DB 8
HOW MUCH DO WE NEED TO LIVE ON?
The Parable of the Lost Coin LUKE 15:8–10 ————————— • ——————————
Introduction
This brief but important parable compares finding a lost coin to finding treasure in heaven. In our economy a penny may mean little, yet to the poor it may mean a lot. We will use this final parable to explore the difference between having great wealth and having little wealth. The response of the woman points us toward how we handle our money and what it means to us. Jesus is telling us that it should also point us beyond money to repentance. The Parable “Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’ In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” The Ref lection There is an old saying in England: look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves. Another expression refers to going to the restroom as “spending a penny,” because at one time it cost a penny to go into a public restroom. Inflation has cast extreme doubt on both of these sayings. “Looking after pennies” just won’t do. I wonder how many of us would bother searching for a penny if we dropped one in a store and it rolled under the counter. We would probably leave it. As for “spending a penny,” we need at least twenty of them at a railway station now, I venture.
Likewise this parable. It seems absurd that the woman should exert so much effort in search of a single silver coin and then tell her neighbors all about it. However, this silver coin was a drachma, equivalent to one day’s pay. (No single coin is worth that in our economy today, except for specially minted gold and silver coins.) In the United States, the current minimum wage is $5.15 an hour, which would be equal to a coin worth $41.20 for an eight-hour day. Now that sounds like a lot more, doesn’t it? Yet to a billionaire this is less than pocket change. But to someone living in poverty, $41.20 is a princely sum indeed. The fact is that the value of money depends on how much of it you already have. How much would a single coin have to be worth before you would behave as the woman does in this parable? To put it another way, how much do you need to live on—and how much can you afford to lose?
I suspect that if any of us were to subject our neighbors to this exuberant response to finding, let’s say, a penny coin, they would think we obviously don’t get out much. Of course to us a penny is kind of small and insignificant, like the average day’s wage is to a billionaire. Perhaps we would have to win the lottery or a game show to get this excited (and we can see this on our television any night of the week). For this woman, it was indeed a lot. For those who are living in poverty today in developing countries, it would also have great value. One can well imagine people there in search of one coin since they live on less than a dollar a day. And over a billion people in the world do live on such a sum. I wonder how we view our personal wealth. Do we assume that when we talk about the wealthy we are referring to other people—like Bill Gates or Richard Branson or Madonna or Bono? Well, these are the super rich. And as an aside we should understand that many celebrities have in fact become corporations, and the celebrities themselves are the chief executive officers. However, as we discussed in an earlier parable, all of us are comparatively wealthy, especially when we look at that figure of a dollar a day. Even for us, a penny may vary in value, depending on our financial situation. When we have difficulties and the bills are mounting up, we often say that “every penny counts.” The cash in our wallets and purses that we ordinarily take for granted may become quite important when we have to scrape together enough coins and dollar bills to pay a long-overdue bill. The wealthier we get, the smaller and more insignificant a penny gets. But what counts for “watching the pennies” becomes exponential to our wealth—the end point being that when rich people fall they have a long way to drop. We’ve all heard stories of one-time celebrities or successful businesspeople who have hit hard times and become cabbies or store clerks or even homeless. It is all relative. If we look beyond our own financial needs and difficulties, we can compare ourselves to others and see that perhaps we are not as bad off as we had thought. By this I mean looking at how much we need to live and how much we spend on things not necessary for a good existence. We live economically between what we need to spend to get by and what we would like to have to feel comfortable. We should ask ourselves to whom we are comparing our lot: “the Joneses” or people worse off than us? The former case is all about keeping up social appearances and getting on with improving our standing in the community. The latter case has to do with what we really need to subsist. Of course, we may feel that things are pretty much on an even keel, that we’re doing pretty well and don’t need to aspire to more than we have. We could also look at those who are not as well-off as we are and feel guilty that we are so favored, which seems to be a problem highlighted by poverty protests.
We can take it as a given that prophecy should direct us toward the ills of life, not away from them. Many of the poverty protestors see themselves standing in the prophetic tradition, directing us to the inequality and senselessness of poverty. Is this prophecy? Is there even room to question what this means? Well, if you have gotten this far in the book, you will not be surprised to read that there are questionable elements of this prophetic stance. This is not to say that there is no scope for an authentic prophetic role to be played by Christians. However, prophecy certainly means more than one-time publicity stunts that generate a feel-good factor, directing us away from the problem by helping us appease our guilt.
The problem of poverty requires, rather, more than a party and feel-good march; it requires good economics and good government. Do those who gather at such protests feel the same love or concern for their neighbors? Do they have the same worries about the poor communities close to them? Is
it in fact easier to objectify the poor, lay the blame at others’ doors, and demand that the government do more—and thereby direct attention away from the guilt that humanity shares in its separation from God?
In such protests, we become consumers of poverty. The music will sell. The newspapers will sell. Many will feel that they have accomplished something, although they will, I’m afraid, achieve little. The governments represented at global meetings are well aware of the poverty problems. Some are stronger advocates than others. There are many players involved in solving the problems; and of course the self-interest of all nations is a factor. When your own country has problems or you have become credit-dependent on the economy, how far are you prepared to go for the poor? How much of your mortgage will you risk?
