Marty Folsom—Year A Proper 9–Proper 12

Welcome to the Gospel Reverb podcast. Gospel Reverb is an audio gathering for preachers, teachers, and Bible thrill seekers. Each month our host, Anthony Mullins, will interview a new guest to gain insights and preaching nuggets mined from select passages of Scripture in that month’s Revised Common Lectionary. The podcast’s passion is to proclaim and boast in Jesus Christ, the one who reveals the heart of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And now onto the episode.

Anthony: Hello friends, and welcome to the latest episode of Gospel Reverb. Gospel Reverb is a podcast devoted to bringing you insights from Scripture found in the Revised Common Lectionary and sharing commentary from a Christocentric and Trinitarian view.

I’m your host, Anthony Mullins, and it brings me great delight to welcome our guest, Dr. Marty Folsom. Marty is a theologian committed to nurturing relationships. He’s a relational counselor, coach, author, preacher, and speaker. He earned a PhD in philosophy and theology, and his most recent book is The Psalms: A Sanctuary for the Soul, which is available on Amazon or wherever you get your faith-based books.

And he lives, and I’m a little bit jealous about this, he lives in beautiful Snohomish, Washington. Marty, thanks for being with us. Welcome back to the podcast, and we’re curious, how have you been? What have you been up to recently? And especially, what has you experiencing delight these days?

[00:01:39] Marty: Anthony, great to be here with you. We actually have moved from Snohomish and now live on …

Anthony: No.

Marty: … Camano Island. I am looking out …

Anthony: No.

Marty: … at Saratoga Passage with Whidbey Island in the distance, Mount Baker to the right and the Olympic Range to the left, with spring gardens around in front of me …

Anthony: Ah

Marty: … and sailboats going by and things like that.

Anthony: Ah.

Marty: So, life is good. I am here at a place a little bit like John on the island of Patmos, writing like crazy. I’m writing the final volume of my five Karl Barth series, which will tie into some of our Biblical passages here. And I am working on the Psalm series, which is everyday living into those.

But I feel young and healthy and vibrant and glad to be doing what I’m doing. I just finished teaching two classes at Northwest University in theology and psychology, and theology and counseling. So, bringing my work into the doctoral and the master’s level to say theology matters for the care of persons has been huge, and I’ll someday here, hopefully within a year or two, write books out of those.

I’m never bored, Anthony. I am constantly engaged in learning and being with others and helping others. And I do continue to counsel and the frontline sense of life that I am not an academic set aside, but rather someone who walks with people, that all of this matters for everyday life and relationship issues is still vibrantly important for me.

[00:03:10] Anthony: I know this about you, even though we haven’t met in person. I followed your work. And so, talking about your work, you mentioned the Psalms that you’re writing on, but also, I think you’re referring to Karl Barth for Everyone, or Church Dogmatics for Everyone.

[00:03:26] Marty: Correct. Correct.

[00:03:27] Anthony: What would you like to talk about in terms of these new works that you’re writing?

[00:03:31] Marty: I’ll just do a quick catch up on it. There are five volumes. Three of them are out. Number four is in the publisher’s desk. He is reading over it. At some point he’ll say, “Okay, we’re ready to edit and print.” But, so anyway, I’m done writing that one. So, volume five, Karl Barth died and said, “You should be able to figure out what I would’ve written from all the things I’ve done.”

So, I am attempting to do, consistent with the style of what I’ve done in the other volumes, what was it about the doctrine of redemption, the work of the Holy Spirit, the whole sense of living in hope and the Kingdom of God, which is important again for today’s text. All of these things I’m attempting to shape based on all the clues that he left.

So, it’s a huge journey of creating something that isn’t, it’s not there, but everything is pointing to what’s there, if that makes sense. So, it’s quite an undertaking and is quite exciting. My Psalm series, the first volume is out, and to say people are loving the idea that we meet with Jesus and the Father and the Spirit in the garden, and that every Psalm takes us into a place where we have this walk with the One who made the original Garden of Eden and still has the world as the garden, and that every Psalm has nuances and invitation to live within a conversation. So, the ability to bring the arts, there’s two different kinds of poems, as well as my daughter’s done visual representations of the places in the garden that we go.

