Poor Mathematics in the Bible. 

There is some very poor mathematics in the Bible. Like the story of the lost sheep where the shepherd leaves the 99 and goes in search of 1 and thereby runs the risk of losing more. Or the story where He commends Mary for her wastefulness by using a year’s wage worth of oil to pour exotic perfume on His feet. Even Judas saw the absurdity of this and commented on how this could have been used to feed the poor. Or the story of the widow who put 2 puny coins in the temple bucket. Jesus then belittled the hefty donations and said, “This poor woman put more in the treasury than the others.”

What about the mischievous story that Jesus told about a farmer who hired workers for his vineyard. Some clocked in at sunrise, some in the morning break, some at lunchtime, or the afternoon break, and some an hour before sunset.

Everyone was happy until the sweatless upstarts got paid the same as those with sore backs and tired hands. The boss’s action in this story contradicted every known thing about employee motivation and fair compensation. It was atrocious economics plain and simple. It was unfair!

Why should the widows’ cents count more than a rich man’s millions? What employer would pay latecomers the same as trusted regulars? Why did God choose Jacob the conniver over dutiful Esau? Why give musical genius to an impish brat called Mozart? Why confer supernatural powers of strength on a delinquent named Sampson? Why groom a runty shepherd boy to be Israel’s king? And why bestow the sublime gift of wisdom on Solomon, the fruit of the King’s adulteress liaison.

Let me tell you, the problem of pain and suffering meets its match in the scandal of grace. In each of the Old Testament stories the scandal of grace rumbles underneath the surface, until finally Jesus’ parables burst forth with a dramatic upheaval that reshapes the moral landscape.

Jesus’ parable of the workers, with grossly unfair pay outs, confronts this scandal head on. The hard workers were shocked by the grace shown to the laggards who were idle all day in the marketplace. It makes no economic sense because the story is about grace. If we were all paid based on fairness, then we would all end up in the lake of fire! Grace is not about finishing first or last or being the best or hardest worker, it is about NOT counting. “How blessed is he whose wrongdoing is forgiven, whose sin is covered!  How blessed is a person whose guilt the Lord does not take into account,..” Psalm 32:1-2. (Paul used this Psalm in Romans 4).

We receive grace as a gift, not as something we toil for. This is the New Testament meaning of the Sabbath as spiritualized by Paul in Hebrews 4. We ‘rest’ in a finished work! We do not labour for our salvation.

This is the point Jesus made in the employer’s response: “But he answered and said to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what is yours and go; but I want to give to this last person the same as to you. Is it not lawful for me to do what I want with what is my own? Or is your eye envious because I am generous?” Matthew 20:13-15 NASB

Are you envious because God has bestowed great talents on someone undeserving. Are you an unhappy Saul because He is so generous to David. Are you a Pharisee, envious because He opened the gate to the gentiles so late in the game. Do you worry that He honours the prayer of a tax collector above a religious leader, or that he accepts the thief’s last-minute prayer of confession, and He is welcomed to paradise in a moment, when you have struggled for a life time to be faithful. It’s not fair!

Let me repeat it. If we were all paid on the basis of fairness, we would all end up in the lake of fire. In the realm of grace, the word ‘deserve’ does not exist! Worldly instinct makes us feel like we must do something in order to be accepted. Grace sounds a startling note of contradiction and liberation. Peter calls it freedom.

Poor Mathematics? I reckon both Judas and Peter were mathematical disciples. Judas was elected treasurer for a reason. Peter was a stickler for detail, always trying to pin Jesus precise meaning down. When they got a miraculous fish catch Peter counted 153. Who but a mathematician would bother. In character Peter pursued some mathematical formula of grace when he asked how many times should I forgive. It was this question that prompted Jesus to tell the story of the man with an impossible debt. (Matthew 18:21-34). Why did Jesus paint this story in such exaggerated strokes. Clearly the King is God and He has forgiven us a debt so mountainous that it is unpayable in human terms. This is atrocious mathematics.

The world runs on ungrace, no pain no gain, winners are grinners, people get what they deserve. Yet if we listen carefully, the loud whisper of the gospel is; I don’t get what I deserve. I deserve punishment not forgiveness. I deserve wrath, not love, I deserve the debtor’s prison, instead I get a clean credit history.

The world requires works. Jesus’ kingdom calls us another way, that does not depend on my performance, but His.

When Paul was knocked off his horse in Damascus he never recovered from the impact of grace. The word grace appears no later than the second sentence of every letter he wrote.