”

Luke draws our attention again to who this man is. Not only is he a leper, but a Samaritan, doubly excluded. This story takes place on the border between Samaria and Galilee, a no-man’s land between two peoples who distrusted each other. But remember, that’s where Jesus chooses to travel, in the boundary spaces, the in-between places, where outcasts dwell. And it’s there that salvation breaks through.

The early church fathers noticed this, too. Cyril of Alexandria wrote that the nine were Jews who followed the law but did not return to glorify Christ; the one who did was a foreigner, showing that grace is no longer confined to the boundaries of the law but is poured out freely to all. Once again, God’s mercy is revealed not at the center of purity or privilege, but at the margins.

The very one who, in the eyes of others, least belongs is the one who sees most clearly who Jesus is. And Jesus says to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” That last phrase, “made you well,” uses the Greek word sōzō, the same word used for “to save.” All ten were cleansed, but only one was saved. All ten received physical healing, but one experienced wholeness, restoration not just of body, but of soul.

All the lepers showed faith, but the Samaritan’s faith goes one step further. His faith moves from obedience to relationship, from receiving a gift to meeting the Giver. The nine run to the priest, saying, “Look at me, I’m healed!” The one returns to Jesus, saying, “Look at God, look what God has done!”

And Jesus’ words to him, “Get up and go,” echo resurrection language. “Get up” in Greek is the same root word used for “rise” in the resurrection stories. His new life begins here, in this moment of recognition and relationship.

Jesus makes whole everything that was broken for the Samaritan leper. He doesn’t just cleanse him of a disease. He undoes the entire system of exclusion. And he shows us a glimpse of healing the divides between communities, the way he will soon bring the Gentiles into the story. This is but a shadow of shalom, the wholeness that is on the way.

This healing Jesus brings ripples outward, not only into human lives but into creation itself. The same mercy that restores the lepers is at work in the world God made, mending what has been broken, calling all things toward wholeness. He will restore the creation and all his creatures to their original goodness. In the meantime, we long for that Kingdom that is already and not yet.

What does it mean for us—here, in this small beloved community on the edge of the continent—to walk in faith like that? To keep moving forward amid the world’s uncertainty, trusting that as we go, God is already doing the healing work in us?

Maybe faith, in times like these, isn’t about certainty. Maybe it’s about movement. About saying yes to the next step, the next act of love, the next moment of courage.

The ten lepers knew what it meant to live in fear. They had been cut off from everything familiar, forced to live on the edges. Yet when Jesus spoke, they set out into the unknown in faith. Friends, that’s where we find ourselves too—in the in-between, walking toward a future we can’t yet see, trying to believe that mercy is still moving among us.

Faith doesn’t mean we ignore the fear or deny the grief of what’s broken in our world. It means we keep walking anyway. We keep trusting that God is not finished with us yet, not finished with this world yet.

This faith is about trusting that even when the world feels fractured, God is restoring not just our communities, but our very selves. So, when creation trembles or when division and injustice threaten to numb our compassion or steal our hope, this story calls us to keep moving toward Christ.

We can listen for that quiet voice that says, “Go on your way,” and we can believe that on the way—in the walking, the trusting, the turning toward one another—we will find that God is already making us whole.

Amen.