Anthony: Nice.

Marty: So, it’s a highly creative endeavor. But I go through over 60 books, including thick commentaries, to really ask what is going on in each Psalm. So, they’re not lightly written, quickly written. They are invested with time and care to really put my ear to the heart of each Psalm and hear what it is that’s going on, and to really lead people into a walk with the living God in the garden and to walk away reflecting on how does this really matter to who I am in my everyday relationship with this living God? So, the responses have been wonderful. The word “wow” comes up- quite often with people.

[00:05:53] Anthony: Nice.

[00:05:54] Marty: So, it is a highly participatory literature, I say. It’s not just reading about the Psalms. It takes you into the Psalms and with the one about whom the Psalms are speaking and drawing us into a conversation with.

So, I’m excited just about it almost as a new form of literature. People talk about participating in the life of God, but so often we fall short of what does that really mean? And I think this series with the Psalms is taking us into what, for many people, has been a real heartbeat of something that feels personal with God.

And so, I’m really thinking that there’s something like what both Luther and Calvin saw, and that is if you take the Psalms and bring them into conversation, it is where much of the reformation happened when people really begin to meet with the living God. And for Luther, he put it to everyday music, the music of the pubs and so forth.

Calvin also had a work done that was a modernizing, bringing into the contemporary experience of people. So, to say, we think of simply the reformers bringing kind of theology back, but to say they had a deep sense that the Psalms were a place from which a reformation could happen, and I think we miss that.

And so, as I read and listen and write, this is not polarizing stuff. This is recentering, what does it mean to live in the challenge struggles of everyday life, but also the delights and discovering who we really are. So, the nature of the journey of doing the Psalms for me has been huge.

I did originally write, rewrote every Psalm in 1998, 1999 when I was doing my post doctorate at Regent College. So, I’ve had these poems there all this time, but I have since added a whole dimension of what does it look like to enter into the experience beyond just rewording? What does it look like to be reverbed into the Psalms?

[00:08:03] Anthony: I see what you did there.

[00:08:05] Marty: You see what I did there? Yeah.

Anthony: Yeah, that’s exciting …

Marty: So anyway, I’m almost done with volume two. I have two, two more Psalms. I’m doing Psalm 59 and 60 these two weeks, and that will be, then I’ll be into the editing process on that. So anyway, that series is coming along well also.

[00:08:23] Anthony: That’s so exciting. The volume at which you write is astounding to me, and I can’t wait to get my hands on that book. And anytime I think of the Psalms, I reflect back on what Athanasius said that Holy Scripture speaks to us, but the Psalms speak for us. That it’s the prayer of every human being, isn’t it?

Marty: Yes.

Anthony: It’s, “Go, God,” and “Man, now I’m in the pit of despair,” but it’s all beautiful, and we see a faithful God in our midst in real relationship with us. So, thank you for doing that. So, people, friends, audience do your thing. Go buy the book, and let’s support the work of Christ there in Marty’s work. Thank you so much.

So, let’s dive into our lectionary text. Our first passage of the month is Romans 7:15–25a. I’ll be reading from the New Revised Standard Version, the updated edition. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 9 in Ordinary Time, July 5.

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ¹⁶ Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷ But in fact it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me. ¹⁸ For I know that the good does not dwell within me, that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do the good lies close at hand, but not the ability. ¹⁹ For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. ²⁰ Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me. ²¹ So I find it to be a law that, when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. ²² For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, ²³ but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. ²⁴ Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? ²⁵ Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I am enslaved to the law of God, but with my flesh I am enslaved to the law of sin.

So, Marty, “I do not understand my own actions, for I do not do what I want, but I do the very things that I hate”, verse 15. In some sense, Paul is diagnosing what has ailed the human condition. So, where’s the good news here?

