Forgetting to Count - Rev Dr Kelly Sprinkle 3-30-25

Reading: Luke 15: 11-32

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Luke fifteen Verses eleven fifteen eleven verses thirty two. Jesus
continued to the parable and said a man had two sons.
The younger of them said to their father, give me
the share of the estate that is coming to me.
So the father divided up the property between them. Some
days later, the younger son gathered up his belongings and
went off to a distant land. Here he squandered all

(00:27):
his money on a loose living. After everything was spent,
a great famine broke out in the land, and the
son was in great need. So he went to a landowner,
who sent him to a farm to take care of
the pigs. The son was so hungry that he could
have eaten the husks or fodder for the pigs, but
no one made a move to give him anything. Coming

(00:49):
to his senses, at last, he said, how many hired
hands at my father's house have more than enough to
eat while I am well here, I am starving. I'll
quit and go back home and say and say I've
sinned against God and against you. I no longer deserve
to be called one of your children. Treat me like
one of your hired hands. What's that The younger son

(01:09):
set off for home. While still a long way off,
the father caught a say of the returning child and
was deeply moved. The father ran out to meet him,
threw his arms around him, and kissed him. The son
said to him, I've sinned against God and against you.
I no longer deserve to be called one of your children.
But his father said to one of the workers, quick,

(01:30):
bring out the finest robe and put it on him.
Put a ring on his finger, and shoes on his feet.
Take the calf we've been fattening and butcher it. Let's
eat and celebrate. The son of mine was dead and
has come back to life. He was lost, and now
he is found, and let the celebration begin. Meanwhile, the
elder son had been out in the field. As he

(01:51):
neared the house, he heard the sound of music and dancing.
He called one of the workers and asked what was happening.
The worker answered, your brother is home, and the fatten
half has been killed because your father has him back,
safe and sound. The son got angry at this and
refused to go in to the party, but his father
came out and pleaded with him. The older son replied,

(02:11):
look for years now I have done every single thing
you asked me to. I never disobeyed even one of
your orders. Yet you gave me so much. Yet you
never gave me so much as a kid, go to
celebrate with my friends. But then this son of yours
comes home after going to kill, going through your money
with prostitutes, and you kill the fat and calf for him.

(02:31):
But my child, the father said, you're You're with me always,
and everything I have is yours, and everything I have
as yours. But we have to celebrate and rejoice. This
brother of yours was dead and has come back to life.
He was lost, and now he has found.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
A little more than a decade ago, George and I
participated in a whitewater rafting trip with the Recreation Department
of Syracuse University with other students who were along, and
we were the adults on the trip. One of our
jobs was to count. We were in two buses and

(03:22):
it was pouring rain, and so we did what the
directors had not do. We let people get on the
buses first, and we can never get the number right.
For one bus could not count. And we tried, and
we texted and called back and forth, and we thought

(03:43):
we had the right number. We get to the white
Water rafting site and our guides are doing their work
and we are missing one release form, and so we
started to count. We went as far as to having
everyone count off. We thought we had it right, but

(04:07):
then again know the guide said you're missing one, and
so they called it out every name. One student finally
was left standing with no release form, so we all
determined she was the problem. She filled out the paperwork.
We went white Whitewater rafting, and when we got back

(04:28):
for lunch, the woman had filled out a form and
now we had two extra forms, but not the right count.
So finally, before we left, the plan was devised. Only
people could go out one door and we would call

(04:50):
out one name for each sheet of paper, and I
was going to stand outside at the other entrance to
make sure no one came exited or entered through that
and we'd finally figure it out. Well we did, and
we were one student short. But the student was with

(05:11):
a friend visiting from another university and always just went
with their other friend wherever she went, but never counted.
It was a frustrating experience of counting. Now, are there
any math teachers in the room, I see look good,

(05:34):
we have at least three if I counted correctly, and
after today we may need a tutorial on math. In
high school, I loved math. I even loved geometry. But
one thing I never quite mastered was proving triangles. We
were supposed to list so many and then give a

(05:56):
proof of it was I never could figure that quite out.
Frustrated on one exam, I wrote, it is a triangle
because it is no points counted for that one. So
there was a shepherd with one hundred sheep after counting

(06:17):
up to ninety nine, which I think would be quite
a feat because I don't know if sheep were always
just sitting there and not moving around. But there was
determined one sheep was missing, and so the shepherd takes
upon oneself to go find the other sheep. But what
the challenge is, which I think we miss in scripture sometimes,

