A Sunday talk to tie in with this week's CL readings . . .
Mr Twistleton was in his favourite place: in his own back garden, on his sun lounger, good book, cold drink, lovely sunny afternoon. It would have been absolutely perfect had it not been for the thump, thump, thump from next door. Those blasted children were out there again, playing with a ball. Mr Twistleton tried to put the sound out of his head, but he didn’t find it easy.
And then it happened. Just as Mr T had managed to close his eyes, the ball sailed over the wall and landed straight on his stomach. Mr Twistleton got up and grabbed it. He was not best pleased. “Really sorry, Mr Twistleton,” came a young voice. “Can we have our ball . . .” “NO, you may not!” Mr Twistleton responded. “It’s on my property, so it IS my property!” And he stomped off into the house with it, opened the cupboard under the stairs, flung the ball inside and slammed the door on it.
Fine minutes later, he was back outside, lying once again on his sun lounger, and this time there were no noises from next door to stop him drifting off to sleep. He’d had quite a snooze when, rat-a-tat, he was woken by a peremptory knock on his front door. He got up, went to the door, and there stood a postman. “You need to sign for this, sir. Important letter.” It did look important, too. Large, brown, well-stuffed, and marked ‘Department of Revenue and Customs’.
Mr Twistleton’s heart sank. He had been a little worried about his tax return. He opened the letter to find he was wrong to be a little worried; he should have been a whole LOT worried. There were sheets and sheets, all filled with figures in red ink. “How on earth did I come to owe this much?” Mr Twistleton wondered. “And how on earth am I going to pay it?”
He hadn’t been wondering that for very long when there came another knock on his door. The postman’s knock had been peremptory. This knock was merely brutal. He opened the door to find a smallish man there in a black jacket, pinstriped trousers, bowler hat, briefcase marked ‘DRC’. Perhaps the man wasn’t really that small - he just looked it, compared to the two immense guys stood either side of him. They didn’t look very friendly.
“Good afternoon, Mr Twistleton,” said the man in the middle. “My, er, friends and I felt we should call to discuss your account with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, and to see if we can’t work out together some way of - er - settling your outstanding balance with us.”
“But it’s only just arrived,” said Mr Twistleton anxiously. “I’ve only just this minute seen the figures. Surely you can give me some time to get things organised?”
“Oh, I hardly think so,” said the man from the ministry. “After all, this is a debt built up over quite some time, and, well, frankly, sir, when we’re talking this sort of money, we do feel it’s best to come to an early and swift arrangement.” Mr Twistleton noticed that one of the bailiffs seemed somehow to have acquired a baseball bat, which he was smacking in a meaningful way into the huge palm of his other hand.
Mr Twistleton fell to his knees. “Oh, please, please, please, please just give me a bit of time, sirs. I’ll do anything, I’ll work every hour I can, I’ll scrub floors, just give me time, I’ll pay it all, I really will . . .” His voice tailed away. “If you scrubbed floors for fifty years you wouldn’t raise enough to pay off this amount,” said the revenue man. “But I hate to see a grown man cry . . .
“Tell you what. I’ll let you off. It’ll be as though this bill never existed. You tear up your copy. I’ll tear up mine. Clean slate; start again. How’s that?”
Mr Twistleton could hardly believe his ears. “Thank you” hardly seemed enough of a reply - but, before he could say anything, the door under the stairs edged open, and a ball tumbled out, bounced a couple of times, and rolled down the hallway to rest at the feet of the man from the ministry. He looked down, and picked it up. “Is this your ball, sir?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Mr Twistleton, “er - I mean no, er yes, er no, er.” “Doesn’t this ball actually belong to the children next door? Oh dear. That puts rather a different complexion on things. It’s difficult to see how we can let you off, after all.” The two minders stepped forward purposefully, both of them now with baseball bats in hand, and that’s when . . .
. . . a second ball sailed over the wall, landed like the first on Mr Twistleton’s stomach, this time knocking him off his sun lounger and waking him up. There was a sort of horrified silence from the other side of the wall.
Then a rather frightened voice said, “Sorry again, Mr Twistleton! But can we please have our ball back, if we promise to be really extra specially careful from now on?” “Of course you may, both of them, of course,” Mr T replied - much to their surprise, but then of course, they didn’t know about his dream.
There’s a simple message from that story, as there is in the story Jesus told in this morning’s Gospel. Christians should live generously and graciously.
We’ve been let off a mountain of debt, more than we could ever pay. We who deserve death have been promised life, we who deserve the pains of hell have been promised the joys of heaven. We are saved by grace and by the generosity of our Father God; as his people we should be generous to one another and we should live generously in his world. Day by day we pray “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We pray those words. Our task in mission and service is to make sure that we also live them. Amen.
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