[00:11:01] Marty: The good news is he recognizes that he often says no to something that is the yes of God, and the yes of God in Jesus is always yes to the heart of the Father. And so, Paul recognizes the gospel is there, the goodness of God is there, and there’s something in him ― call it distracted, call it disconnected, call it whatever you like, the nature of the human ― there is this capacity to look away from the One who is the very source of life even while he still continues us.

And Paul has woken up to this. There’s something that when I recognize that saying no to God, that was choosing death. I was killing the relationship. And what good is this? Nothing. It is simply death. But thanks be to God, the yes is there. The yes of God in the person of Jesus Christ, even in this person who I am, says yes to me and no to my evil.

And to say the cross is, first of all, the yes of God for humanity that says no to the sinfulness of humanity. And so, we could look at the cross and see what Paul’s wrestling with here, the nature of sin, but you have to look deeper and go, “It’s all yes.” It is the yes of the love of God in the person of Jesus Christ who acknowledges what Paul’s acknowledging here and says, “But don’t get stuck there.”

The cross is proclaiming the yes of God, and in his resurrection, he is that yes every day to us, so that even as we wrestle with what Paul wrestles with here, the yes is the pronounced thing when we ask, “Do you love me even today?” And the resounding yes comes back, meets us, embraces us, and each day that yes is there.

And Paul’s ability to recognize the things that he says no to ― that is what comes from what is called “conscience” which, “con” “science”, the two parts are there. Knowing with. Knowing with what or who? Paul knows with God, and he knows that what he is inclined to is so often not a conscience shaped by being with the God who is living and present to him, but gets distracted.

So, he’s living in a tension, but he knows true north. He knows the right thing to do, and therefore his final statements are that delight. “But I know where” truth is. I know what it means not to be caught enslaved in this life apart from, but to be lived in the freedom that God gives to us in himself who is here present with me. I am not abandoned. I am one even in this state who is embraced.

[00:13:49] Anthony: Yeah. Amen and amen. That’s a beautiful heralding of the gospel right there. But if you were to dig or mine something else from this and proclaim it to a congregation, what else would you have to say?

[00:14:04] Marty: So that word enslaved, I’m not enslaved. The nature of Paul’s sense of being enslaved is particularly fear. “I’ve not been given a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but I’ve been given the spirit of adoption by whom I cry out, ‘Abba Father.’” So if we recognize here that Paul’s wrestling here with the possibility of the unfreedom that comes when we forget our essential orientation as children of the Father, loved to him in and through the Spirit by Jesus’ work in bringing us there, and that this whole sense of slavery that the law even brings ― the law’s always going, “Am I doing it right? Am I doing it wrong?” ― we become attentive to ourselves and not to the delight of the One who loves us. So, to say Paul here in the end is wanting to release us from any sense of being enslaved with the fear that ever makes us judges, and the word law that appears after it would seem to point us towards a kind of law, but it’s not the law of our courts.

This is the law of God. It’s the Torah. It’s the way of walking with the one who has loved us and given himself to us. So, he is, in his whole being, not in slavery to any earthly law. He is submitted to the nature of the way of God, which is the way of freedom. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”

And so, this is the law of the Spirit, and sets us free. We’re not enslaved to judgment, condemnation. Even as he’s sitting here wrestling with this, he could get absorbed in that condemnation, but no, he recognizes, “This God calls me to the life of freedom, and I will not be enslaved to any other law, judgment, or anything. Even my own judgment, I will not allow to be enslaved. I will live in the freedom won for me by the One who says, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.'” And in knowing Him, you are free.

[00:16:10] Anthony: Oh, wow. The scope of it ― it reminded me of a Thomas Torrance quote that “nothing in all of creation will be able to separate from his love any more than anything can separate the Father and the Son from one another.” Hallelujah, that he says yes to us, even as he says no to evil.

All right, our next passage is Matthew 13:1–9, 18–23. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 10 in Ordinary Time, July 12. Marty, would you read it for us, please?

[00:16:48] Marty: Yes.

