The past imperfect

Only one leper came back to give thanks. What of the nine? What of the one?

We are standing in the brick hallway of the church, next to the dusty cry room. Huddled, snickering, nervous. We are acting out the Gospel, and we are the lepers. 

Dutifully, we show up on cue, shuffle to the center of the aisle, mime our cries to Jesus. Then nine of us turn and scuttle back to the dark hallway, safe from the eyes of the crowd. 

Only one of us goes back, lifts up his hands half heartedly, as only an awkward teenage boy roped into playacting can do, stands by his savior, untucked shirt and messy hair, shifting one leg to the other, ready to run and be done.

The rest of us giggle off-stage; at least it’s not us.

As he continued his journey to Jerusalem, he traveled through Samaria and Galilee.
As he was entering a village, ten lepers met [him]. They stood at a distance from him and raised their voice, saying, “Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!”
And when he saw them, he said, “Go show yourselves to the priests.”
As they were going they were cleansed.

Everything here in Luke’s Gospel happens on the way, interrupted. As he continued his journey. As he was entering a village. As they were going. 

In certain languages, this verb form is called the past imperfect. Ongoing, unfinished, interrupted. Not the simple past tense: they stood and raised their voice. But the continuous action in the background: as they were going.

Everything holy happens interrupted.

And one of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying God in a loud voice;
and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. He was a Samaritan.

Does it matter if any of the lepers lived a good life after? 

We paint them into saints, make them paper angels. Two-dimensional figures cast simpler shadows.

But what if the one leper who said thanks went to jail after? What if he never made anything exceptional of his saved self? What if he settled down into a simple life, wife and child, and didn’t turn into a sparkling speaker, an evangelist or an influencer for Jesus? What if another disease killed him later, too young—was that unfair or should he have been grateful for a little more time? 

What does healing mean? Must it be permanent, powerful and palpable, provable to all—or otherwise it doesn’t matter?

All of us are sinners, jerks to plenty. Forgiveness abounds, of course, and healing too; doesn’t matter where we came from or where we are going, God is for us. And yet the question presses: if you are saved, how do you live after? 

Jesus said in reply, “Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine?
Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?”
Then he said to him, “Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.”

Survival is a complicated salvation. Others in your same shoes slipped them off and shuffled off this mortal coil. You still get to wake up each morning, groan and stretch, putter downstairs, mutter about the messy kitchen. 

Shouldn’t your whole life be a song now? A symphony, an Alleluia of second chances, a Cinderella chorus with singing birds twittering round your open window to the world outside? 

Funny thing about resurrection: nothing looks the same. The world to you or you to others. Friends might not recognize you; you might not recognize yourself in the mirror. You get to keep living, for a while, yes. But the present is always imperfect. So are you.

Lazarus died again. We don’t talk about that, or about the time between. Did his friends and family embrace him, cover him with kisses, untie those reeking swaddling cloths of death as fast as they could? Or did people shy away and stand at a distance? The strange once-dead one. The unmortal man who went places they had never seen. 

He’s not normal any more, not like us. He reminds us of our own death. He’s unnerving. Who knows what could happen to him next.

Here’s where my memory gets muddled. (The past imperfect.)

I am watching the scene as if from the corner of the church ceiling, the wooden beams I used to number, bored in the pew as a child. I can see the group of us eighth-graders, the ungrateful lepers, giggling in the hallway again.

But the boy who was the One Leper, the golden child of the Gospel play—like all of us in grade school, cruel at times and kind at others—was he actually Jesus? 

Maybe I have the memory wrong. Now I can see him standing in the center. Maybe he’s wearing an altar server alb, the easiest Jesus-y costume to scrounge up at a Catholic school. Maybe the story is flipped, and he’s the one offering healing, cleansing, a new beginning. Maybe he’s the one to whom we owe our thanks.

I cannot remember that essential detail, maddeningly. I start to see the murky scene both ways in mind’s eye, like rooms shifting in a dream where you cannot reach the end of your home, the known becoming suddenly, strangely unknown. But either way, the ending stays the same. 

That boy died of cancer, nearly a decade ago.

(Simple past tense: over and done.)

I am writing these words today, cancer survivor.

(Present-continuous tense: still going.)

Who lives, who dies, who tells your story? His is not mine to share; I barely knew him in high school, only a shadowy figure in the hallway. But this morning in quiet sunshine I read this Scripture again, and in an instant, memory catapulted me back to grade school, a Gospel play. A boy like all of us, part sinner, part saint; healed and then not; now gone beyond what and where we know. 

Whether he played Jesus or the thankful leper, the starkness of the lesson presses like a lead weight. (Like the crush of the mammogram machine, the claustrophobic dread of the MRI tube, the compression wrapped tight around the ghost of my chest.)

How do we respond to healing? Can we call it deserved for one and underserved for others? Aren’t we all the ungrateful nine most of the time, ignorant of the thousands of times we have been saved—the car that didn’t hit us, the night we weren’t attacked, the test that came back negative? What’s more normal than living the blessed ignorance of all the holy interventions behind the scenes that got us here? Are we to be cursed or chastised for our natural human inclination to race back to regular routines? Wouldn’t you want to run to show your beloveds your healed self, too—especially if you had been kept apart for ages?

Jesus doesn’t tell the grateful leper to stay there at his feet and keep offering praise. Stand up and go, he insists. There’s life to be lived, and that’s why I gave it back to you. To resume your all-too-human ways, not to hover six inches above the ground, holier than all. 

Every day now I wrestle with how to live on the other side of cancer. Can I trust the After? Could I plant a small seed in new soil and trust that it might take root? That even happiness or length of life might be mine, when both have seemed—in much of the imperfect past—to be a good that would never be?

If I am not grateful enough, will it last?

Some languages have a future imperfect tense, used for plans and predictions: what one will be doing at a certain point that lies ahead. I will be starting the new manuscript after the kids go back to school. We will be visiting our family in the fall. I will be celebrating one year cancer-free in November.

Future imperfect presses with insistence: a promise, a hope, a defiant declaration.

You will be living.

Maybe all of it is imperfect. Past, present, and future. Public gratitude and private joy. The return to regular and the conversion to change. Our shared struggle for survival. Our longing for hope and healing, for someone to save us, too. 

Maybe we can only remember that everything holy happens on the way, a step of grace toward whatever comes next.