Do you remember the “new math” that was introduced in schools several years ago? I vaguely recall it being launched and my memory was jogged as I prepared for this message.
The “new math” was basically an experimental form of arithmetic and it was very confusing, especially for the parents who were trying to help their children with their homework. You see in the “new math” adding subtracting, and multiplying don’t work in the same way. I mean, things don’t add up the way you would think they should according to the laws of the “old math,” the math most of us know and love.
The new math involved something called “base theory” and here’s a little example of how it works. In base ten-which is the “base” we use all the time in “normal,” or “old math”- in base ten, 2 + 2 = 4. But in base three, 2 + 2 = 11. Now, I won’t tell you why it equals eleven because I don’t understand it myself, but you can see how it would be confusing. I mean if you change the context-if you change the “base”-well, the numbers mean entirely new things.
I bring this up today because there’s a sense in which at times the Christian faith itself often sounds like new math. I mean, there are times when what God does just doesn’t seem to add up.
Philip Yancey points this out in his book, What’s So Amazing About Grace. For example, there’s Jesus’ parable of the shepherd who left his flock of ninety-nine and headed out into the darkness to search for one lost lamb. As Yancey says,
“[This is] a noble deed, but reflect for a moment on the underlying arithmetic. Jesus says the shepherd left the ninety-nine sheep ‘in the country,’ which presumably means they were vulnerable to rustlers, wolves, or a feral desire to bolt free. How would the shepherd feel if he returned with the one lost lamb slung across his shoulders only to find twenty-three others now missing?”
Doesn’t make mathematical sense, does it!?
And then there is the scene in John’s gospel where a woman named Mary took a pint of exotic perfume, expensive perfume, perfume worth an entire year’s wages, and poured it all on Jesus’ feet. Even the betrayer, Judas, saw that this did not “add up.” Surely Mary could have just put a little, an ounce perhaps, on Jesus’ feet and then sold the rest to feed the poor. I mean, our Lord would have smelled just as good. So, why overdo it? Why waste the entire jar when an ounce would have done the job?! This Mary must have flunked math class because in our way of thinking her calculations were way off.
Mark’s gospel contains a third example. After watching a widow drop two little coins into the temple collection plate Jesus belittled the larger financial gifts of more wealthy worshipers. He said, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put MORE into the treasury than all the others.” (Mark 14:23) Well, what kind of ciphering did Jesus use to come up with that mathematical deduction? How could two little coins equal more than a handful of huge gold pieces? To put it in modern terms, how could two beat up pennies equal two fists full of brand new hundred dollar bills?
And then our text for today adds to all these confusing calculations with one final example to what Yancey refers to as, “the atrocious mathematics of the Gospel.” Turn to Matthew chapter 20 and follow along as I read verses 1-16. Jesus is speaking, teaching one of His parables.
1 – “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard.
2 – He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
3 – “About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing.
4 – He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’
5 – So they went. “He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing.
6 – About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’
7 – “‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered. “He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’
8 – “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’
9 – “The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius.
10 – So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius.
11 – When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner.
12 – ‘These men who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’
13 – “But he answered one of them, ‘Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius?
14 – Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you.
15 – Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
16 – “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
This is the Word of the Lord; thanks be to God.
Now before we examine Jesus’ math in this parable, let’s review what has happened. At sunrise a farmer went to the place in the town where the day laborers gathered to seek work. He hired some to pick grapes in his vineyard. And we must understand, it was very hot work. In Palestine during harvest season the temperature is often above 100 degrees. Another thing: grape harvest was usually a hectic, demanding time back then. You see, often there was just a narrow window of time during which the fruit of the vine was ripe and ready to pick before bad weather set in. After that the crop was not worth picking so the job had to be done very quickly.
Well, perhaps in his haste to get the job done, at the third hour, 9 am, the farmer went and hired some more workers. He did the same at noon and 3 pm. Finally at 5pm, in order to get the harvest through the “home stretch,” he went and hired some more.
Then, one hour later, at 6pm or the twelfth hour, this farmer told his foreman to blow the “quitting time” whistle and give everyone their pay, starting with those who were hired last. This must have made the workers curious because usually pay was dolled out on a first-come, first-served basis so I’m sure they looked closely as the paymaster began to count out the payroll.
Well, the guys who had only worked an hour were paid how much? Look at verse 9. Right, they got a denarius, which was a great wage back then. It was the same daily wage paid a Roman soldier, much more than a common day laborer would expect to get even for an entire day’s work, so the math didn’t add up even at this point. But the other laborers didn’t mind-yet. I mean, I’m sure they were pleased with the farmer’s amazingly gracious generosity, especially those men who had been working since sun-up. They must have calculated and thought, “If these guys who only worked an hour get an entire denarius, imagine how much we will take home! We’re going to get a bundle today!” But when they got to the paymaster, what was their salary? Look at verse 10. Right, -they received the same as the other guys, only one denarius, and they were ticked because that didn’t seem fair to them. It didn’t add up. After all, they’d been sweating and slaving at high speed under that hot sun all day. According to “normal” math, they should have gotten 12 denarius because 12 times 1 is 12!