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. ² Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. ³ And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. ⁴ And as he sowed, some seeds fell on a path, and the birds came and ate them up. ⁵ Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. ⁶ But when the sun rose, they were scorched, and since they had no root, they withered away. ⁷ Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. ⁸ Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. ⁹ If you have ears, hear!”.

¹⁸ “Hear, then, the parable of the sower. ¹⁹ When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. ²⁰ As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, ²¹ yet such a person has no root but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. ²² As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of this age and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. ²³ But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”

[00:19:15] Anthony: Before we get into exegeting the text, what, if anything, would you want preachers and teachers to know or be cautious about when it comes to the parables?

[00:19:28] Marty: The trick with parables of the kingdom is that we really quickly jump to thinking we need to build the kingdom.

[00:19:36] Anthony: Come on.

[00:19:38] Marty: But the point here really is this, these are parables of the kingdom. The kingdom of God is present, active, and waiting to do work. And so, the ability to align ourself with, to submit to, to yield to the work of the Spirit ― it’s really a matter of ourself getting out of the sense that he’s somewhere and he’s going to give me the power to do my work for the kingdom here, or someday the kingdom will come and then all will be done.

No. The kingdom is here and now. And so, our ability to simply let our hearts be penetrated by the here and nowness of God is where the root goes all the way down into our hearts and does something. But it’s just us all allowing the kingdom to be the shaping of who we are. So, it is just so easy for the question, what should, what do I need to do to take over, instead of what is the kingdom proclaimed here and what’s it doing, and how do I just not get in the way?

[00:20:47] Anthony: Oh. Yeah, that’s a good word. And speaking of good word, when we come to the written word, we’re looking for God. We’re looking for the God revealed in Jesus Christ. So, tell us about what this parable reveals about God, and the second part of this, a theological, anthropological question what does it reveal about God and what does it reveal about us, humanity?

[00:21:12] Marty: I think it’s an amazing thing that the world just grows, and we take it for granted. But to say all of this is here because of the intention of a God who created a world that is the very space within which we live, and to even recognize in our human life, we are alive, we are seeds on the soil because we have been given life and the ability to grow and to bloom.

And so, to recognize even ourselves as seeds who have this capacity to grow or not to grow, it’s all because God has given us already that life-giving capacity for his work to bring to fulfillment that which he intended from the very beginning.

So, to recognize that it, what it says about God is always the God of life. He is always about positioning us where life can happen. And the nature of what it is that humans are is that we have a tendency to place ourself away from what it is that will allow God’s life to work in us. So, the different kinds of soil and places that we might be. I’m not a lover of the city, and it’s partly just the way you can be six inches from somebody else in an apartment.

Anthony: Yeah.

Marty: So, you’re right next to people, but you’re apart from them. And no, the seed has no capacity to know and be known, to love and connect, to serve. If you hear them bumping against the walls, that may be as close a relationship as you have. And the image of a small town, which I heard something that Matt Canlis did this week, spending time in Scotland in a church at Godspeed, and saying, you know, “I had to slow down enough to where I didn’t expect people to come to my office as though that was the ground that people grew in. I had to be in the ground where they are, and the smaller the village, the closer we get.”

[00:23:10] Anthony: Yeah.

[00:23:10] Marty: And so, the positioning of ourself and the slowing down to the speed that God goes is, in a sense, allowing for the soil to do the work that it does to nurture the kind of relationship with God and one another, to be a community where this growth happens, and there’s hundredfold, sixtyfold.

So, you can imagine in a town of 100 people, you know all 100 people, and there’s a sense of love and appreciation for each person that’s there. Whereas you may be in a building of 1,000 people and you know no one.

Anthony: Yeah.

Marty: They’re all there, but nothing is growing. And so, to simply attune ourself to the nature of what does it look like to avail ourself to be those who listen, look, speak with others, and whether we pray out loud for them or not, to be the presence of prayer, that is the presence of the kingdom.

