How do you determine value
Luke 15:8 – 10
Rabbi Rev. Dr. Michael H. Koplitz
[Parable] 8 “Or what woman, if she has ten silver coins and loses one coin, does not
light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? 9 “And when
she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with
me, because I have found the coin which I had lost!’
[Meaning] 10 “In the same way, I tell you, there is joy an the presence of the angels
of God over one sinner who repents.”
In Luke’s Gospel, chapter 15, verses 8–10, we find a very short and very sharp parable.
Jesus tells the story of a woman who loses a silver coin and immediately takes up her
broom, sweeping every corner of her home until she finds it. She will not stop searching
until the coin is recovered.
To understand why this is so significant, we need to remember something about the
ancient world. Floors in homes were not smooth and level like ours today. They were
uneven, filled with cracks and crevices because of the way they were constructed. A
small coin could easily slip into one of those cracks and be nearly impossible to see.
The coin Jesus refers to is a drachma—a petite silver coin, even smaller than a U.S.
penny. It represented one full day’s wages. Losing a drachma was a serious matter. If
the woman could not find it, she would not have enough money to go to the market
and buy food for her family that day. And for people in Jesus’ time, that could mean
going without eating. They lived day by day. There was no refrigeration, no freezers,
and certainly no ability to store a week’s worth of groceries.
Women went to the market every day except the Sabbath. On Fridays, they would
purchase twice as much so they could feed the family when the markets were closed.
While the ancient world did have a few preservatives—especially salt for meats—there
wasn’t much else. Bread was baked in the morning and eaten the same day. Keeping
bread overnight meant it would be stale by the next day, and Sabbath bread was likely
quite dry.
Today, when we buy bread at the store, it lasts a long time because of preservatives. But
in Jesus’ time, bread that wasn’t eaten was simply covered by a cloth or piece of paper—
no Ziploc bags, no Tupperware, nothing to keep it fresh.
So ,when you picture that little drachma slipping into a crack in the floor, you begin to
understand just how valuable it was. It represented life for that family.
Now think about how we determine value today. Most of us have all kinds of things in
our homes. I can look around my study and see plenty of objects I’ve collected over
time. Everything has a monetary value—determined by what someone else is willing to
pay for it. But I also see items that have very little financial value yet mean a great deal
to me because of their sentimental worth. My guess is you have the same kinds of things:
little mementos from a parent or grandparent that you would never part with, no matter
what someone offered.
And if one of those precious items went missing, you would probably turn your whole
house upside down trying to find it.
That is the heart of Jesus’ parable. As with all rabbis, Jesus taught through parables, but
this one is not complicated. He even tells us the meaning.
Jesus is saying that God places such immense value on each one of us that if even one
person wanders from God’s kingdom, God will go searching—lovingly and
persistently—until that person is brought home again. We are that valuable to God.
Think about that for a moment. There are well over 6 billion people on the earth today.
Add to that every person who has lived since Adam’s time and every person who will
live after us. And yet God cares for each one individually. That is an overwhelming,
almost unbelievable truth.
So now consider this personally: If God values you that deeply—out of billions—how
does that shape the way you value your relationship with God? How does it make you
feel to know you are seen, known, and loved in such a profound way?
We say that Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sins. But how many of us value
that gift enough to respond, to give back, to live in gratitude?
If you can imagine God caring so much for you that—even among six or seven billion
people—God would search diligently if you were lost, then the next natural question is
this:
Knowing that God values you so deeply, what can you offer to God in return?