We have a fragile economy that is being run on the fuel of our desires, of our self-interest. We have noted Adam Smith’s view of self-interest in which he famously stated that it is not on the kindness of the butcher and the baker that we trade but upon our self-interest. What Smith meant is that trade is not conducted by people out of the goodness of their heart, but because they have their own needs and interests to consider first. This was how Smith stated the issue in the Wealth of Nations, but opponents equate this self-interest with selfishness. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith defines self-interest not in terms of selfishness but in terms of what is beneficial for the survival and happiness of the self. The selfish thing, the desire for what we can consume, may not be in our self-interest. The headlong rush toward debt and consumerism may owe more to our selfish desires than to our own interests.
Of course, from the parable we know that there is much more to the story than our own desires and interests. The parable of the lost coin is very much like the parable of the lost sheep that precedes it (Luke 15:3–7), but Jesus has chosen here to use an economic example. It is also similar to the parables of hidden treasure and a valuable pearl (Matthew 13:44–46). The lost coin points us toward the repentant sinner, while the treasure and pearl point us toward the kingdom of heaven. These parables reveal a different kind of economy, an economy that at once breaks apart all that we are and have materially: an economy of gift. It is no ordinary coin, but a silver coin. The coin is of great significance to the woman, as we see from her joy, but may not hold the same meaning for others—though arguably it should! It is no ordinary lost object; it is hidden treasure. It is no ordinary piece of jewelry; it is a pearl. Each parable indicates something precious and something that is gifted to the finder in some way.
The gospel is a gift given to us—something that is precious but yet costs us no money—which leads us to ask whether it thus subverts the human economy. At the risk of deconstructing capitalism, we could cite that doyen of postmodernism, Jacques Derrida, who provided a wonderful insight when he wrote that the problem of gift is that it breaks the cycle of exchange in the economy. Derrida’s proposal is that the gift subverts the real objective of all economic transactions because our acts of economic transaction are all calculations. Thus, gift has no place in the economy, which is perhaps why economists would call a gift an externality. However, perhaps a gift also becomes a source of doubt in the economy because gifts are ultimately more valuable and meaningful than the things we buy or covet for ourselves. The gift suggests that we act in a way that is wholly other, that we give up our self-interest as selfish. Yet, if we give, or forgive, are we not still making a calculation?
It seems that we want the economy to do that which we personally do not want to do: to serve or be charitable. We do not want to give ourselves, so we subcontract to the state. I am not suggesting here that charity will solve everything (though it would go a long way). Rather, I wonder to what extent we abdicate our responsibility to care, expecting others— government agencies, welfare, the state—to do our bidding. The price we pay is perhaps small, and we expect a big dividend from it, one that takes away our guilt. A gift also becomes indebtedness, for gifts are not truly given freely, and the gift becomes part of the cycle of exchange, for there is a symbolic debt or duty created in the act of giving. The one to whom I give becomes indebted to me. Can we ever give truly selflessly?
Derrida and other writers have taken this discussion of gift further, and in these postmodern times there is a tendency toward wishful thinking in imagining an alternative economy to the free market. This is taking a good idea in the wrong direction. Absolutely, there is tension between economic life and the life of faith. Economic life appeals to our self-interest, rewarding us for our self-interest, as well as punishing us when we manage our wealth badly. The free market system is truest to our nature, and money provides a measure of how well we as individual economic agents, businesses, other economic organizations, and governments play the game. Yet the life of faith asks us to give ourselves up, to be selfless toward our neighbor. But few, if any, of us are so capable. We are then held hostage by the economy, caught in a struggle between our economic self- maximization and our selflessness, for which we receive no economic reward. In many ways I have been at pains in this book to defend the free market system against theological attack. However, the overall aim has been to rectify a perceived bias against the market and to argue that the market is something Christians and churches can and should work with for the better. Theology should not exclude the market, since the market is the best form of economic organization we have at our disposal at present. Within this limited framework there is much that can be achieved for the good. To this view, I add a major caveat. The market is not the place for us to find salvation, nor should we use the economy as a means to shore up our own independence from God. The values of the gospel are, in the ultimate court, contrary to the market—but this applies just as much to all else in this world that is at odds with the gospel. The gospel shines light on all the dark recesses of human life and shows how often we fall short of the ideal. Against this gospel we are to measure all that we are and do, and act to align ourselves with the Lord in battle against evil and the wrongs of the world. This is a daily struggle, since we rise and die with Christ each day; and it is also a lifelong struggle as we seek the kingdom of God. As this parable ends, Jesus tells us that there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents. The gospel calls for us all to repent, rich and poor. It is the gift we are given to guide us in all our ways and is thus outside of the economy and outside of human society. There can be no trading for this gift, there is nothing we can give to equal the generosity of the gift, and we are wholly undeserving of the gift. We can and should seek to do good in the world, but there is only one source of grace and only one appropriate response. God is that source of grace, and the appropriate response is to kneel and give thanks in the name of Jesus Christ that it is freely offered to us. There is no other way to achieve salvation. Secular salvation—where we make our concern and care for the poor the source of our spiritual well-being (and in some cases our economic well-being as well)—is no substitute. I leave you with this unsettling image from a short story by the nineteenth-century French poet Charles Baudelaire, which Derrida discusses, where a man passes a counterfeit coin to a beggar, leaving the impression of giving a generous gift. Baudelaire writes of the response by the man’s friend: I looked him squarely in the eyes and I was appalled to see that his eyes shone with unquestionable candour. I then saw clearly that his aim had been to do a good deed while at the same time making a good deal; to earn forty cents and the heart of God; to win paradise economically; in short, to pick up gratis the certificate of a charitable man.
Other Biblical Texts to Study
Luke 15:8 Luke 15:9 Luke 15:10
Luke 15:4, 11–16 Luke 15:5–6, 17–24 Luke 15:7, 25–32