Because the kingdom of God is always just God here and now bringing a yes. How do I be that to that person walking through the door? Maybe I help them hold the door. Maybe I give them a smile. All of those things is being fertile ground for the kingdom to do a work. It is possible in the city. I think it’s just not as good, a good a soil as maybe a smaller place might be.

So, the nature of soil, I think there is a sense where we do make choices that align with positioning ourself both in the place, but also how we will be in the place. And so, I’ve often thought I would love to see a book where somebody just takes a mailman who says, “This town is my congregation, and every place where I drop off mail or packages, I’m going to get to know the people and love them.”

And to see this happen for 50 years, that his soil was this town, his commitment was to be the presence of the kingdom, and when he dies, that the whole town comes out, Christians and non-Christians going, “this person was like the presence of God among us. He cared. He brought us together.”

Anthony: Yes.

Marty: “He spoke our language. He knew us, and we came to know him.” That’s, in a sense, the fulfillment of what this parable invites us into, the hundredfold, that everyone would celebrate not his death, but the life that he lived that brought life to them.

[00:25:32] Anthony: And friends, the documentary that Marty referenced from Matt Canlis called Godspeed, I highly recommend. Just Google Godspeed Matt Canlis. Watch and learn and grow, and I just crack up every time I see it where the priest tells him, “You don’t have an office. Your office is out there. Go be with the people.” It’s awesome.

Marty: Yes.

Anthony: All right. Let’s transition to our next passage of the month. It’s Matthew 13:24–30, 36–43. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 11 in Ordinary Time, July 19.

He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field, ²⁵ but while everybody was asleep an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and then went away. ²⁶ So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. ²⁷ And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ ²⁸ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ ²⁹ But he replied, ‘No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. ³⁰ Let both of them grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’”

³⁶ Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” ³⁷ He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; ³⁸ the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, ³⁹ and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. ⁴⁰ Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. ⁴¹ The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, ⁴² and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. ⁴³ Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!

So, Marty, what does the parable of the weeds have to teach us about the kingdom of God?

[00:28:18] Marty: The one big thing is the kingdom of God is the one who comes and plants good seeds.

Anthony: Yes.

Marty: If we ask about the intention of God, we always know, if there’s good seeds, we know where they came from. The nature of the intent of one who plants seeds is that they envision abundance and provision and good things for all the earth. And so, to say the parable of the kingdom is to say that where you see the kinds of things that live out the heart of God the Father, you know where the seeds come from.

And when they’re not, you know that they’re not things that he intended. And Karl Barth says, “If you want to know what sin is, you have to say, we can’t give it an ontology or a being that’s truly real, because what’s really real is the love of God, the freeing love of God, and the heart of the Father that goes out into the world. And that is imaged in these seeds, and it produces all that is good.

[00:29:22] Anthony: Yeah, looking at verse 37, the one who sows is the Son of Man, and so often I hear people proclaiming this in such a way that it feels like I’m the one that’s doing the sowing of the good seed, but it’s truly the Son of Man. Let’s look to him.

What else would you … you know, Jesus says, “Let anyone with ears, listen.” So, we want to listen. What else should we hear and respond to because of this pericope?

[00:29:47] Marty: Yes. Interestingly, the word listen is key here. We tend to think today if only I could see Jesus, all would be well. If only I could see the good things in the world.

But the nature of hearing is something that penetrates more differently, so that the nature of the Jewish confession, Shema Israel, “Hear, O Israel,” to say the world of modern science wants to study that which is observable, but the science of the personal, that is to truly know persons, including the person of God, one has to learn to listen.

And so, listening goes beyond just the lips moving. It goes into the very depths of the heart. And so, in this parable, Jesus is saying that if you listen to this parable well, you will be invited to recognize that there is life in the planting of a seed that is good, that is the seed of the kingdom, that is the seed of the presence of God who brings life, who when there is goodness in the world, we know that it is the intention of the Father being fulfilled in the world in the same way that the good of the days of creation was, and that’s good, and that’s good. And here, this is the good of God in the world.

