By Joshua Olds
For the last couple of weeks we’ve been considering the God who spoke in Story, with special emphasis on the stories Jesus told as recorded in Luke 15. Let’s recall the scenario: Jesus is talking with tax collectors and sinners—virtually the modern equivalent of talking to a group of hookers. The Pharisees were shocked that a rabbi would teach a group like this. To explain to the Pharisees how deep God’s love was for these people and, perhaps more importantly in Jesus’ mindset, to show it to the people themselves, Jesus launched into a series of stories.
Jesus’ story of the lost coin is wedged between the popular shepherd imagery of the first parable and the oft-told story of the prodigal son and is therefore usually ignored. A lady loses her drachma, worth about a day’s wage, and when she finds it, she has a party. We pick up the meaning that we are valuable to God, and He rejoices when we repent and turn to Him. We in American culture think we have this one figured out. It’s about money…and we know money. We know if we lost a day’s wage, and then found it, we’d party hardy too.
But such an interpretation limits the depth of meaning Jesus was going for. First, why did this woman have ten days’ wages with her? Well in Israel, the wedding custom was that instead of a ring, the bride would wear a necklace of ten drachmas that would be a part of her father’s dowry. The woman has not lost a day’s wage, she’s lost her wedding ring!
Not just a shiny object that can give her some material comfort, the coin is a representation of the love between her and her husband. It is important to her, and she searches frantically for it. Husbands, how many of you, if your wife lost her wedding ring to the sink drain, would become an amateur plumber to fish it out? And would you dare suggest getting another ring? Not if you’re intelligent.
The difference between the parable and reality is that God has not just lost the symbol of His love for an individual, He’s actually lost the individual! And it’s not through accident or any fault of His but through that individual’s disobedience. Picture God on his knees, lamp in hand, running a hand over the dirt floor in an effort to find what had been lost. God the Lover pouring out His heart to find His love.
But again, we’ve not yet fully grasped it. Portraying God as a woman was scandalous to the Pharisees, who were known to praise God for the fact they were not born women. Throughout His stories, Jesus identifies God with the commoners and contrasts Him with the religious perception of God. Jesus’ next story pictures God as a wealthy man, something the Pharisees could relate to, something that fit into their religious perception, but again Jesus is preparing to turn culture upside down.
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