I can recall three rhetorical questions that accompanied me throughout my childhood. The first was, "Were you born in a barn?" That usually came when I left a door open, or didn't clean up my room.

The second was, "When will you ever grow up?" which was a question my sisters asked me as a carefully planned, relentless program of persecution.

The third one was, "Have you forgotten something?" That was the parental admonition, usually for not saying thank you after receiving some gift.

This last question is what I thought of when I read the New Testament lesson for this morning from Luke's gospel, the seventeenth chapter, the story of Jesus healing ten lepers. Only one comes back to give thanks. Ten were healed, but only the Samaritan came back. If my mother had been there, she would have said to the nine, "Have you forgotten something?"