Trinity Church in the City of Boston
The Rev. Morgan S. Allen
October 12, 2025
XVIII Pentecost (Proper 23, Year C), Luke 17:11-19
In you, O Lord, have we taken refuge; for the sake of your name, lead us and guide us. Amen.1 From Psalm 31.
September 16, 19842 Date of the Miami Vice, two-hour premier, entitled: “Brother’s Keeper.” 41 years later, this scene holds up. Though two generations of humans in the pews will never have heard of Miami Vice, “In The Air Tonight” maintains a place in pop culture, even now.: Sonny Crockett drives his convertible Ferrari3 A 1972 365 GTS/4. Later, he would drive a Testarossa, which was not nearly as cool. through a Miami night, Ricardo Tubbs and most of the United States viewing audience at his side. A camera mounted above the front, driver’s wheel-well holds the car and its gamboge headlight fixed while the chrome rim spins and the city speeds past in a glare of cool blues and hot pinks, steel grays and blinding flashes. The story world’s ambient noise disappears, and Phil Collins’ “In The Air Tonight” builds: the Roland4 A CR-78. drum machine … the distorted guitar sustain … the fretboard arpeggio … the bass line …. and then the synthesizer … the soundtrack of Miami Vice’s two-hour pilot becoming the song on Crockett’s car stereo.5 In church today, Trinity’s Associate Director of Music, Jerrick Cavagnaro, recreated the feel of “In The Air Tonight” as I recounted the scene. Jerrick’s graciousness (and skill) allowed us and the congregation to make meaning in an uncommon way for Episcopal sermons. Check out the recording to hear it.
Sonny breaks the sensationally formal6 That is, a television or film moment more focused on the form of the storytelling – camera angles, lighting, sound, mise-en-scène, etc. – than the content of the story. In this scene, notice the sound and colors, innovative camera angles and reflections. moment: “How much time we got?”
Tubbs, looking at his watch: “25 minutes.”
Deciding that’s enough, Sonny parks at a pay phone by the docks. A neon sign for Bernay’s Diner lights the scene in colors identical to the series’ teal-and-fuchsia logo.
Sonny calls his wife, their separation still new for both of them. The phone rings, and she stands from the supper table with their young son. She moves to the kitchen in the shot’s foreground, moves toward the viewer and answers: “Hello?”
“I need to know something, Caroline.” Sonny breathes desperation into the receiver, “The way we used to be together – not … I don’t mean lately, but before: it was real, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, it was,” Caroline answers – softly at first, grief and regret at the edges of her voice … before conviction seems to grip her, and she names more forcefully, defiantly, “You bet it was. Sonny, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing, Caroline,” Sonny lies to her, hiding his fear behind the cabochons7 A great word! The cabochons – small balls of glass – in La Farge’s masterwork window at Trinity are a blue-green color not so far from Process Cyan. of lens flare8 These are the blurry spirals in photographs and film, often created when a bright light shines directly into the lens. Mann (and Director Thomas Carter) chose to keep these, not as a mistake, but as an enrichment. Formal elements like lens flare reminds us we are watching a movie and provoke a different meaning-making process. blinking over Biscayne Bay above him. He hangs up the phone and leaves the booth. Phil Collins hits his iconic drum fill9 Phil Collins was a dadgum hitmaker of all hitmakers. One day, I will preach a sermon referencing the “gated snare” sound he accidentally created with Peter Gabriel. He drastically gates this fill, too, giving it that ’80s feel – on point to Mann’s mode of realism, that sound is both of this world and from far beyond it., and the Ferrari tears back toward the boulevard.
As much as anyone, Miami Vice’s Executive Producer, Michael Mann, established the look-and-feel of the 1980s. Instead of homage to classical tropes and styles, Mann’s storytelling appealed to the images and iconography of more popular culture, marrying Picasso’s geometric shapes, flashing retail marquees from everyday curbsides, and contemporary radio hits. His garish, Miami palette replaced the 1970s’ Harvest Golds and Avocado Greens, and in trading those earth tones for artificial hues, he created a “realism” teeming with tension, the familiar scraping against the foreign.
Likewise, Miami Vice revolutionized television with its filmic sensibilities and strategies. Mann’s highly formalistic approach conveyed as much narrative information as his characters’ dialogue and action. He shot the series with wild camera angles that did not seek to recreate a simple point-of-view, but to make a point, to interpret the filmed material during his engagements with the viewer. Mann also incorporated non-diegetic sound [that is, sound from outside the story world that the audience hears, but the characters do not], and he used that music to reinforce a peculiar realism – again, one from this world and, yet, from far beyond it.
Of course, the communities authoring the Christian Gospels did not have Mann’s formalist flourishes available for their storytelling [this is that turn toward scripture you were waiting to hear]. Now, our Evangelists could torque narrative conventions and fixed oral-tradition patterns to highlight a surprise twist in the story, as when casting a Samaritan as the hero10 Luke 17:16. “He prostrated himself at Jesus’s feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan.”. Likewise, they could have their characters anticipate a reader response and then bring that reaction into the story world, as when Jesus condemningly declares, “Was none of [these ten men] found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”11 Luke 17:18. I receive Jesus’ comment as a formal element, not a historically accurate statement. The authoring community makes the bold decision to have Jesus’ voice the incredulity to emphasize the unlikely narrative turn. And the authoring communities could feather foreshadow and summary into their Gospel’s transitions, as when offering an easy-to-overlook geography note: On the way to Jerusalem, Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee.12 Luke 17:11.
