"Then one of the lepers, when he saw that he was healed, turned back praising God with a loud voice, and he fell on his face at Jesus feet, giving him thanks." Our Lord wondered aloud: "Were there not ten cleansed? Where are the nine?" Where, indeed? Obviously they had gone on their way, released from a lifetime of suffering, miraculously healed of a disease that had made them outcast from the community in which they vainly had hoped to live but could not. Released from this, healed, cured, they evidently went their way without so much as breaking stride. How on earth could they have done such a thing? Several possibilities suggest themselves. They may well have hurried on toward the temple - had not the Master said: "Go show yourselves to the priests"? So off they went, seeking the priests and turning their back on God. Even the most arrogant Episcopal Priests know that is not a wise choice. Perhaps they didn't turn back to thank Jesus out of simple, rank ingratitude. They had asked for, and received, what they felt was only their due. They were granted their request, as well they should have been. That was that. They owed this man nothing. The world owed them, plenty, for all the lost years, the heartache, the hurt, the victimization. The world, life, and the Lord of Life has a great deal to make up for, and this was just a start. They didn't owe anything to anyone - they were owed, big time, and this was just the too-long delayed first installment. Or perhaps they were just so involved - in things, in life, in stuff, busy, you know how it is, never quite got around to what they intended to do, ot say, or the note they still plan to write, haven't quite given up on, will get around to it ... Maybe they were just plain thoughtless, heedless, clueless, maybe it never occurred to them to thank him, to be grateful. Or maybe they were too elated about their new-found health, too caught-up in the glory and the excitement and the pink cloud to think of anything else. Understandable. It happens, we smile indulgently when it does. As many different possible, plausible, excuses and explanations as there were lepers. More. But there is another possibility, morally neutral but still thoroughly devastating: Maybe they didn't even notice. Didn't even notice that they had been healed. "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. When he saw them he said to them, 'Go and show yourselves to the priests. And as they went ... they were cleansed. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back." Perhaps the Nine didn't, didn't see, didn't appreciate, didn't understand that they had been healed. Didn't realize what had happened to them in that moment. Didn't know who it was they had encountered on that road at that point in their lives. Didn't know, didn't perceive, just didn't notice what was being accomplished in them, for them, in that moment by that man they called Master. "Not very likely!" someone might say. You can hardly have a disease like leprosy one moment, not have it the next, and not notice. I'm not so sure. I wonder. After a lifetime of regarding ourselves in one way, it is not always so very easy suddenly to change our outlook, revise our self-image, think differently, clearly, about a clearly different us. To see that the leprosy is in fact gone, to notice and believe and trust that we are, in fact, healed. Perhaps years later the Nine looked back after much thought and insight and prayer and the comments of friends and fellow villagers and perhaps they then reflected and recollected and realized: That was God! That was God at work in my life, that moment on that road is when the leprosy left me, that is when I was healed and changed and redirected. That was the very moment I was touched by grace and love, when the world opened out to me, and that closed-in, restricted, isolated exile came to an end, and I went on my way new and clean and fresh and fine. As we look back over our lives, we can see God at work in ways and in places that we didn't recognize at the time. "One of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back and gave thanks." Perhaps the Nine gave thanks years later. God is patient. He can wait for our gratitude. He will survive our delayed response. But will we? What needless suffering and anguish and continued shame we go through, live with, carry about, all because we do not see that we are healed, that it is over, it has stopped, it is changed, we are changed. It's over. Lack of gratitude to God is deplorable. But the inability to see that it is over and we are healed, now that is tragic. From time to time we ask God, we ask others, we ask friends, family members, we ask those we love, whomever, to help us. And there is a tendency in us, or at least a risk to us, that when the goods have been delivered, and the thing accomplished that we then credit ourselves. And that suggests one more and one last possible explanation for the behavior and the attitude of the Nine. Maybe they weren't ungrateful, maybe they were deeply grateful, terribly grateful, ever so grateful. To - Themselves. And they went their way not turning back, not needing to, went their way with happy, grateful hearts, grateful to themselves, thanking themselves. Thankful that they had had the good sense to ask for help, glad they had been smart enough to see hope on the horizon, grateful that they had both the wherewithal and the self-awareness to seek out help and to appropriate to themselves the amazing grace and succor that's just out there for the asking from a kindly universe. Maybe they just finally realized and repeated enough that they were - OK, and that break-through perception healed them and they can be proud and they should pat themselves on the back. And go on, gladly forward. Into life. Or maybe they were really, really good Christians and they thanked themselves for their faith, the faith that made them whole, the faith that made them well, as faith will, as Jesus said faith would. Grateful to God, of course, in some vague and first-off way, but really grateful to themselves for their faith and their prayers and their devotion that, all combined, healed them and made them whole. Oh, doutbless telling themselves it was not their faith that healed them, but only, modestly, their faith that made them available for the stream of grace. God washed and cleansed and sanctified, we just waded in first and got everything started, and are we pleased with ourselves for having had that initial trust. God must smile sadly yet still lovingly at such so-called modesty! And now we can go our way, our faith has made us well. Didn't Jesus say that somewhere to some hemorrhaging woman: Go your way, your faith has made you well. Nine lepers understand our complacency and all our excellent reasons for it. A tenth leper shows another way. We are probably pretty good at being grateful and expressing that gratitude for the dear and wonderful little kindnesses we receive. I bet the nine lepers thanked people for each coin they were tossed. Saying thank-you to God in some fashion for favors received, prayers answered is probably not so alien to any of us. The tenth leper quietly reminds us of a kind of straight-forward, openly expressed gratitude we may overlook, or misattribute. Do we go on our way rejoicing, rejoicing in our new skins, or do we notice what has actually happened to us thinking, "Oh my heavens, I have been healed, my leprosy is gone." That one leper, the tenth one, doesn't shame us, doesn't harangue us, doesn't even directly address us. He simply shows us what it can be like. And mutely suggests something. Suggests that we look at ourselves, see what we once were, know what we are now, and give thanks to the one who did it, who accomplished it, yes perhaps with our help, yes perhaps with our co-operation, but give thanks to the Master who healed us, who found us lepers lamely stumbling along a road and sent us on our way, healed, restored, forgiven, saved, washed, sanctified, set free. And turn back and fall down and thank our Lord and praise our God.