grace is terrible math
"Grace is terrible math."
Josh Howerton
"Grace is enough. He is enough. Jesus is enough."
Brennan Manning
The Kingdom of Heaven doesn’t map neatly onto the values of the modern world.
There are so many things that define Jesus’ life that just don’t seem to meet our cultural expectations. One of the most startling ones is how inefficient Jesus’ ministry seemed to be.
So much of what is valued in our world today is marked by size, scale, and attention. Importance seems to be measured by observable impact. But this kind of thinking didn’t even factor into the ministry of Jesus.
Jesus spent 30 years of his life in obscurity. Manual labor, attending synagogue, dealing with family drama, living a very normal life. God was in the village for 30 years and no one seemed to notice. He spent three years in public ministry but thirty years in obscurity. That’s a 90 percent obscurity rate for 10 percent public ministry. My friend Brad Cooper calls this "developing in the dark." Jesus seemed to be more concerned about potency than publicity.
In Jesus’ parables, this is only heightened.
In Luke 15, Jesus tells the story of the shepherd who is willing to leave the 99 sheep to go after the one. There is no cost-benefit analysis here. There is no collateral damage in the fields of Bethlehem. There is the love of the shepherd willing to risk it all for the lost. Love is not reasonable. Love does not fit into human equations. The math of heaven does not fit into the metrics of earth.
In Matthew 20, the scandal continues in the parable of the workers.
The laborers who work 1 hour get paid the same as those who work all day. This violates all HR regulations in the modern world. This reeks of unfairness. This screams of injustice. Yet Jesus’ response highlighting the shocking grace of God still confronts us centuries later. "Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?" Grace will always be a scandal to those trying to earn love.
Consider Jesus’ vision of giving.
In Luke 21, Jesus’ views verge differently from the world. When the rich were giving in full view of everyone else, a widow sneaks by and drops in two small coins, an insignificant measure in everyone’s eyes but his.
"This poor widow has put in more than all the others."
No special dinner for the widow. No building is named in her honor. No extra time with the senior pastor. Yet to Jesus, she is at the top of the generosity list in heaven.
Or consider Jesus’ resistance to the metrics of human possibility.
In John 6, a crowd has gathered to hear Jesus teach, but they run out of food.
Jesus calls the disciples to feed the crowd, but the math will not add up.
"There’s a young boy here with five barley loaves and two fish. But what good is that with this huge crowd?"
For the disciples, 5 + 2 = a starving crowd
For Jesus, 5 + 2 = the feeding of 5000.
Jesus’ math is fueled by the possibilities of God's kingdom, not the limits of human resources.
HOW WILL YOU MEASURE YOUR LIFE?
Harvard Business School Professor Clayton M. Christensen wrote a thought-provoking book titled "How Will You Measure Your Life?" It's an important question everyone must answer. What metrics should we measure to make sure our life really matters? How should our time on earth add up?
I wonder how Jesus would answer that question.
I believe it would simply be obedient love.
He didn’t seem to worry about outcomes like we do. He didn’t measure what mattered to so many in his day. He just listened and loved until the day he died. He wasn’t concerned with success, metrics, outcomes, or the applause of the crowd. He seemed to be content living in the Father's love. Brennan Manning, the modern apostle of grace, seemed to understand this too. He wrote,
"All that is not the love of God has no meaning for me. I can truthfully say that I have no interest in anything but the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. If God wants it to, my life will be useful through my word and witness. If He wants it to, my life will bear fruit through my prayers and sacrifices. But the usefulness of my life is His concern, not mine. It would be indecent of me to worry about that."
JESUS AT DISNEY WORLD
In my mid-thirties, my in-laws took our family to Disney World for Christmas. The highlight for me was the Carols service in EPCOT. It was almost surreal to be in Walt Disney’s magic world, hearing songs about Jesus’ birth. The lessons and carols service is shockingly orthodoxy yet the highlight was the reading of a poem by the Rev. James Allan Francis. Here in the midst of funnel cakes and light parades, the timeless power of grace rang true. I looked around in awe at all Walt Disney had built in just a few decades but was reminded of the power of the broken math of grace.
He was born in an obscure village,
a child of a peasant woman.
He grew up in another obscure village
where he worked in a carpenter shop
until he was thirty.
Then for three years
he was an itinerant preacher.
He never had a family.
Or owned a home.
He never set foot inside a big city.
He never traveled two hundred miles
from the place he was born.
He never wrote a book
or held an office.
He did none of the things
that usually accompany greatness.
While he was still a young man,
the tide of popular opinion
turned against him.
His friends deserted him.
He was turned over to his enemies.
He went through the mockery of a trial.
He was nailed to a cross
between two thieves.
While he was dying
his executioners gambled
for the only piece of property he had,
his coat.
When he was dead,
he was taken down
and laid in a borrowed grave.
Nineteen centuries have come and gone
and today he is still the central figure
for much of the human race.
All the armies that ever marched,
All the navies that ever sailed
And all the parliaments that ever sat
And all the kings that ever reigned
Put together
have not affected the life of man
Upon this earth
As powerfully as this
One Solitary Life.
It's true, so true.
Jesus + nothing = everything. Grace is terrible math.
Thanks for reading.
Cheers.
Jon.
