New Math

 

New Math

New Math - Audio/Visual

He replied to the one speaking for the rest, “Friend, I haven't been unfair. We agreed on the wage of a dollar, didn't we? So take it and go. I decided to give to the one who came last the same as you. Can't I do what I want with my own money? Are you going to get stingy because I am generous?” Here it is again, the Great Reversal: many of the first ending up last, and the last first. (Matt. 20:13-16, MSG)

Remember "new math" when it was first introduced in our schools during the 60’s? It was launched just after the Sputnik crisis in order to boost science and math skills in the United States so that the intellectual threat of Soviet engineers, reportedly very skilled mathematicians, could be met. It was basically an experimental form of arithmetic, and it was very confusing. According to "new math," adding, subtracting and multiplying simply didn’t work the old way. Things didn’t add up. So they came up with “new math,” which involved something called "base theory." For instance, in base ten (which is the "base" we use in "old math"), 2 + 2 = 4. But in base three, for instance, 2 + 2 = 11. I really can’t tell you why it equals eleven because I’m not exactly sure that I really understand it myself. But you can see how it would be very confusing since, if you change the context, or “base,” numbers mean entirely new things.

There's a sense in which, sometimes, the Christian faith sounds an awful lot like “new math;” there are times when what God does just doesn’t seem to add up. 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. It’s a noble deed, but think about the underlying math. Jesus says the shepherd left the ninety-nine sheep “in the country,” which presumably means they were vulnerable to rustlers, wolves or just the general idea of bolting for freedom. But how would the shepherd have felt if he’d returned with the one lost lamb across his shoulders, only to find twenty-three others were now missing? It doesn’t make mathematical sense.

And then there’s the scene in John's gospel where a woman named Mary takes a pint of exotic, expensive perfume, worth an entire year's wage, and pours it all over Jesus' feet. Have you ever owned a $51,916.27 bottle of perfume? Even Judas noticed that it didn’t add up. Surely Mary could have put just a little, an ounce maybe, on Jesus' feet and then sold the rest to feed the poor. Arguably, Jesus would have smelled just as good. So, why overdo it? Why waste the entire jar, especially on Jesus’ nasty feet, when an ounce on the pulse points would have done the job? Apparently, Mary flunked math since, 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 compared it to 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) What kind of rocket science did Jesus consult to come up with that conclusion? How could two pennies equal more than handfuls of brand new hundred dollar bills?

The parable in Matthew chapter 20 is about a farmer who, at sunrise, goes into town and hires day laborers to help him pick grapes in his vineyard. Temperatures in Palestine during the harvest season frequently exceed 100°; it’s really hot work. Grape harvests are also hectic and demanding since there’s a very narrow window of opportunity to harvest the grapes at the peak of their sugar content, or brix, and the bad weather setting in. If the “window” closes, the crop’s not worth picking. So maybe in his haste to get the job done quickly, the farmer goes into town at 6:00 a.m. to hire workers, and then again at 9:00 a.m. to hire more. He did the same thing at noon, 3:00 p.m. and again at 5:00 p.m. in order to get the harvest through the final stretch. At 6:00 p.m., the farmer tells his foreman to call it quits for the day and give everyone their pay, starting with those who were hired last. Now the order must have made the workers just a little curious since, usually, pay was handed out on a first-come, first-served basis. So the workers were probably looking pretty closely as the paymaster began handing out the paychecks.

As the owner had instructed, the guys who had worked only an hour were paid a denarius, i.e., a day’s wage, e.g., $104.00 in California these days, less taxes of course. That was a great wage back then. In fact, it was the same wage paid a Roman soldier, which was a whole lot more than a common day laborer could ever expect to get for even an entire day's work. So, the math doesn’t add up at this point. But the other laborers probably didn't mind; at least not yet. They were likely amazed at the farmer's generosity, especially the guys who’d been working since sunrise. They probably ran the numbers and thought, "Wow, if these guys who only worked an hour got an entire day’s wage, imagine how much we’ll take home. We're going to make a bundle!" But when they got to the paymaster, they got the same amount and now they’re steamed.

How is that fair? It doesn’t add up. After all, they'd been sweating and slaving at high speed under the hot sun all day. According to "normal" math, they should have received $1,456.00, throwing in time and a half for the four hours overtime. But here, the boss’s actions contradicted everything known about employee motivation and fair compensation. It was atrocious economics, plain and simple. So then what’s the point with these atrocious payroll calculations? What is Jesus teaching us in this parable about a seemingly mathematically-challenged landowner?

To answer that question we’ve got to realize that if we try to understand Jesus' story on the basis of math, we'll miss the point entirely. Jesus’ parable isn't supposed to make economic sense; it isn't supposed to add up. The point of the parable is about grace, and grace can't be calculated like a day's wage. Grace is not about finishing last or first. It’s about not counting at all. As Paul says in 2 Cor. 5:19, "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 sins have earned us, we'd all be in very deep trouble. Here’s some more math excerpts from Romans: "...all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God ... and the wages of sin is death." (Rom. 3:23; 6:23) Praise God that he dispenses gifts and not wages. And here’s another: "The free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord." (Rom. 6:23) Because of his great and truly amazing grace, people who respond to the Gospel do not get paid according to their merit.

Using our “new math” example, God's "base" is grace. His actions are prompted not by math, but by his great, all-encompassing, unconditional love. This love, this grace, is the key to understanding the atrocious mathematics of the gospel. And we have a hard time understanding that. We often have trouble comprehending God's grace because we’re still programmed to think according to our traditional math upbringing. Grace baffles us because it goes against our mental calculators that insist that some price must be paid for our sin. But if you struggle with the mathematics of the Gospel, remember that 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 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 the point, he breaks a jar, and to pay for his sin one of the servants is beaten. Jesus reversed that ancient pattern: when the servants erred, the King was punished. Jesus was beaten. He was tortured. He was crucified. He was the payment for our sins.

I never really liked math all that much growing up. In fact, I struggled with math so much, and got so far behind in school that my parents became a little concerned and got me some sort of mechanical contraption to help me with just simple, basic math. And I can’t tell you exactly when I eventually got it, but by college and graduate school I was doing calculus. At one time in my life, math just didn’t make any sense. Then, with some help, math made all the sense in the world.

Once, I didn’t get Jesus, either. But with the aid of his Word, I got Him. Not “got Him” in the sense of completely understanding him since that’s a journey, but “got him” from the standpoint of grace – a place where, thankfully, the math doesn’t have to add up.

Grace,

Randy