Senior Pastor Fraser Pearce
I'd like to tell you a story - I guess you could call it a kind of parable – which I call The Fairy Garbage Man. It’s a story I tell the confirmation students when I’m teaching them about God’s forgiveness (I’ve also used it in teaching children and adults), and I thought I’d take the opportunity to put it down in writing, and to make a few comments.
The Fairy Garbage Man
Imagine that you’re sitting at home relaxing, having a cup of tea and watching the television. There’s a knock at the door, and so you get up and go to see who’s there.
When you open the door you are met by a most surprising sight. There is a large man with a grimy face and a big bushy beard. Flies are buzzing around his face. He is wearing a stained blue tank top, and his stomach is bulging over his blue Stubbies shorts. When you look down you see that he is wearing thongs flattened by years of use, and that his feet are calloused and dirty. But then you notice that he is hovering two inches off the ground, and when you look back up you also notice that he has two tiny flapping wings protruding from his shoulders, and the faintest outline of a halo above his head.
‘Hello, I’m the Fairy Garbage Man,’ the fellow says in a gruff but friendly voice. ‘I’ve come to buy your garbage.’
Before you can close the door, he pulls out a wad of $100 notes held together with a silver clip. He flicks off one of the notes and extends it towards you and asks, ‘What have you got?’
Now this is a truly unusual situation, and you hesitate. This can’t be real. But there’s the money in the fellow’s hand, and you do have garbage, so you decide to give it a go. You go down to the kitchen, look in the bin, and find a banana peel. You take it out with the tip of your fingers, head to the front door and present it to the Fairy Garbage Man. His face beams in delight. He hands over the $100 note, takes the banana peel and puts it in his sack. Then he flicks off another note from his clip and asks, ‘What else have you got?’
Well, you go back to the bin and have a look. There you see a bone that the dog had been chewing. So you take it out with some tongs, walk to the front door, proffer it to the FGM, and he again receives it with delight as he hands you another crisp $100 note. ‘What else have you got?’ he asks, as he again flicks off a note from his roll.
Now you understand that this really works, so you drag your bin to the front door and empty it piece by piece. Each time the FGM receives the garbage with great delight until the bin is completely empty.
He asks, ‘What else do you have?’ as he flicks off yet another note from the clip. Well by now your definition of garbage is beginning to change. Anything of lesser value is something that you’re willing to hand over to the FGM. Before you know it, your house is cleaner than it’s been in years. Your house is in fact in the process of being filled with valuable and beautiful things, all because the Fairy Garbage Man wants to buy your garbage.
Some Comments
I use this story when I’m teaching about God’s forgiveness because I think it can help us understand that God not only wants to take away our guilt and sin, but to give us peace in return. He wants to clean our lives from the inside out by giving us the peace that comes from his Spirit-filled word of absolution. In John 20 we read these words:
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’
The risen Lord proclaimed his peace to his disciples, and gave them Spirit-filled authority to be ambassadors of reconciliation, an authority that is exercised in the church to this day. We make use of this as God invites us to confess our sins, to receive forgiveness in Jesus’ name, and to live with the peace that comes from having a right relationship with the Father and with each other.
Now all analogies break down at some point, and The Fairy Garbage Man lacks the depth, subtilty, and power of Jesus’ parables. Yet I think it’s worth sharing, and I hope that it is encouraging in your life of faith.
God’s peace to you,
Fraser Pearce, Senior Pastor
(originally submitted for News for the Pews, September 2019)