I wish I had thought of today’s Gospel reading ten years ago when I was sitting at the bedside of a very sick woman in a Washington, DC, hospital. I was in the middle of a summer internship after my first year of seminary, and each day, I would make the rounds in particular departments of the hospital providing pastoral care. A woman wanted to talk with someone, and so I visited her.
I could tell she was tormented inside. In my role as an intern, I had to thread a very careful needle with patients. They came from all religious backgrounds, and sometimes none at all, and this meant that I often encountered theological understandings that chafed against my own core beliefs. But I wasn’t supposed to fix or correct anything I perceived to be bad theology.
The woman in the bed before me was a perfect example of someone wrestling with such a punitive theology. She was suffering and seemed to think it was because her faith wasn’t strong enough. She was certain that her lingering illness was due to some deficiency on her part. Does this sound familiar? It’s what we saw in last week’s Gospel reading when Jesus’s disciples asked for more faith after considering the challenging obligations of discipleship.
As I sat at the bedside of this woman, I knew that she came from a religious tradition that probably encouraged her to think that her sickness was the result of something she had done wrong or, at the very least, due to inadequate faith in God. If only her faith were stronger, she wouldn’t be suffering. I myself had grown up with such an understanding, and maybe that’s why I wanted to comfort her so badly.
I could hardly stand it. I tried every trick in the book to get around the prohibition against correcting anyone’s theology in my pastoral work in the hospital. In hindsight, I wish I could have told her about the story of Jesus cleansing ten men with a skin disease. I could have told it simply as a Bible study and let her draw her own conclusions. I wish I could have shared this story—which she might have already known—and then explained that the point of this story is not so much that the ten men are cleansed and healed. The point is, rather, that only one of the healed men returns to Jesus with thanks. I wish I could have told her that Jesus’s words at the end of this story get misinterpreted in translation. I could have said to her that Jesus’s words to the one thankful man who was healed could be rendered “arise, go your way: your faith has made you whole.”[1]
I would have liked to talk to that woman about the real meaning of faith and its relation to salvation and wholeness. I would have told her that there is so much more than physical healing in this story and that healing and salvation are tied up because God’s wonderful works are oriented towards wholeness and being restored to relationship with God and one another.
I would have explained to that sick woman that this story of Jesus’s healing is complex and contextual. I could have told her that in this part of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is on the way to the cross, and that means that we, his disciples—all of us—are always on the way to the cross as we follow him. And this means that we all suffer, and we all get sick, and it’s not because we’ve sinned but because sickness and brokenness and discomfort are simply a part of life on this side of heaven.
I could have told that hospitalized woman that the real clincher in this story is that the one man who returns to thank Jesus is a Samaritan. A Samaritan! He’s the outsider—you fill in the blanks here—who, like the Good Samaritan back in chapter ten, demonstrates what it really means to follow Jesus. I could have gone on to say that the one man who gave thanks was considered unclean by Jewish ritual standards and therefore needed to keep his physical distance from Jesus and others. He wasn’t allowed in the Temple until a priest determined he was once again clean. And he was a foreigner, an outsider, an enemy of the Jewish people.
And so, I would have explained, when this man is healed and returns to Jesus and Jesus tells him that his faith has made him whole, God has restored him to the community. He is no longer an outcast. He is no longer anathema. And because he has the awareness to recognize what God has done for him and to give thanks for it, he is made whole. His faith is not the reason for his healing. His faith is demonstrated in first seeing that Jesus can heal him, in seeking Jesus’s mercy, in knowing that he has been healed, and then in closing the circle by returning to thank the Giver of the gift.
If I could go back in time to the bedside of that distraught woman, I would have liked to tell her all those things. I might have told her that in Jesus’s ministry, he frequently had to correct misunderstandings that we can see over the course of the Bible itself. That’s why Jesus obliterated a causal relationship between sin and suffering. I would have said that Jesus himself said that his mission was not to seek out the righteous but sinners. I would have told her that we are all sinners. I would have said that if she felt that she needed to keep her distance from Jesus because she felt unclean or unworthy, then all of us, as sinners and fallible human beings, should keep our distance, too.
But then, I would have said that Jesus can heal us over any physical distance, just as he healed those ten men without even laying hands on them. I would have said that what Jesus wants is for every one of us to come closer to him, not just to get something from him but to witness to our faith in thanksgiving for all that we trust he is doing for us. And sometimes—perhaps often—Jesus heals us in ways that we can’t understand. He heals us even when the sickness lingers and death comes. And our salvation is not about escape from torment or avoidance of hell but in being made whole, in being restored to God and one another. And to experience this salvation and wholeness, we must be prepared to return to God again and again in gratitude.
More than anything, if I could go back in time to that woman’s bedside, against the admonitions of my hospital supervisor, I would have wanted to tell her about the Eucharist. I could have explained how the Eucharist ritually acts out the pattern of that story of Jesus and the ten men with a skin disease. If we could have been there on that road between Samaria and Galilee and closed our eyes, we wouldn’t have necessarily known that the ten men had a skin disease. We would only have heard their cry for mercy. That’s all they ask for. And if we closed our eyes in this church, we would hear at the very beginning of the Mass a similar cry for mercy. Lord, have mercy, because we’re all sinners. We’re all broken. We’re all sick and lost in some way. But what we cry out for is mercy. That’s what we need so that God can tend to us and heal us in the mystery of his grace. Our faith, which we profess every week in the Nicene Creed, is nothing less than a corporate belief in a God who will make us whole again.
And if we had been on that road with Jesus and the ten sick men, with eyes still closed, we would have heard one lone voice, minutes after the healing, cry out in praise of almighty God. We do the same here in this church. After a cry of mercy, God calls us to come closer so that he can feed us with the Body and Blood of his Son to make us whole again. We cry out in thanksgiving, and then, we hear a command for all of us to go into the world to proclaim the wonderful works of God.
Just as I wish I could have told that sick woman that her illness was no sign of her estrangement from God, I would like to tell all those who stay far from the Eucharist because of their suffering, that whatever their situation, they are not separated from God, that in their anxiety, loneliness, inner torment, and even anger with the reality of their lives, they can always come closer to God. Indeed, in those times of deep pain and uncertainty, they need the Eucharist the most. They can and should come close to God in the Eucharist, crying for mercy, and then let God do the rest. But I could also tell them that even though, for whatever reason, they choose to remain far off like ten men with a skin disease, Jesus can still heal them.
In the Eucharist, we receive a foretaste of the kingdom of God, where there are no outsiders or foreigners or strangers or untouchables. As a demonstration of our faith and like that one Samaritan man who was healed, we return to the feet of our Lord. We prostrate ourselves before him, week after week, crying out in praise of God, and we give thanks for all that God has done for us, trusting that what God has done is far more than we can ever imagine. God takes the divisions, rancor, and brokenness expressed in our cries of mercy, and God heals us. And then we arise and go on our way, showing the entire world that the God we worship in faith has made us whole.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
October 12, 2025
[1] Variant of the King James Version translation