Sermon on October 12, 2025
“Wholeness and Welcome”
By: The Very Rev. Pamela Dolan
The other day I was listening to a news story about the government shutdown and noticed the reporter saying that it could be some time before federal employees would be “made whole.” What an evocative phrase! In this context, of course, “being made whole” means receiving payment after a furlough, getting back pay for missed work days once the government starts issuing checks again.
It got me wondering: what would it look like to be “made whole” in my own life? Where are the broken places that may or may not ever be repaired in this lifetime? How am I part of larger systems that also need to be made whole, including the church?
We live in an era that worships the quick fix. I often see ads that claim that you can forget about diet and exercise, all you have to do is take this one supplement, once a day, and you’ll have the beach body you want in not time. Worse, the accelerating pace of our society means that even quick fixes are too slow for many of us; obsolescence is baked into much of what we buy, and the reality is that most of the time it is much easier to get rid of something that’s broken and buy a new one, rather than find a way to fix it, quickly or otherwise.
To be made whole is the opposite of a quick fix. It’s a holistic change that usually doesn’t happen all at once, but over time and through relationship. There’s an equivalent Christian vocabulary word that has gone out of favor, which is “salvation” or “to be saved.” For many of us, the notion of being saved has become associated with false prophets, with charlatans, with people who want to placate the poor and marginalized with promises of “pie in the sky by and by.” But salvation is the central theme of Scripture—first, God’s saving work with Israel, leading them out of slavery and the desert and into a place of life and abundance, and then the ways that Jesus saves, by offering good news to the poor, healing to the sick, food for the hungry, and forgiveness for sinners.
Wholeness, or salvation, is what God desires for us—for all of us, for everyone and everything God created. Sometimes we think it is all about our circumstances. We think we’ll never be whole until something exterior changes in our life. We think we can never be truly whole because of what our parents did to us, or because this guy is president, or because our body seems to be giving out. Or, we fall for the opposite fallacy, believing that our whole life is in our control, that with the right frame of mind and proper breathwork or meditation practice, we won’t need saving, because we will have saved ourselves.
Today’s Gospel suggests that neither end of the pendulum gets it exactly right when it comes to wholeness and salvation. Our circumstances do not define us, but nor are we limitless demigods who will reach our full potential if we just put our minds to it. We are limited, finite, even a bit of mess: we need God and one another, community and the fullness of creation. We need to be made whole, something we cannot do on our own. In fact, recognizing our dependence and interdependence may be the first critical step on that journey of wholeness and holiness.
Again, in today’s Gospel, ten men are afflicted with leprosy, probably not Hansen’s Disease, but still a skin affliction that was so contagious they needed to be kept apart from their families and regular communities. Even as they set out to follow the instructions Jesus gives them, they are all cured. All ten of them were cured, liberated from the shackles of their disease, but how many of them were made whole? Only one, and a Samaritan at that.
In a curious reversal from how healing normally works, it is only after the Samaritan has been cured, and after he has come back to Jesus, thanking him and praising God, that Jesus says, “Your faith has made you well.” Surely all ten had some little bit of faith, even if it was the faith of the desperate who will try anything to get better. What sets apart the faith of the Samaritan is that he recognized what a great gift he’d been given, and that the gift was greater than having his skin cleared of disease.
And let’s be very clear ourselves about something. This story is not about good manners. Jesus wasn’t mad that he didn’t get a thank you card. That’s not why he asks about the other nine. They aren’t in trouble, and they won’t have their cure taken away from them. Jesus has not set up a reward-punishment system based on good behavior; if anything, I can almost hear Jesus speaking of the other nine with regretful affection, “Darn, what a missed opportunity for them. Well, their loss!” What they have lost is something even more precious than physical health: they have lost an opportunity for connection. All ten asked for something and got it. But only one got something more—a moment of intimate connection with another human being and, through that particular human being, with God. That is the path to wholeness.
The text doesn’t tell us why the other nine don’t turn back to give their thanks and praise. The only clue as to what distinguishes the one from the other nine is that he is a Samaritan, an outsider, someone who would have been used to being overlooked or excluded in the Jewish society of the time. There’s clearly a lesson here: those who have the experience of being marginalized are often the most generous, most gracious, most likely to give back, even if all they can give is a sincere word of thanks. This is also a caution to those of us who are used to being the givers, the helpers, the people with agency. Those who know how to receive, how to acknowledge their own interdependence and indebtedness, are more likely to be made whole than those of us who still think we can do it ourselves.
Back to those other nine, I’m extrapolating a good deal here, but it strikes me that one thing that stops people from expressing thanks is that it requires a certain amount of vulnerability. True gratitude creates an opening for a relationship to be created or to deepen. The person receiving thanks also has an opportunity to be vulnerable, to accept the gratitude of another, whether you feel worthy of it or not. Again, receptivity, and the willingness to risk a moment of vulnerability, is key.
The theologian Norman Wirzba talks about wholeness and salvation in terms of health, language that is more familiar to us but that needs some unpacking. He writes, “To be healthy is to be able to move freely, sympathetically, and shamelessly among others. We experience the conviviality that is possible in a shared life. Put another way, when we’re healthy, the relationships that join us to communities and neighborhoods are life-giving and strong. We receive blessings with gratitude and generously offer help to others.”
Our stewardship theme this year is about that kind of health and wholeness, asking us to do all we can to strengthen St. Martin’s as a place to be welcome, be known, and be loved. This may sounds like a “feel good” campaign, creating an image of the church as a refuge from a big, bad world. But creating a space where all who gather can be welcome, known, and loved, is a profoundly important act of resistance in this cultural moment. We are being pitted against each other into ever smaller, more distinct, and more malignant opposing forces: not just Democrat against Republican, but moderate Democrat against progressive Democrat, traditional Republican against MAGA Republican, and so on and so on in all the various spheres of our lives. The algorithm, and whatever other forces that seek to pit people against each other, to pull us apart, make it harder and harder to “move freely, sympathetically, and shameless among others” or “to experience the conviviality that is a shared life.” And yet that is what it means to be a whole human being, made in the image of God.
When we hold fast to the truth that God welcomes all, knows all, and loves all, and strive to pattern our lives after Jesus, it will become apparent that a big part of being made whole is to practice welcoming all, knowing all, and loving all. Sometimes this starts as an inside job. Am I willing to let myself, my whole self, be welcomed here, be known here, be loved here? Am I willing to be made whole? When we say yes, when we center our lives on that act of receptivity, of praise and thanksgiving, it will gradually but inevitably spill out into the world, helping us to offer a vision of wholeness and a genuine welcome to everyone we encounter. Amen.
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