You know, that Miami Vice logo13 Seen here in the series’ opening credits. Jan Hammer’s instrumental theme hit #1 in November 1985. tells the whole story of the series: its colors offset in a world on fire, yet cold; overwhelmingly congested, yet utterly disconnected. Likewise, the first line of today’s lesson tells the whole Gospel story – the entire arc in two clauses.
“On the way to Jerusalem.”14 Luke 17:11a. Call it a hint or even a telegraph, but Jesus knows where this and all his encounters lead: to “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!”15 Luke 13:34a. From that Chapter 13 reference, despite the mortal threat Jerusalem presents to Jesus, he longs “to gather [her] children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.”16 Luke 13:34b. Jesus responds to his people’s rejection and violence with grace and gentleness.
And on the way to Jerusalem, “Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee.”17 Luke 17:11b. And – Lord, have mercy! – are we not always negotiating these borderlands? On one side of us, Samaria: its capital notorious for idolatry, its people set at enmity with the Israelites of Jesus’ day; and on the other side, Galilee: its territory including Nazareth and Jesus’ family, its towns fondly home to Jesus’ disciples. Even in this conflicted context, Jesus remains committed to his course. Loving and serving both the shamed and the saved, the enslaved and the entitled, he appreciates the cost of his destination, and pursues it, nonetheless.
“As he entered a village,” the text continues – as pointing to the very moment Jesus crosses the border from the outsiders to the insiders – when ten men with a skin disease make themselves known.18 Luke 17:12a. These men suffering with leprosy have formed their own community beyond the settlement’s edge – a cadre built, at least in part, upon their common exclusion by the townspeople and their common acceptance of one another. They subordinate their personal identities [ethnic, regional, whatever might otherwise divide them] to take care of each other.
Importantly, Jesus does not tell them to stay back, they choose to keep their distance.19 Luke 17:12b. And from a respectful afar, they call out, “Jesus, have mercy on us!”20 Luke 17:13b. Jesus replies, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.”21 Luke 17:14a. And another as, “as they went” – the very moment of their turning and going – “they were made clean.”22 Luke 17:14b.
In Michael Mann’s catalogue – not only Miami Vice, but his feature films to follow23 For my nickel, highlighted by Manhunter in 1986, and Heat in 1995 – the latter easily in my Top 5 Of All Time. – the criminals have families, and the cops have complications; see, those cool blues and hot pinks, steel grays and blinding flashes overlap one another. To hold oneself steady in his cities always pulsing with peril, righteousness demands breath-by-breath constancy, aiming passions for good and not for ill, for community and not for isolation.
Yet, what Mann intended as a warning, popular culture received as an encouragement: the world adopted his style but ignored his stories.24 A peril for the formalist moviemaker – and an easy mistake for us viewers when the films are so beautiful. Despite Sonny Crockett’s longing for something real, his aching for anything existentially meaningful in his life, the nation surrounding his story world chose what was false. From Gordon Gekko to Ollie North, we denizens of the 1980s chose the comfortable lie, rather than the more demanding truth.
In today’s Gospel, the Samaritan refuses the culture of division – he approaches Jesus and makes whole what had been separated. And hear how Jesus affirms the transformation of the man’s perspective, not his epidemiological status: “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well”25 Luke 17:19. – your clear complexion has not made you acceptable, your faith has made you well, and your faith can change the world!
Yet, what Luke’s authoring community intended as a warning, we receive as an encouragement if we receive today’s lesson as a story of God’s power to purify. No. The Samaritan understands God’s grace and the restoration of community as the miracle, and he responds with graciousness of his own. He makes the teacher’s way his own, and he joins Jesus on the road to Jerusalem – a destination that may cost him everything, but that promises so much more.
In the story world of our contemporary lives, violence and political madness wrack us with grief and anxiety. In response, we have too often contributed to the unholy momentums of the extant narratives, hating our opponents, rather than loving our enemies. Too often, we have sought healing only for ourselves and not for the world. Too often we have labored for revenge and not renewal – conspiring with those self-interested nine to flip the scales, rather than partnering with the Samaritan to transform our polarized, partisan culture.
Trinitarians, the fulfillment of God’s great dream does not depend upon our individual purity or our enforcing the purity of a chosen few. The reconciliation of the world depends upon our joining Jesus on his way to Jerusalem. We must make Jesus’ way our own. Steadying ourselves against the pulse of peril – those polished wheels spinning, those colors flashing – demands we subordinate our personal identities in service of the common good. Even when such commitments set us at risk, we respond to rejection and violence with grace and gentleness, for such loving vulnerability remains the unavoidable model of Jesus.
Righteousness in this world requires our breath-by-breath constancy, shining the hot-pink of our passions for others’ benefit and not ours alone. See, we offer ourselves as faithful formalists, reinterpreting this American moment with the high-angle of our grateful hearts! We challenge the world’s depravity with the soundtrack of our joyful worship! We light the world with our pledges of time, talent, and treasure – in this Stewardship season and always. Non-diegetic as all these devotions may seem, be sure that by our gracious lives we more than establish the mise en scène of a single setting or season, we inaugurate a new reality – for us and for all people.
Amen.