The rest of the story.

Ten lepers recognized Jesus and were healed, but only one came back to say thanks. Why?

Jesus Heals 10 Lepers: Luke 17:11-19.

ESSAYIST LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH WAS ONTO something when he declared: "People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading." For all children who were ever called bookworms--and all grown-ups who have reading material chronically affixed to the end of their arms--the love of story need not be explained.

The death of the printed page, however, has been predicted for some time. In the century since the invention of motion pictures, visual media may have supplanted the written word for many of us. But nothing has supplanted the desire for a good story. The power of story is greater than any media, for it emanates from our desire to know ourselves. Stories existed before the printed word, springing from oral tradition and the need for the community to pass on its history and identity.

Story is who we are on a fundamental level. Like the poet Walt Whitman, we are each telling the Song of Myself as we knit today to yesterday and look longingly toward tomorrow. Arranging and rearranging the facts in the telling, we become the authors of our lives, deciding along the way whether the story we bear is tragedy or comedy, scripture or theater of the absurd, to name only a few options. To amend Pearsall Smith, I might say that reading is not the thing, but the story is.

Is it any wonder, then, that when we speak of God we choose to tell stories? Though catechisms are useful, and theology is a worthy field of study, the Bible is the primary pathway on our journey toward God. And when we take that path, we do not encounter an abstract deity or a soulless force. God appears first as the benevolent creator who walks in the garden at twilight. Stranger and more wonderful still, we learn that this God, whose footfalls are just beyond us in the garden, created us to be part of the divine story. To people of faith, then, the story we tell must be a synthesis of the mortal and eternal story. Our individual stories are like the Book of Ruth, small scriptures within the larger drama of what God is doing in our company.

But knowing what God is doing and knowing how to respond to it are two different things. We see this clearly in the gospel story of the 10 lepers. Ten people in the same boat receive the same miraculous healing. But only one returns to give thanks. The story raises two questions: What made the response of the 10th leper different? And what is our response when we are the beneficiaries of God's mercy and grace?

These 10 lepers have much to teach us, the longer we remain in their company. That is a creepy proposition, because leprosy is a repellant condition. Of course, biblical leprosy has to be separated from Hansen's disease, the medical name for what we used to call leprosy. Hansen's disease did exist in biblical times, mostly in hot, humid areas. But scholars and medical folk agree that the majority of cases of leprosy described in the Bible were a host of other maladies, including ringworm, severe eczema, and other ailments of the skin. According to the diagnosis of the disease in Leviticus, biblical leprosy could likewise infect clothing or houses, which might need to be burned or razed. This mold could make a place as unclean and untouchable as a person with a frightening rash.

In reviewing biblical leprosy, we learn that it is more than a physical disease. It is a condition with awful social, emotional, and spiritual ramifications. It carried with it a moral judgment and a sentence of ostracism. Because scripture writers use the term leprosy loosely, we can be forgiven for doing the same and looking at leprosy as more than a physical condition. Let's borrow the motif of 10 lepers for a moment and through them consider 10 possible leprosies that might be presented to Jesus for healing.

THE FIRST ANGUISH OF LEPROSY COMES FROM THE DISEASE itself, which corrupts the flesh and corrodes the spirit. It is hard to be sick, to have the body's strength sapped and to endure suffering that has no remedy. This is the leprosy that many of us will sooner or later come to terms with: in hospital wards, doctor's offices, and our own beds, as fevers and infections, cancers and disabilities, diabetes, strokes, and heart attacks. The event of illness comes all in a moment and strikes us intimately and irrevocably, changing our relationship to our bodies in a way that feels like betrayal. In illness, we seek health; but more than health, we long for healing, for a return to the trust we once had in our bodies as part of ourselves. It used to be good for us to be here, in the flesh. "Will that feeling ever return?" we ask Jesus.

The second torment of leprosy is shame. In shame we also feel betrayed by our bodies, but it is our sexuality that is particularly wounded. From the time we are young, we have been taught to disapprove of our bodies and to mistrust them, to find fault with our looks and our urges. Many of us have developed a terrifying relationship to food that poisons our ability to nourish ourselves. Some of us eat or drink until we are sick; some of us starve ourselves until we are dangerously ill. Few of us see ourselves realistically in the mirror. All we can see is what we have been taught to loathe, that girl or boy who is never good enough, neither beautiful nor worthy. Can Jesus take our shame away and give us something to ease the hunger?

Next to arrive is the despair of leprosy. It can include all of our personal failures that add up to cynicism and bitterness. Some of us lost hope long ago, surrendering our innocence for realism. We may have learned early that the world is a mean place, and if you aren't tough, you'll be mowed down. So we got tough, hardened our hearts, and forgot how to love. What's left is a kind of dull depression, a lightheadedness that sometimes makes us feel giddy, like we're standing on the edge of self-destruction. Could Jesus give us a reason to live?