Yancey writes, “The boss’s action contradicted everything known about employee motivation and fair compensation. It was atrocious economics, plain and simple.”
Okay, what is the point of all these “atrocious” payroll calculations? What is Jesus teaching us in this parable about a seemingly mathematically-challenged landowner? Well, to answer this question we must first understand that if we try to understand Jesus’ story on the basis of mathematics we’ll miss the point entirely. I mean, our Lord’s parable isn’t supposed to make economic sense; it isn’t supposed to add up. You see, in this story our Lord is giving us a parable about grace, and grace can’t be calculated like a day’s wages. Yancey puts it this way. “Grace is not about finishing last or first. It is about not counting at all.”
And he’s right. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:19, in sending Jesus to die for our sins, “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them.” If God did count our sins against us, if He did pay us according to what our sin earns us, we’d all be in trouble. Let me remind you of the accounting phrases in Romans where it says that,
- “…ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God…and the WAGES of sin is death?” (Romans 3:23; 6:23a)
No-praise the Lord-the Gospel is good news because its central message is that God dispenses GIFTS not wages.
- Romans 6:23b says, “The free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Because of His great-and truly amazing-grace people who respond to the Gospel do not get paid according to their merit.
Let me put it this way-God’s “base” is grace. His actions are prompted not by math, but by His great all-encompassing, unconditional love. This love of God, this is the key to understanding the “atrocious mathematics” of the gospel.
One of my Christmas gifts this year was a devotional book based on Rembrandt’s masterpieces. In the section on Rembrandt’s depiction of this parable from Matthew 20, Pastor Robert DeMoor illustrates this principle with an example from his own childhood. He writes,
“Back in Ontario when the apples ripened, Mom would sit all seven of us down, Dad included, with pans and paring knives, .until the mountain of fruit was reduced to neat rows of filled canned jars on the basement shelf. She never bothered keeping track of how many we did, though we younger ones undoubtedly proved to be more of a nuisance than a help-cut fingers, squabbles over who got what pan, apple core fights. But regardless of our output, the reward for everyone was always the same: we each received the largest chocolate ice cream cone money could buy.
A stickler might argue that it wasn’t fair, since the older ones actually peeled apples. But I can’t remember anyone ever complaining about it. You see, a family understands that it operates under a different set of norms than a courtroom does. In fact, when my younger brother had to make do with a popsicle because the store ran out of ice cream, we all felt sorry for him, despite his lack of productivity. (He’d eaten all the apples he’d peeled that day-both of them.)”
Well, in the family of God our Heavenly Father operates under a different set of norms than an earthly courtroom doesn’t He!? Because of God’s love, those of us who accept Jesus as Lord and Savior receive the gift of eternal, abundant life instead of the physical and spiritual death we deserve.
But we have a hard time understanding this, don’t we? We often have trouble comprehending God’s grace because we are still programmed to think according to the old math. I mean, grace baffles us because it goes against our mental calculators that says that some price must be paid for our sin. And if you struggle with the “mathematics” of the Gospel then let me remind you a price was paid. As Romans 3:24 says, “We are justified freely by His grace-through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” In other words, God gave up His own Son rather than give up on humanity. Jesus paid our sin debt.
In the movie, The Last Emperor, the young child anointed as the last emperor of China lives a magical life of luxury with a thousand eunuch servants at his command. There’s a scene in which his brother asks him, “What happens when you do wrong?” The boy emperor replies, “When I do wrong, someone else is punished.” And to demonstrate he breaks a jar, and to pay for his sin one of the servants is beaten.
Well, the glorious news of the Gospel is that Jesus reversed that ancient pattern: when the servants erred, the King was punished. Jesus was beaten. He was tortured and crucified as payment for our sins.
We celebrate this, the “new math” of God’s grace, through the ordinance of communion. As we do, let me invite all Christians present to partake with us.
After all, even if you are not a member of this church, if you are a Christian, if you are His, this is Yours.
[The Ordinance of Communion]
Once we begin to grasp the “atrocious” math of the gospel, once we experience the grace of God, we are truly driven to live for Him Who loved us and gave Himself up for us. This morning if our little math lesson drives you to make some sort of public decision now is the time to share it. As we stand and sing, come and share any decision the grace of God compels you to make, whether it is to join this church family, or to confess your faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord.