Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost: October 12, 2025 | The Rev. McKenzi Roberson

Readings: Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7 | Psalm 66:1-11 | 2 Timothy 2:8-15 | Luke 17:11-19

I regularly wish I could have a conversation with the framers of the revised common lectionary. I am so curious why they made the choices they did about what texts we read any given Sunday morning. Sometimes I want to know why they skipped certain passages, sometimes I begrudgingly acknowledge their wisdom in avoiding challenging texts that need far more than ten to twelve minutes to unpack, sometimes I lament that preachers have to talk about bread for seven weeks in a row. And then there are days like today, where I have to almost laughingly thank these folks for skipping over three verses of decidedly non-English names. Readers across the church give thanks.

On a more personal note, I am also grateful this week that the assigned reading stops where it does. When US Americans think of Jeremiah chapter 29, they tend to think of just one verse, a little past where our reading ends. 29:11 is where God says, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” You can walk into Hobby Lobby or Walmart and almost certainly find these words printed on a coffee mug or a wall canvas.

So often people take this one verse, forget all of the context around it, and assume that God is speaking to them directly, or maybe their friend who is going through a hard time, and take it as a comfort that their pain will not last forever. God has a plan for me and my life, and it’s a plan that is going to feel good to me.

The simplicity of this interpretation misses two key points. First, God is not making these promises to individuals. God is speaking to the whole of the people who are in exile. The community, rather than specific people, is the subject of these plans for a hope and a future, so bear that in mind as you make choices in your attempt to move towards prospering. The future is about more than you.

The second point is what we see in our portion of the text this morning. This prophecy of prosperity and hope comes to a people in exile who will remain there. Verse ten describes how Babylon, their captor, will have them for 70 years. The adults first taken from their homes will not return, and the children who return will have none of their own memories of it. That’s not often what we picture when we hear “plans for a hope and a future.” This hope and future extends beyond our lifetimes. We are called to believe in a story that spans generations and almost certainly will not end with us.

Now, don’t hear me say that you as an individual don’t matter. You matter to God. This two-sided coin is one of my favorite parts of our faith: you, each and every one of us gathered here, is beloved of God. And, this story isn’t about any one of us specifically. The story of God is about a community spread across both time and space striving to return the love of a loving God. What comfort in receiving God’s love. What liberation in knowing that while my strivings matter to God, the narrative arc of God’s relationship with creation does not rest solely on my shoulders, but on the whole community.

So what, then, is this community to do in exile? “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce…seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” These instructions certainly wouldn’t be my first instinct. I would almost like to think I would become angry about being in exile, advocating for justice for me and my community, but if I know myself then I would probably just become despondent, going through the motions, doing the bare minimum to survive. But that is not what God called the people of Israel to do in their exile. Their call was to live, and to live fully, to flourish in this new place even as they remember their once and future home.

We know something of exile in this community, don’t we? Each February we recall the signing of Executive Order 9066, which sent thousands of Japanese and Japanese Americans into exile, removed from homes and sometimes separated from family and friends. We see it in the news these days, too, American citizens and residents deported from this country, sometimes the only home they’ve ever known.

There are plenty of other kinds of exile as well. Some of us are pushed from home to home as rent and property taxes rise and we can no longer afford to stay in one place. Some of us are exiled from our families for being fully ourselves. And some of us are exiled from our bodies as we try our hardest to live into what other people have said we should be – a certain size, a certain gender, a certain ethnic heritage.

What does home look like when we are constantly on the move? How do we be nourished by the fruits of our garden when we are disconnected from our bodies?

In this season of our parish’s life we are asking a different set of questions: who are we? Who is our neighbor? Who are we in relation to our neighbor? I will confess to you that as I was writing this I had a charming, if entirely anachronistic, flash of imagination where the leaders of those in exile gathered together in somebody’s house to read this letter from Jeremiah proclaiming God’s promises, and one of them steps up to teach this part of the College for Congregational Development module, asking their community these same questions about how they are going to live now in Babylon. While their context and ours are wildly different, there is a shared core of wondering about our identity and deciding how we will live in light of it in this time and place.

Our gospel reading today might help shape our imaginations as we see how Jesus lives into answers for these questions. To set the scene we hear that, “On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee.” A little historical context is helpful here. Leading to the exile we were just talking about, Israel was split into two kingdoms. The Southern Kingdom was essentially the tribe of Judah, and its capital was Jerusalem. The Northern Kingdom was the other ten landed tribes of Israel, and its capital was Samaria. The Babylonian empire came, destroyed the temple in Jerusalem, and took the people captive to Babylon, while seeding foreigners to live in the land around Samaria. Crucially, though, some of the people of Judah were allowed to remain in the land near Jerusalem. This remnant allowed them to keep a sense of Jewish identity and religious purity, so that when the people of Israel were released from their captivity, the people in Jerusalem would go on to call themselves the “real” people, and those from the northern tribes, who intermarried with the foreigners, both in Babylon and in Samaria, were reduced to dirty idol worshipers.

So when Jesus was walking between Galilee and Samaria, that means Jesus was walking on the edge of exile. The people of Samaria had returned from exile physically, but they had not returned relationally. They were still viewed as outsiders, as people who were less than.

Jesus was on the edge of one exile when he was approached by people experiencing a different kind of exile, lepers. These are people marked with a tragic disease, pushed to the edge of society and deemed ritually unclean.

It is unclear in the text whether or not the other nine were Jews or Samaritans. But it is nevertheless shocking that it is a Samaritan who returns to Jesus. I wonder what it would have been like to have spent a lifetime being looked down upon by people just like the one who healed you. The double dose of humility I can only assume it would have required to go back and say thank you. The shock of catching a hint of the divine within the person you otherwise would call your oppressor, and being made well in that moment.

“Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” In her commentary on this week’s readings, Amy Frykholm highlights that when Jeremiah calls the people in exile to seek the peace of the city, or in our translation, the welfare of the city, the Hebrew word he uses has a much more fulsome meaning than we typically give to the word peace. Jeremiah tells them to seek the shalom of the city, so welfare, yes, but also justice and harmony and flourishing. Build your houses, plant your gardens, be cured of your disease and reintegrated into society. But also, seek flourishing, build meaningful relationships with your neighbors, strive to build a foundation for a future hope, let God use your faith and gratitude to make you well.

We are here, now, in this place that we love surrounded by the saints who have gone before and the saints who journey with us. God is in the midst of us. As we move forward, whether it’s in the physical places where God has called us to be, in the relationships God has called us to tend, or internally in our identities as beloved children of God, God comes alongside us, calling us to plant our gardens, and being faithful to give growth in ways we cannot yet imagine.