24th Sunday 2022
Exodus 32:7-11, 13-14; 1Tim 1:12-17; Luke 15: 1-32
I would like you, this morning, to travel back with me to January 1977. It followed on the heels of the long hot summer of ’76, when the fields were burned brown and, in parts of the country, there were bowsers and stand pipes to provide people with water.
January brought the other side of the coin, with thick snow blanketing the country. (For the benefit of younger generations I should explain that snow was white stuff which used to fall from the sky and lie on the ground—yes, honestly! Now, if it is seen, it is bottled and placed in a museum.)
This was within my first twelve months as a priest, and my first twelve months on the staff of Upholland College where, for my sins, I was put in charge of the First Years (aged 11/12) who, on a Monday afternoon, would combine with the Second Years for Games. Normally, this would have meant football, but as the pitches lay under a foot of snow, we went instead to a neighbouring golf course, where we spent the Games period sledging, chucking snowballs, and generally acting the maggot.
As darkness drew in, we headed back to the college for tea, and as we left the golf course, I pulled back my cuff to check the time, only to discover, to my utter horror, that my watch was missing. At some point during the previous hour, it had slipped off my wrist, and must now be lying, on the golf course, in the snow, on what was rapidly becoming a pitch dark evening.
I was totally dismayed. This wasn’t just any watch: it had been my 21st birthday present from my Mum and Dad, and to lose it was unimaginable: yet the unimaginable had happened.
It was a wretched evening and night that I spent. I bombarded St. Anthony with prayers, whilst all the time feeling that, even though St. Anthony, being my patron saint, is a good friend, it was asking perhaps too much of him to find a watch on a golf course in the snow.
Tuesday dawned bright and clear, and after a few more prayers I gave the First Years Latin class off, and took them on a watch hunt. They were in their element: no declensions or conjugations, but forty minutes in the fresh air (and the snow). I, on the other hand, was thoroughly wretched: it was a forlorn hope, and I was not surprised when I had to call off the expedition in order to prepare for the next lesson, with my watch undiscovered.
Hands in pockets, head down, I was trudging back to the college when footsteps came pounding behind me. “Father, Father, is this your watch?” When we had abandoned the search, little Bill Butterworth, who will now be in his late 50s, had stumbled over it, and there it was, still keeping perfect time, none the worse for its night in the snow.
I was jubilant, ecstatic, overwhelmed. I remembered to pour out my thanks to St. Anthony, and I gave the lads “prep off” that evening, which meant no “homework” for them, and arranged a trip out for them which probably cost me more than the financial value of the watch—but I didn’t care. To me, the watch was priceless, and recovering it one of the great events of my life.
Then, for the first time, I really grasped those great parables of forgiveness which we have just heard, and especially the second parable, in which a woman loses and then finds a coin. You see, I couldn’t understand why she made such a fuss about a coin, throwing a party which probably cost more than the newly recovered drachma.
All of a sudden, I understood perfectly. This was a special coin (I have heard it suggested that it may have formed part of her bridal headdress) whose value to her far exceeded its monetary worth. It meant the world to her, and she was more than happy to splash out on her party.
And that, says Our Lord, is how God behaves when someone gives Him the opportunity to forgive them. He has a party with the angels. I suspect that head banging, as a dance craze hadn’t arrived by 1977—this was, after all, the era of punk rock—but later experiences have given me the image of God and the angels head banging together, probably to the strains of 1979’s “Bat out of Hell”: jubilation on our part, but jubilation in God too.
