“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?” Luke 15: 8.
When I was a child, it was common practice on a Saturday morning for me to scour behind the cushions and crevices of the couch to find the lost small change using whatever I found to buy an ice cream cone or candy bar The few coins that had fallen out of my Dad’s pockets were too small to matter to him, but to me they were an enormous treasure Anything bigger than a dune belonged to Mom Anyone who has ever lost a coin and later recovered it can relate to this parable (Luke 15 8-10) If the coins were of small value, we would probably not have noticed their absence, but if we had a gold piece, its misplacement would engender an entirely different response On the other hand, if we were faced with a potentially serious loss, we would do everything m our power to recover the item
An old Jewish parable
The Jewish Rabbis have a story about a widow who lost a small coin and spends an enormous amount of effort to recover it She involved friends, neighbors, and relatives seeking to find what was lost They spent considerable time, effort and emotional energy but to no avail The lost coin could not be found As told by the Jewish sages, the moral of this particular story is to let go quickly when something insignificant is lost It could easily be replaced with a day’s work Hence, if we waste time and energy on recovering small things we will be wasting valuable resources that could be more wisely spent on more important matters In other words, m today’s parlance “Don’t sweat the small stuff” A useful moral lesson as it stands, but contrast this to the instruction that Jesus Christ draws from virtually the same circumstances.
Those Pharisees and scribes who listened to the Lord Jesus Christ tell-mg this parable of the so-called “Lost Coin” probably were familiar with the story of the widow and its traditional interpretation. But Jesus takes the story and turns the lesson completely upside down, This parable has been variously called the parable of the “Lost Coin” or of the “Careless Woman.” Personally, I think both these titles do great injustice to the point of the story. I prefer to think of this tale as the “Parable of the Diligent Woman.” Let us examine the details of this story more closely.
Woman likely a widow
Luke 15: 8 tells us that a woman had “ten pieces of silver” [NW]. The actual word for the coin here in the original is drachma’. The marginal notes of various Bible versions gives us a detailed explanation of the value of this coin. The drachma was equivalent to the Roman penny, which equaled an eighth of an ounce of silver, which would give it a current value slightly less than a U.S. dollar. To appreciate its value more fully, the drachma was equivalent to a day’s wages in the first century at the time Jesus Christ told this story.
It is also interesting to note, that in this story, it is a woman who has the money in the household and not a man! This was highly unusual at the time of Christ (and for a long time thereafter). Without saying so directly, Jesus infers that she is a widow since only under such circumstances would a woman normally control the purse in first-century society. His original audience most likely would have been completely familiar with the tale of the “lost coin” as recorded in the commentaries of the sages and would have assumed he meant a widow. Hence the allusion to her having the purse in the household would have been understood and accepted by the Pharisees and scribes. Moreover, the need to preserve her wealth because she was a widow would also be appreciated.
Equivalent to God’s portion
She lost one of the coins. This was ten percent of her net worth. It is of interest that this is also exactly the amount that the Israelites were supposed to tithe under the provisions of the Law of Moses. Under such circumstances she could easily have rationalized that she should simply forget about it and take it out of her tithing tax. In effect, she could write off her loss out of the portion of her income owed to the service of the Lord.
It is a rationale that we often use. When we get a pay raise do we increase proportionally the amount we put in the collection? When other bills and services escalate in cost do we assume that the needs of the ecclesia can be neglected to make up for our own increased appetites? The same rationale applies with how we devote our time and energy. If we get busy at work, and have to work overtime, where do the extra hours come from to compensate? Hopefully not from the time that we should serve the ecclesia, nor from that which we need to devote to nurturing, serving and loving our families and our brothers and sisters.
Lost within the house
As a widow the loss of even one-tenth of her savings was serious and thus she proceeds to “light a lamp” [NIV] and search everywhere. In the most common cases, at the time of Jesus, ordinary people had homes with very little light. The floors were pounded dirt covered with straw. But she knew the coin was lost within the house and thus proceeds diligently to seek it out and find it. In contrast to the previous parable, of the one sheep that had gone astray in the wilderness, the loss here is entirely within the household.
It is perfectly possible for us to be in the household every Sunday, attend every lecture or other ecclesial event and always be at Bible class and still be completely lost! This is especially true in larger ecclesias where the single small coin can easily be hidden by all the straw spread thickly over all the flooring. If one is new to the ecclesia, whether by moving from another area of the ecclesial world, or by reason of being recently converted to the Truth, it is difficult sometimes to break into the local culture and be fully accepted.
On the other hand, if one has been brought up in the ecclesial Sunday school one usually has a social support structure of friends and relatives, sometimes spanning several generations in the ecclesia. Under such favorable circumstances one is less likely to get lost within the household. But even in these cases some traumatic event in life might suddenly leave one entirely lost. It is important that we exercise due diligence watching over each other.
The lamp is the word
This woman lit a lamp to search among the straw which she swept to find the lost coin. The lamp represents the word of God as revealed in Jesus Christ (John 12:46). It is by the constant illumination of this word that we can prevent losing anyone. We should encourage one another in studying the word, and this should be done with love and understanding.
There is nothing more discouraging for a weaker brother or sister than for them to make a comment at Bible class, which someone else might disagree with, and find themselves harshly put down. Under such circumstances some would be tempted to just stay home rather than be humiliated. It was possible that in searching through the dry straw, that if proper diligence was not taken, the widow woman could have accidentally set the straw on fire with the light of her lamp. Such is the case if the “word” is used to burn instead of to illuminate. We must never forget that we are taught to “be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” (Eph. 4:32).
Careful diligence the lesson
God desires those who “diligently seek him” (Heb 11 6) This parable makes it evident that diligence involves not only our own personal faith, but also the application of that faith through our care for all in the ecclesia There are no insignificant “coins” with God Jesus prayed and thanked God that he had not lost one of his disciples except the son of perdition (John 17 12) It is possible that the words of Jesus m the Garden of Gethsemane echo his intense pain, due at least m part to this loss “My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death” (Mark 14 34) God cares for every last one of His children, m-deed the very hairs on our heads are numbered (Matt 1030, Luke 12 7)
The woman “sweeps” the household to find the lost coin This act must be one that is carefully done The prophet Isaiah speaks of sweeping “with the besom of destruction”(Isa 14 23) The word “besom” is said to mean a scouring broom The prophet uses this to refer to the thorough sweeping away and complete destruction of the wicked But this cannot be the way the widow woman swept the household for her lost coin To thoroughly clean the house in the days of Jesus one would have swept the straw completely outside and burned it or let the wind carry it away Such a scouring would have cleaned the household, but also would have probably swept the coin away into the outside world The sense of sweeping that Jesus meant in this parable must refer to something much closer to the words used by Abraham in pleading for the “lost coins” at Sodom and Gomorrah Then Abraham approached him and said “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked”? (Gen 18 23 NW) It is in this sense that we carefully sweep the ecclesia so that we keep all within the household and not allow any “coins” to roll into some crevice and be hidden and lost.
Finding the lost, not saving money
The woman eventually finds the coin and proceeds to throw a party (“rejoice with me”) for all her friends and neighbors We quickly realize that it wasn’t the loss of the money that really bothered her as much as her own inattention in keeping track of it The cost of rejoicing could easily have exceeded the amount of loss if she had simply written it off But what of it? We cannot count the cost of recovering one individual lost within the household It is not a matter of cost-benefit analysis It is, in fact, our duty to find every lost coin Likewise we should all rejoice once they have been recovered even as the angels of God do rejoice over one sinner who repents.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One