Luke 17:12–19 — The Healing of the Ten Lepers

“Were there not ten cleansed? But where are the nine?”

It is St. Nicholas Day as I write this—red pajamas, festive beanie—and the whole house smells like pumpkin bread.

Not the tidy, respectable kind you find in a grocery store display. This is the family recipe—older than I am—which my mom baked through the Kennedy administration and beyond. 

The one that perfumed our childhood home every December. 

The one we wrapped in foil and delivered to the fire station on Christmas Eve before driving to Grandma and Grandpa’s. 

The one I later baked for chaplaincy committee chairs, for neighbors, for “thank you” gifts to people who had no idea how much their quiet faithfulness meant.

Today that same recipe is in the oven again, rising under an Oregon sky as gray as dishwater.

Pumpkin and spice.
Memories and sugar.
A little bit of the old world in a very modern December.

Later, we’ll carry loaves down the block to our German and Irish neighbors, St. Nicholas gifts wrapped not in shiny paper but in waxed paper and history. 

Before that, we’ll bundle up for Vespers, hats and wool sweaters and breath frozen in the air. 

After, we’ll come home and begin, gently, to decorate: boxes down from the rafters, lights unwound, the Nativity Fast kind of chaos where you wonder where you put the Nativity set last year.

It is all so good.
And, if I’m honest, a little overwhelming.

Because somewhere between the red pajamas and the pumpkin batter, the to-do list crawled out from under the fridge and started making speeches.

Cards to write.
Emails to answer.
Gifts to plan.
The stove to scrub (which my husband, God bless him, is doing between errands and phone calls to far-flung siblings).

I want to be the serene woman in the icon corner, offering all this quietly to God.
Instead, I feel more like a slightly frazzled elf with a grumpy heart.

And that’s when the ten lepers walk in.

++

They show up in the Gospel on their own kind of threshold day.

Ten men, outside the village, outside the life they used to know. Ten whose bodies and reputations have been eaten away by disease and isolation. Ten who cry out from a distance because that’s the only way they’re allowed to exist: 

half-seen, half-heard, technically alive but practically gone.

“Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”

He sees them. (He always does.)
He sends them to the priests.
And as they go, they are cleansed.

As they walk—still limping, still in rags—their skin becomes whole. Numbness recedes. Pain eases. They feel the weight of their own bodies again. Life floods back in.

And then the part that undoes me:

Only one turns around.

One man, “when he saw that he was healed, returned, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at His feet, giving Him thanks.”

Ten men healed.
One man grateful enough to go back and say so.

Jesus asks the question that hangs in the air like incense:

“Were there not ten cleansed? But where are the nine?”

++

If I’m honest, I have more in common with the nine than with the one.

I imagine them the way I imagine myself in December:
suddenly well, suddenly busy.

Maybe they ran to the priests, then to their families, then to the markets and the wardrobes and the long-neglected list of “normal life” tasks. 

Maybe they thought, I’ll thank Him properly later, after I get through this list. After I get settled. After I’ve caught up on everything I missed all those sick years.

Maybe they meant to turn back.
They just never quite got around to it.

I know that life.

Last night, we went to our favorite little French restaurant—the one where the food takes time and conversation is the main course. 

No TV. 

No blaring music. 

Just clinking glasses, murmured talk, candlelight. The kind of place that reminds you eating is supposed to be a human act, not a drive-through transaction.

Between courses, I caught myself mentally cataloguing tomorrow: the baking, the errands, the emails. I was physically present at a slow feast and spiritually halfway down the road to my next obligation.

Ten lepers healed.
Nine moving forward.
One turning back.

I can feel Jesus’ question tugging on my sleeve: “Were there not ten? Where are the nine?”

And sometimes the answer is embarrassingly simple:
The nine are at their laptops.
The nine are scrolling.
The nine are in the kitchen, muttering about a crumbly stovetop.

The nine are me.

++

What I love most about St. Nicholas—the real one, not the mall version—is that he lived his whole life as the “one who turns back.”

As a young bishop, he hears of a poor father with three daughters and no dowries. No social security, no safety net. Their future narrowing to one terrible option.

Nicholas doesn’t say, “I’ll pray for you,” and move on.

He waits until dark.
He slips through the quiet streets.
He tosses gold through their window.

No plaque. No newsletter acknowledgment. No photograph of himself with a caption about “serving the poor tonight, so humbled.” 

Just gratitude turned into action, gifts quietly laid at the threshold of someone else’s need.

It is as if he spends his whole life saying, again and again, “Thank You, Lord—and here is my ‘thank You’ wrapped in mercy.”

My pumpkin bread is not gold.
But on my best days, it’s my little way of turning back.

++

The nine lepers received a healing.
The one who returned received a relationship.

The others went on with their lives—good, necessary, busy. 

But the one who turned back got to hear Jesus marvel. Got to hear Him say, “Your faith has made you well,” which in the original carries the flavor of saved, made whole, restored beyond the physical.

Ten were cleansed.
One was changed.

As the Nativity Fast moves on, and Christmas barrels toward us with all its cultural noise, I keep wondering:
Where am I in that story?

Am I racing ahead into obligations—even good, churchly, pumpkin-bread-scented ones—without pausing to turn back? Without falling a little bit, even silently, at His feet?

I hope not.
But often, yes.

++

This season, I am trying—very imperfectly—to practice turning back.

Not in grand gestures, but in small pivots of the heart:

When I pull the loaves from the oven and the kitchen is warm and fragrant, I am trying to whisper, “Thank You, Lord, that we have flour and sugar and spice, and neighbors to share with.”

When I see my husband up on a ladder, wrestling down the Christmas boxes that I cannot lift, I am trying to say, “Thank You for help, for partnership, for someone who scrubs stovetops between errands.”

When the Vespers incense clings to my coat and we step back out into the wet Oregon dark, I am trying to breathe, “Thank You that You are with us even here, in the cold and the clutter and the not-yet-finished lists.”

And when I pause to pray at noon, even as the to-do list nags at me with the old lie—“keep working, keep doing, the Lord needs your serving and doing”—I am trying to believe, “Thank You for helping me, like Mary, to choose the better part.”

Not dramatic.
Not saintly.
Just small returns. Little U-turns of the soul.

Little ways of not being one of the nine.

++

If you, like me, find yourself drifting toward leper-number-nine territory this season—walking on with your healing, your provisions, your answered prayers, but forgetting to circle back—take heart.

You are not a lost cause.
You are simply invited.

Invited to pause in your kitchen, your car, your office, your pew.
Invited to turn, even half an inch, in His direction.
Invited to whisper what the Samaritan man shouted:

“Glory to You, O God.”
“Thank You.”
“I remember.”

Christ is not tallying how many perfect thank-you notes you’ve sent Him. 

He is watching, with that same aching question in His eyes, for the one who will stop mid-journey, pivot, and come back—not with polished words, but with a real heart.

Ten were cleansed.
One turned back.

May we, this week, be that one.

Even if we are wearing red pajamas.
Even if the stovetop is still messy.
Even if our gratitude is more of a hoarse whisper than a hymn.

Amen.
Perpetua

🕯️ Postscript: A Word from the Saints

“When you have eaten and drunk, remember Him who has given you these gifts, and give thanks to the Giver. For everything that you have is from His mercy and love.”
— St. John of Kronstadt

“Let us give thanks to God always. Not only when we are in joy, but also when we are in sorrow. For gratitude in times of trial is more pleasing to God than thanksgiving in times of prosperity.”
— St. John Chrysostom

“Those who give thanks in every situation receive joy from God. For nothing so calms the heart as gratitude, even in sorrow.”
— Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica