God's Math, by the Rev. Dr. Dennis Winkleblack
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Rev. Dr. Dennis Winkleblack
Sermon for Proper 19C, September 15, 2013
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford, CT
1 Timothy 1:12-17 and Luke 15:1-10
Probably everyone here has had the experience of answering the phone and the friend or family member shouts “I’ve got great news!” “What?” you reply, tell me!” Your mind races with the exciting possibilities.
Likewise, probably everyone here has had the experience of a friend or family member phoning and saying, “I’ve got some bad news for you.”
What do you do? You take a deep breath, sit down if you’re not already and say, “Okay let me have it.” The announcement of bad news is always – well, bad.
In the first of two parables today in Luke chapter 15, the parable of the lost sheep, we have an example of both good news and bad news. In fact, in the New Testament, the Gospel, the “good news” is often linked with “bad news.” Sometimes you’re not really sure if what you’re reading or hearing is good news or bad news for you.
Let’s look again at the details. A sheep is lost and the shepherd goes to find it, leaving behind 99 other sheep to fend for themselves. Good news for the one. But what about the 99 others left to fend for themselves?
This same good-bad phenomenon occurs in families with more than one child, doesn’t it. When one child is ill, the other children have to learn to be content with less attention while extra attention is given to the sick one. Sometimes the other children may understand. But many times they don’t. Nobody likes to be ignored in a family setting. It just isn’t fair.
Of course, what’s fair, what’s unfair isn’t just a problem for children in families. What’s fair, what isn’t is an issue in society in general. For example, many people feel it’s unfair to give so much attention and money to the homeless, the jobless, persons on welfare, immigrants.
They say, “Why should we, who work hard, be asked to sacrifice? Why should we pay for others’ medical care and government services? Why should we be taxed for programs we’ll never in a million years have need for ourselves?”
Such questions often arise from the 99 who feel taken for granted, who say, “Come on, it just isn’t fair.”
Back to the parable: If you’ve grown up attending church, you probably know more about sheep than you think you do. For example, you may know that if sheep don’t have a secure fence around them, they’ll nibble their way into lostness in a snap if someone isn’t watching them.
So think about it: if a real shepherd were to go out in search of the one lost sheep, what would happen to the 99? Right. More sooner than later, they’d become lost as well. Then what would you have? You’d have one found sheep and maybe 99 lost sheep.
The arithmetic just doesn’t add up, does it? I mean, wouldn’t it be much, much better to just hang on to those who’ve stuck with you, who don’t need special care, the 99, and simply write off the lost one?
Well – and here’s the reason this parable made it into the Bible – our arithmetic isn’t God’s arithmetic. God’s arithmetic is very different from our arithmetic.
The accompanying parable of the lost coin helps shed light on just how different God’s arithmetic is, and helps make sense of the confusion of good news and bad news.
So, let’s take a look at that. A woman’s coin is lost. It’s a drachma, the smallest of all coins, like our penny. She has ten of those coins, but when she loses one, she lights a lamp, gets a broom and sweeps and sweeps. The parable says that she swept until she found that coin. Terrific. End of story. Or, is it?
However, here’s something Jesus’ hearers would have immediately understood that isn’t at all obvious to the likes of us. In first century Palestine, oil was very expensive, and brooms weren’t cheap either. So, says one commentator interpreting this story, the woman could easily have burned 5 cents of oil and worn out a 10 cent broom looking for a one cent piece.
What kind of economy is that? Why does she persist so in her quest to get the little penny?
Well, here’s the deal, according to the same interpreter. The drachma was more than just a piece of currency. The drachma, you see, had a hole in it. In first century Palestine, a woman would receive drachmas when she got married. She would then make them into a necklace to hang around her neck, much as today we might wear a wedding ring.
So, in this case, as Jesus tells the story, somehow, the necklace got broken and apparently the coins rolled away in every direction. Says she found 9 of them, but she couldn’t find the tenth.
We’d say, “big deal.” Let it go. But she couldn’t: it had sentimental value. It couldn’t be replaced. Standard arithmetic just doesn’t apply in such circumstances where the heart is involved, does it?
Some of you have heard of Clarence Jordan, the Georgia peanut farmer, New Testament scholar and co-founder of Habitat for Humanity. About our passage today, Jordan writes: “Every little human being in this world is part of God’s set. And God just has a sentimental attachment for his set. God doesn’t go by the kind of arithmetic that you and I go by. He has never learned to deal in fractions. God didn’t get that far in school. I think God’s like my father who had 10 children, and many a time I thought, “Well, my goodness, with a family this big, Daddy can’t love me very much. I can only claim one tenth of his love.” But my father loved me with all of his love. It’s just that way with love. There is no fraction in it. You can’t break it up into pieces. And God wants the whole human race. God just can’t deal in fractions. And so Jesus is saying to these people who were griping and mumbling and grumbling about the fact that he was taking in all kinds of people, bums and drunks and the poor folks and everybody, he was saying, “Well, I just can’t help it. God just has a sentimental attachment for God’s people.”
People, maybe you, often speak of finding God in their lives. As if God were lost and could be found only by dint of our own searching efforts.
But, of course, as these parables remind us, it isn’t we who find God. Rather it is God, like the sweeping woman or the searching shepherd, who finds us when we’re lost.
This, then, dear friends is our God: Our God who is attached by God’s heart to the lost; who sweeps and searches until the lost are found. Our God, who, like a good shepherd, searches until the straggliest, most unworthy sheep is found. A God who can’t deal in fractions.
Now, it’s true that if you happen to be one of the 99 left in the fold, at times you very well may feel deserted. You might even wander away and get lost yourself.
Ever get lost?
I’ve been lost from God. Even while I was playing pastor.
You ever get lost from God?
Maybe you have a chapter in your life where you did bad things. Or it may be that a secret festers within that keeps you from feeling worthy in God’s sight. Or maybe your lostness has to do with direction or purpose or meaning.
Or maybe you became lost because someone told you that you were lost and you believed them. “You’re not like us. You’re different. You as a person are wrong.
And, you believed them.
But, then, by God’s grace, you were found. By a relentless God who makes no wrong people. Who just can’t deal in fractions.
A mother of 8 children was asked if she had any favorites. “Yes, I have favorites.” She said. “I love best the one who is sickest, until he is well. I love best the one who is in trouble, until she is safe again. And I love best the one who is farthest away, until he comes home.”
She sounds a lot like our relentless, pursuing, fraction-challenged, loving God.