SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good evening, little lambs. Tonight's story is called Nobody Told Biscuit, inspired by the Gospel of Matthew eighteen fifteen twenty. The hardest walk in the world is about twenty steps long. It is the walk over to the friend who hurt you to say so out loud with your own mouth and kindly. Jesus asks that of us in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter eighteen, verses fifteen through twenty, and He promises something lovely too, where two or three of us stand together to put something right. He is standing in the middle of us, and so tonight we are on Shepherd's Hill, where a rope hangs from the low branch of the oak, and it is hanging much too high. For three evenings Fig had worked on that rope. She is a small, quick lamb with russet brown wool and a soft green ribbon braided round one foreleg, and she had flung the rope over the low branch and knotted and unnotted and knotted it again until the flat wooden seat hung exactly a hoof and a half above the grass. That was not a guess. That was measured. Wren is the smallest lamb on the whole hill, tiny, with curly ears that will not lie flat, and a hoof and a half was the highest a seat could hang, and still let Wren climb on all by herself, with nobody lifting her. On the fourth evening the rope was up in the branches. Biskit had retied it that afternoon. A high swing goes further. Everybody knows that, and she had spent the whole afternoon going further, out over the buttercups and back, out and back, laughing so hard she had to stop and breathe. Wren stood underneath and reached up, and could not reach. She did not cry. She sat down in the dust, and her curly ears went flat. Fig saw it. She said nothing. She went round to the far side of the oak, where the roots come up out of the ground like knuckles, and put her chin on a root. She wanted Biskit to look down and see Wren sitting in the dust. She wanted Biskit to work it out by herself and be sorry without being told. That way it would count. Fig knew that was a strange thing to want. She wanted it anyway. Clover found her there. The green sprig behind her left ear stood up straight until she saw Fig's face, and then it tipped over sideways. She moved it, Fig said. I measured it for Wren. I'll go tell her, said Clover. Don't, said Fig, and then her ears went hot, because she had just told Clover instead of Biscuit, and she knew it. Old Wooly spoke from against the trunk, low and slow, the way a voice sounds when it has known you your whole life. If nobody tells her, nothing happens. The rope stays up, Wren sits down. You stop sitting next to biscuit at the fire, and Biskit never finds out why. I have watched two lambs stop being friends over less than a rope. There was no fight, it just went quiet, and then quieter. Then Jesus came round the trunk and sat down in the grass beside her, close enough that Fig could see the dust on his feet. He did not look at the rope or up at biscuit swinging. He looked at Fig and said her name, the way he had said it once before on a foggy morning when she lost her green ribbon and cried by herself instead of waking anybody, and he came and found her with the ribbon already in his hand. Go and tell her yourself, Jesus said. Just you and Biscuit, nobody else. Say the true thing and say it kind. Fig tucked her ribbon leg under her. If I have to tell her, it doesn't count. I want her to see it herself. Jesus did not say his sentence over again. He asked her something instead. Fig, does Biscuit know? Fig thought about it honestly. Biskit had not looked down once, not all afternoon. No, Fig said. She doesn't know. Then she is not choosing to leave it high, Jesus said. Nobody can choose about a thing they have not heard about. Fig sat very still. Then she worked it out herself, out loud, slowly. So, if I don't tell her, she never even gets to choose. Her ears came up. Tellin' her isn't the mean part. Tellin' her is the part where she gets to fix it. It was still twenty steps. Fig stood up, got nine of them done, and stopped. Take somebody with you, Jesus said, not to make her feel small, just so you are not standing there by yourself. So Clover came, and Matt came, quiet, dark fleeced Matt, who once walked a whole hill beside Fig without saying a single word, just so she would not be alone with something heavy. He stood on her other side. Biscuit's hooves came down out of the branches. She looked at the three of them, then at nothing at all. Oh, she said. Oh, is it about a rope? I measured it for Wren, Fig said. Her voice came out smaller than she meant. A hoof and a half, so she could get on by herself? Biskit put her hoof flat on her chest, where she says a stone sits when she has done something wrong. I didn't look down, she said. Fig, I'm sorry, I didn't look down once. Then she climbed up and undid her own knot. It took ages in the dark. Clover held the seat steady, Matt held the rope end, Fig called up which way to pull, and nobody said one more word about whose fault it had been. And Jesus was not back on the path, watching. He stood right in among the four of them, with a hand on the branch. This, he said, two or three of you standing together, putting something right. Whenever you do this, I am not far off. I am here in the middle of you. The seat came down to a hoof and a half. Wren climbed on all by herself, and Biskit pushed her very gently, and the little curly ears went out and back, out and back until the first star came up over the ridge. And so tonight we learned that when a friend hurts us, Jesus does not want us to go quiet, and he does not want us to go tell everybody. He wants us to go to that friend and say the true thing kindly, because that is how they get the chance to make it right. And if the walk is too hard on your own, take one or two who love you both. Close your eyes now. The rope is back at the right height, the hill is dark and warm, and the shepherd who walks those last twenty steps with you is standing close enough to touch. Jesus, if somebody hurts me, help me go and tell them just them and say it kind. If I hurt somebody, help me listen and fix it. Thank you that when we stand together to make things right, you are right there in the middle of us. Amen. Good night, little lamb. God loves you so much. Sweet dreams.