Leprosy also brings loneliness. It isolates you from others, circumscribes your world with estrangement. No one can share this place with you, not even those you once held close. They don't know how to relate to you anymore; this differentness has raised an invisible yet impenetrable barrier. Before they knew this thing about you, their love seemed real. But now you wonder if they ever loved you. Leprosy has exposed the flaws in their commitment, and this center you once called family now has a hollow sound to it, like an abandoned house. Can Jesus heal the broken heart?

Outright exclusion is part of the legacy of the leper. Society as a whole shuns you, and you find yourself relegated to the wild places, where outlaws roam and evil thrives. It's the realm of the foreigner, the stranger, the widow, and the orphan. Leprosy is where each of us learns what it means to be a Samaritan: to be hated because of the color of our skin or the sound of our words. What can Jesus do about a world that resists the outsider?

Lepers are untouchable. They may have real, communicable diseases that make their bodies off limits for normal human tenderness. Or they may be seen to communicate bad ideas, bad morals, bad karma, or bad social stigmas. We don't want to be seen with lepers, for fear of being identified with them. Is Jesus willing to kiss a leper and break the spell of untouchability?

Being a leper means, fundamentally, being unloved. That's not the same as not being loved in the first place. It means being detached from those who once loved you. It's what a spouse feels when a marriage has gone cold. It's what the children of divorce fear as the memory of their parents shouting is all that's left of "home." When a friend trades you off in favor of self-preservation at a critical moment, you find yourself sprouting leprosy. Will Jesus call you beloved, when the world unloves you?

And what can compare with the special agony of having no purpose? Lepers cannot contribute to society. Their infirmity takes the opportunity for self-offering out of their hands and renders them, in a word, unnecessary. Anyone marginalized by unemployment can tell you how demoralizing it is to be unable to make a contribution. Or what of those who are underemployed or unsuitably placed, giving far less than they could? I know a man who was a scientist in China, but here, because he cannot speak the language well, he is forced to work below minimum wage at a denigrating job that imperils his health. Does Jesus have a way to free workers to find their vocation and to make a just wage while doing it?

Society is fearful of lepers: afraid of contact with them, but also afraid of not being able to control them out there on the margins. The poor, the mentally ill, the disenfranchised, the ghettoed minorities all fall within the range of those whom society regards with apprehension. Worst of all, society harbors the secret guilt that it is responsible for the injustices that made those lepers--or at least keeps them on the margins. Does Jesus have a vast social plan to welcome those lepers without endangering the rest of us?

The 10th element of leprosy, we could say, is that it renders the human person inhuman. Disfigured by their disease, lepers are banished to the desert--in biblical society, a place for wild beasts and devils. They must now cover their faces when people pass, ring a bell to warn of their approach, and beg for alms. They must not expect compassion, because compassion is reserved for those like us. The best they can do is inspire horror and pity.

Today, we reserve this monstrous status for violent criminals, who are believed to have forfeited their right to full humanity. Let them live as beasts with devils. Let them inspire horror and be a lesson for others. But do not offer them compassion, for they no longer belong to our kind. Would Jesus dare to offer even these creatures fellowship and dignify them with his mercy?

TEN LEPERS RECOGNIZED JESUS AS HE TRAVELED DOWN THE road. They kept their distance, knowing how the world saw them. Truth was, they saw themselves the same way. But compelled by such great need, they raised their voices at the sight of him: "Master! Have pity!" As the story goes, Jesus did not ask them to explain themselves. He did not insist they justify their worthiness. He did not say "Repent!" as he did to the crowds who listened to him teach. He asked only for a mustard-seed show of faith: that they present themselves to the priest, the legal requirement to be declared disease-free. All set on their way. And on the way healing came to them, without exception.

One returned with thanks at the miracle. Nine did not. But the story is not about them. The drama of salvation is always about what God is doing in our company, for through Jesus, God walks in the garden alongside of us. What made the response of the 10th leper different? The call forward into gratitude was stronger than the desire to run back to the old life. And what is our response, when we are the beneficiaries of grace? The story presents possibilities, but it doesn't assign us a role. Only we know what ails us and what is most in need of healing. In the synthesis between God's story and ours, we alone can write the ending. And how it turns out is terribly important, for the story is, after all, the thing.

By ALICE CAMILLE, author of Invitation to Catholicism (new this fall from ACTA) and a collaborator on the homily series "This Sunday's Scripture," available through Twenty-Third Publications.