The Nine

Luke 17:11-19

We so want to be the one leper. We so want to be the person who would never forget gratitude. We so want to think our faith is such, our vision so clear, and our hearts in the right place.

But a piece of our being knows we are the nine. 

It is not that we are cold-hearted. It is not that we are thoughtless. It is not that we are lost in ourselves. 

It is that we are human. 

When a human being gets pushed to the limits, there is no greater sense of relief than to suddenly be free from the push. Lots of things overwhelm us—obligations, responsibilities, duties, deadlines—they all pile up, weighing us down. They keep us up at night. They separate us from the very people to whom we want to be closest. They foul up our relationships. They cause us to doubt, even the most core beliefs. 

We feel like lepers.

Try to understand what these ten people felt like. They had leprosy, a disease that was incurable and literally caused you to fall to pieces. Receiving such a diagnosis was a condemnation. You were condemned to live apart from everyone else except other lepers. If you traveled, you had to wear a sign warning everyone of your disease. You had to be wrapped from head to toe so no one else would have to look at you. You even had to carry a bell and call out to anyone nearby that you were unclean. The closest you could come to a healthy person was thirty feet. Imagine only being able to get thirty feet away from your child or beloved. You existed in total isolation. That had to lead to total alienation. Who or what could you actually enjoy? How would you feel about God?

That is where we tend to go when pushed by life to extremes. Desperate people are rarely any good at keeping perspective. Nor are they particularly adept at seeing beyond their own nose, especially if something threatens to make that nose fall right off our face!

Then comes release.

Jesus does not touch the lepers. He does not even pronounce them healed. There is no great display of power. Rather, it is nearly absurd. Lord, have mercy, cry the lepers. Get to the priest, answers Jesus. And that’s it. Deed done. 

Imagine their sudden celebration as they look at the their hands—no dead skin, no fingers falling off, no blemishes of any sort—THEY ARE WELL! The impossible happened. They one thing they feared to ask—to be well (note they only asked for mercy)—comes to be. Oh, great day! Oh, impossible dream! We can see them running, dancing, skipping, shouting, crying, singing—all for joy! THEY ARE WELL! 

Can we even begin to imagine such liberation?

I had the wonderful experience of sitting with a cancer patient as she received word that her cancer was gone. I remember she fell back in her seat, unable to speak, tears rolling off her cheeks—pure, unadulterated joy. It flummoxed her physician, but he understood even as he could find no adequate response other than babbling, Wow…you’re welcome…

Ever felt that way?

And there they go—a bunch of now ex-lepers singing and dancing and skipping down the road to the synagogue to find the priest who will declare them clean—able to rejoin the the community of real life, real living, and real people, no bells, wraps, or warning signs. 

But one turns around. 

He comes back to Jesus, still singing, dancing, and shouting his praise of God. He comes back to say thank you. 

Wow.

So simple. So basic. Yet, so incomprehensibly impossible for us to remember to do when our whole being is lost in celebration. 

He remembers.

How?

Maybe it is as simple as that as he gazed on his freshly restored skin, hands, arms, and touches his fresh, newborn face with now tingling fingers, he realized that he had nothing to do with this miracle. There is a healer.

That is a matter of keeping our hearts, minds, and eyes open. Faith is our sure and certain means by which to do so. Faith daily reminds us that the basic act of waking up is reason for joy. God gave us a new day. Thanks be to God. Faith reminds us that each breath is cause for celebration—God breathes in us and through us, the Spirit quickening us. Faith allows us and leads us into daily thanksgiving in every ordinary miracle. The more it becomes a daily, momentary experience, the more it will be a natural effusion in the extraordinary. In fact, there will really be no discernible difference between ordinary and extraordinary. It will all be miracle.

And that is more than enough reason to continually give thanks.

It is then that we move from being the nine into being the one—as we remember the Healer, remember our God from whom all blessings flow, and we remember to whom we belong, pointing others in that direction—the place where all can be well and all shall be well.