God is Bad at Math

 Luke 15:1-11

September 11, 2022

 

The Pharisees and scribes are wondering why

Jesus eats with those people.

Obviously the wrong people.

The tax collectors and sinners and the like.

Apparently, they are not up to snuff for some.

And Jesus tells them this parable.

The Found Coin
Lisa Konkol

 

Jesus asks them:

“Which one of you, having a hundred sheep

and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost?”

And I think today, we might think about that and

get all sentimental and say, of course you would

leave the 99 and go looking for a lost sheep.

We’re thinking of them like a pet, they’re cute.

But if you have 100 of them, they’re not pets.

They’re business. But people who lived at that time and knew about

shepherding and they would say, No I wouldn’t.

 

A reasonable shepherd would not leave 99 of

his sheep by themselves and go looking for one.

The other sheep would get lost too, it would be a big mess.

 

And Jesus also asks:

If you lost a coin that was worth about a day’s pay,

wouldn’t you spend a whole day of work looking for it,

and then when you found it, throw a party

which probably cost more than the value of the coin you found?

would that be a wise thing to do?

The answer is no, a practical person wouldn’t do that either.

None of these make much financial sense, the math doesn’t work.

You’re gonna eventually go broke if you do that.

 

 

You don’t risk losing 99% of your flock just to find one percent.

You don’t spend the value of two coins trying to find one coin.

The math just doesn’t add up.

The religious leaders must have that Jesus was crazy

to even suggest it.

 

And that is Jesus first point: He’s just not that good at math.

Jesus asked his followers last week if they calculated

the costs, but the fact is he doesn’t calculate the costs.

And that’s a good thing.

If you look at people only like numbers and their benefits

to society and your goals, like the religious leaders do,

then Jesus is doing a terrible job.

He’s not considering who he is being seen with and how

It is going to affect him in the long run. 

He’s not calculating what this will do to his reputation and to his brand.

 

It just doesn’t make good sense to go looking

for one lost one if you’re talking about sheep and coins

if you’re talking about objects, possessions, things,

the one does not outweigh the many.

 

But it makes complete sense if you’re talking about people

and family and relationships.

 

So while Bob has been gone I get to watch lots of

true crime shows.  And the worst most heart wrenching ones

are those where a person has gone missing without a trace,

and their family doesn’t know whether they are alive or dead,

where they are, or anything.

It’s kind of even worse than the people who

have family members who have been found dead.

 

For the families of the missing, they can’t really even mourn.

They have no closure.

They actually pray that something will be found, even if it’s bad news, it’s better than not knowing.

Being lost is terrible, especially for the people who are looking.

 

And many of them, their whole life is focused on the lost person.

And that does not seem unreasonable at all.

Because when you’re talking about people,

the math suddenly makes sense.

 

People are not commodities or things, or numbers on a paper,

they are people and every person is precious and valuable.

And that is the kind of math that Jesus is good at.

 

The fact is that people are often confused with commodities.

We are seen, and we see other people for the

monetary value that they provide.

We are valued for the work we have done or we did,

for what we produce, for what we have the potential to consume.

For our votes, or our market demographic, or how much we spend.

 

Churches even do this

We don’t always see people as individuals, we don’t see

Them all as children of God with different lives and opinions,

and hurts and experiences, but as attendance numbers,

or membership numbers or offerings in the plate.

We’re doing the world’s math when we do that.

 

And when we talk about Chimney Cove, to appeal to a certain

number of people on the Island who don’t see the residents

as often as we do, we might talk about the work they do

and how valuable their labor is for the other people here.

But make no mistake, we are defending real people.

Real children of God. We want justice for Maria, and Rivelo,

and the actual, real people and families who live there.

 

We may need to use the talk of the world to get our point across,

but we need to use Jesus math and remember we’re talking about real people.

 

As people of God, we always need to stop ourselves

from doing the world’s math, and we need to be doing Jesus math.

 

When Jesus eats with tax collectors and prostitutes and others,

he doesn’t just see sinners and people who haven’t lived up

to expectations. He doesn’t see commodities, 

he doesn’t see whether or not he will be impressive or shunned by being with them.  

He’s not calculating the return on his investment in them.

 

Jesus sees people. Brothers and sisters.

God’s family, people that were lost to God, but are now found again.

 

All people, no matter who or what they do, or where they’ve

been or what they’ve done are all part of God’s family.

We are all precious individual children, we are not just commodities,

or numbers on church rolls, or butts in seats on Sunday,

or money in the offering plate. We are God’s family.

And when we’re separated from God

in whatever way we find ourselves separated from God,

God feels it. When we’re lost, God is always looking for us.

 

Now sometimes humans end up giving up,

even on people we love, even on our families.

Sometimes there are times we need to let go of people in our lives.

And let go of hope or else we will just get swallowed up in disappointment again and again.

We’re only human.

 

But God never gives up. God never calculates the cost.

The lost are always on God’s mind and in God’s heart.

And God won’t stop.

And when even one is found again,

all heaven rejoices.