(06:40):
is it says the shepherd left the other ninety nine
sheep in the open pasture, no gates, no way to
corral them. In it's open. The sheep can go and
come as they please. So who knows after the one
has come back? Should you recount all over again? What

(07:03):
happens if you only have ninety seven now. Some scholars
say that counting in parables, or just parables in general,
are somewhat like a riddle, much like proving triangles if
you ask me, But you see, the thing is we

(07:28):
count today's parable often s three. They're parable of the
lost sheep. They're parable of the lost coin, then the
parable of the one lost son. Scholars tell us it's
all one big parable, all thirty two verses. The first

(07:49):
two helped set up the third. So there was a shepherd,
then there was a woman who had silver coins, she
lost one. Now Here is a little bit of debate.
Some translations calls there was ten drachma the ten silver coins,

(08:14):
and pending on who you ask and their expertise on
Greek and the nuances, some will say it's worth not much.
Others would say it was too drakma that the Samaritan
gave for the man who had been left half dead.

(08:35):
Too dragmas was enough to acquire one night's lodging, so
it's not quite worthless. But even some would go even
further in saying a dragma or that one silver piece
was like losing a year of wages. Whether it was
the stock market that dropped, or a foolish living, or

(08:57):
however you count, you just didn't quite count. Your checkbook
didn't balance, and you've never noticed. So it's not like
you just lost a penny. It could be worth a
year of your retirement savings. But the challenge is is

(09:25):
a woman lost one silver piece. And we often make
women a little lower or less or even sometimes inscription,
we may play them off as being a little bit
not quite with it, not as a student, as a
man in counting. Well. First of all, any woman or

(09:50):
any person during this period of time, if they had
ten silver pieces and it was worth ten years of wages,
that's quite a bit of money to have. And the
woman too, was a householder. This woman was not poor.
This woman owned a house, had ten silver coins, and

(10:15):
whether it was ten years worth of savings or enough
for five days lodging for the man that had been
left half dead and the Samaritan brought to the inn,
that's a lot of money. But so far have you
gotten it? A shepherd lost, a woman lost. And then

(10:41):
there was a father, a man who had two sons.
And this is where we stumble. Description never tells us
that the father had lost one or two sons. It's

(11:02):
just there was a father with two sons. It's again counting,
but this time it is the father who has lost,
and we miscount. Here there was a father who had

(11:23):
two sons and lost two sons because the father forgot
to count, and we too, forget to count. Sometimes. For yes,
the one comes and says, give me my half of

(11:43):
the inheritance, and the father does so, and for all
we know, he counted it exactly right. This one got
half and the other one would have half. The one
son goes out, comes back after losing it all, and
the father welcomes the son home, it says, throws a feast.

(12:11):
But then there is a feast, and the other son
that the father has lost has been there all along,
out in the field. And it's this son who hears
the party in going on and pulls one of the
servants aside and says, what's going on? And he said, oh,
your brother is back. Imagine if you had been the

(12:33):
child who didn't even know your brother had come home.
Your father had not told anyone to tell you that
your sibling was back, but didn't even invite you to
the party. How often when we count that we forget
to count those who are just already around us. Sometimes

(12:57):
we live in a world, or in families, or the
circumstances where we put all our attention on one child
and forget about the other. For this other child may
make good grades, this other child may do everything that's right,
and when we celebrate the achievements of one, we forget

(13:22):
the other. Talenting is hard work. So a shepherd lost
one sheep, a woman lost one coin, a father lost
two sons. And this is where we misread parables, for

(13:46):
we often make the God figure the shepherd, the woman,
the father. But there's not quite the way it should be. Four.
God never loses count of us, and never will. God

(14:10):
doesn't lose us at any point in our lives. We
may feel lost, but to God we are not lost,
for we always count. And when I say we, I
mean everyone, everyone here, everyone who listens, everyone in the world.

(14:31):
God has not lost, and God counts as valued and secured.
So when we are all found by those of us
who lose count and we rejoice, we should remember that

(14:57):
God has rejoiced from the days that each person was born.
This person counts, and God, throughout each stage in our lives,
will never lose count You need help counting, Surely I
do at times for all earth and creation matters. And

(15:22):
let us not lose count