As I’ve been working with my kid to complete his math homework, I’ve found myself having to look things up, like what is a co-efficient or absolute value or factor. Most of the math I have done over the past 30 years has been on my taxes or deciphering church budgets. Sometimes I feel like I’m back in 6th grade again.
In
today’s scriptures we learn that God’s math is different from our human math.
The
first reading is about the man from Ethiopia who had been castrated in order to
more faithfully serve his queen. He is
reading the scripture. It is starting to
add up that this might be for him. He
might understand about someone being led to slaughter and someone being denied
justice. He can relate to this reading
in the scroll of Isaiah. It speaks to
him. He then encounters Phillip on the
road, who becomes something of a tutor to him, opening the scriptures to him as
Jesus had done for Phillip before. He
explains the vocabulary, the story of Jesus and this man from Ethiopian is
getting it. So he asks, what is
preventing us from adding? What is to
prevent us from adding water for baptism to his own body.
Phillip
at once realizes that God’s math is not the math Phillip’s been using. Philip’s math would have said that is not
possible—that because this man’s body had been mutilated, he was not fit for
baptism, not fit for being added to the numbers of Jesus’ followers. He was not without blemish. But Phillip sees at once what this man, not
knowing the religious customs and their kind of math, is seeing and
suggesting. He didn’t know all the human
barriers that would prevent this equation, so he proposes something, sees
something possible that Phillip cannot deny.
This man is baptized and he took the teachings of Jesus to Ethiopia
where one of the oldest Christian communities still worships, where many people
came to faith in Jesus. God’s math is
not human math.
The
second reading tells us that whatever else we do, we need to add love to
it. We need to add loving action to our
words. We need to love as Christ loved
us. If there’s something missing from
the equation and you can’t quite work it out, it might very well be love.
We
know in human math that if you take something away, you have less. We call it subtraction. But with a vine, you take something away and
now you have more. That’s God’s math. By pruning the branch, you get new growth.
This
is what faith is—not being able to see what the outcome will be, but letting go
in order to make space for new growth, for fruit. This is just what Jesus shows us with his
whole life, that pruning, or giving something up, can create
opportunities. He gave up his seat in
the heavens to become a human being and he gained a whole family of siblings,
adopting us all. He gave up his status
to speak to children and divorced women and he gained a welcome and listening
ears. He gave up his life out of love
and he gained resurrection life, giving life to the cosmos. Even Jesus accepted pruning, took risks, gave
things up that would have made him more comfortable, in order to take up what
was good for him and for all those he met.
Beyond his own growth and gain, he gave to others and they gained—food,
respect, healing, new life, learning, hope, joy!
Faith
helps us make sense of what we can’t see.
It helps us find a healthy focus, look for what is life-giving, motivate
ourselves to do what is right and good.
For the vine and the branches, when they get pruned, their roots go down
deeper in order to find sustenance that means new life, fruit. When we make sacrifices, we might have to go
deep to stay connected with our source.
The other thing about roots is that they dictate the size of the tree or
roots. If you have a big tree and you
want it to be smaller—tough luck. You
can prune and prune and cut and that tree will come back just as big and strong
as before because those roots need to send that energy and water somewhere. The tree will create new branches. That’s why so many trees are grafted—number
one, you get consistent fruit from tree
to tree, but secondly to control the size.
You graft the branches you want with roots of a smaller tree so it
doesn’t grow up so huge that you can’t get a ladder up there to pick the
fruit. If we have strong roots, we will
have strong branches.
As
Christians we can be using God’s math.
We like to see our balanced budgets and rising worship attendance. We like our bigger church buildings and more
worship services, but Jesus says our math doesn’t always show deep roots or a
strong faith. It is in the willingness
to risk, to prune, to give away, to have faith, that we find out how strong our
roots really are and then fruit has the potential to grow. When we give away our parking lot for the
rain garden, or rooms for community groups to meet, when we give away our
Easter service and it becomes bilingual, when we give away our attention and
focus to help a child who has joined the choir, when we give away our time
volunteering for those in need, we find God’s math adding so much new
life. What is to prevent a child from
serving on altar guild? What is to
prevent us learning to pronounce the words in Spanish? What is to prevent Darth Vader invading this
church to raise money for Zarephath pantry?
Only in human math can we not add it up.
In God’s math, there is more than enough and in giving away and
subtracting God adds to the blessings.
I
have seen it happen. St. Paul of
Damascus Lutheran Church is closing, but as that painful pruning happens, they
share new life with others and continue in faithful worship of God. I have seen churches have the hard
conversations about what it would mean to be publically and officially
welcoming of all people, especially people who have been excluded from the church
in the past, to become what is called Reconciling in Christ, to be welcoming to
LGBTQIA people. Sometimes some members
threatened to leave and sometimes people did.
It was a pruning and it was hard, because these are people we love. But those churches took a step in faith, gave
something up, and ended up more clearly proclaiming the good news of God’s
love. What is to prevent our siblings who have been so hurt and excluded from
being added? Only human math. God’s math means exponential compassion, love,
and fruit.
We
have some math homework to do, but we have a fabulous tutor in our Savior
Jesus. Let us follow his lead so that
subtraction leads to multiplication, so that abundance flows unexpected ways
and places, so that the least becomes the greatest, so that new life
flourishes.
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