We’re still living, being focused by Jesus not to ask, “Who are the ones that are weeds?” That’s not the call of this parable. The call of this parable is to be those who are aligned with, attuned to the heart of the One who calls us to listen to his heart. And when you know his heart, then you’re able to discern for others and yourself what it means to follow the way of life. And that is the invitation of this.

[00:31:30] Anthony: In thinking about listening, It took me to a reading I did of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together and talking about the community of the church. And I’m loosely paraphrasing, but he said, “Often pastors under shepherds of Christ think that their first service to another is to speak,” because we’re often invited- to speak. But he said, “No. The first service to another is to listen and to know.” And so, I think what you’re saying here is vitally important, that we want to have ears to hear and that we can know him through that. Is there anything else from this text that you want to expound on?

[00:32:09] Marty: The idea of shining like the sun the last statement, “The righteous will shine …”

Anthony: Yeah.

Marty: “… like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” There’s something about what it means to be those who have grown up as seeds that were planted and grew well ― which things are growing really well here right now. When the sun shines, things seem to blossom in ways that they are being what they were intended to be.

And so again, the nature of the likeness of the person who grows because the seed has allowed the sun to do all that is there, those people shine like the sun, too. And the phrase the glory of God is to say that the very nature of glory is not just lightness and brightness in the world. It’s that the very character of God becomes implicit and glows in that person ― which if you’ve ever seen somebody who’s just full of delight, they’re glowing.

There is something in there that this shining of the glory of the goodness of God is in them. And I think that is the invitation to this parable, is that we don’t make ourself shine any more than we make the fruit of the Holy Spirit. But it is fruit, and it is shining because the seed has grown into what the kingdom has called it to be, fully alive, fully with God, fully in the world.

[00:33:33] Anthony: Fully alive. Amen and amen.

All right, we’re in the home stretch. One text to go. Matthew 13:31–33, 44–52. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 12 in Ordinary Time, July 26. Marty, we’d be grateful if you’d read it for us, please.

[00:33:56] Marty: Yes.

He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; ³² it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” ³³ He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.” ⁴⁴ “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and reburied; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. ⁴⁵ “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; 46 on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it. ⁴⁷ “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; ⁴⁸ when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. ⁴⁹ So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous ⁵⁰ and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. ⁵¹ “Have you understood all this?” They answered, “Yes.” ⁵² And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

[00:35:52] Anthony: So, “the kingdom of heaven is” gets repeated five times in short succession. Tell us about this. What’s going on here?

[00:36:01] Marty: So, people often say to me the phrase, “I don’t have time for that” or “I don’t have money for that.” And I say, “Huh, it sounds like that’s not a priority for you.”

Anthony: That’s right.

Marty: The nature of the kingdom is that there is a sense of the greatest value, the distinguishing out of that which defines the rest of your life. The day you decide to get married, it rearranges everything because that relationship has become a priority so that everything else aligns with what it is that is going on there.

So, to say the nature of the kingdom of heaven is that when we pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven,” that’s not a Father far away. We are suddenly submitting, “You are most important. Hallowed be thy name.” “Thy kingdom come” follows immediately because it is this reorientation. The number one priority in my life is to know who you are so that I know who I am. I know your name. I know that you know my name. May your kingdom now become that which is of greatest value in my life so that the choices that I make as I go through this day, they are all lived from the value of who you are in my life. They’re not a possession that I have in the way that some of these tangible things in these parables are.

But to say the kingdom is, it is the relationship with the God who made us and sustains us and gives us the ability for the daily events of our life to become like the mustard tree, for example. We become like those that are a blessing to others, that are a provision for others. We become attentive to being like Jesus as those who notices the sinners, the tax collectors, the outcasts, the marginalized. We become those whose priority is to act congruently with the heart of the Father in a way that’s consistent with the life of the Son, empowered by the Spirit, who gives us eyes to see and ears to hear as we go through our day.

So, this whole continuity of whatever image it is that would look like the kingdom, it’s all the reorientation of the core value around the living God, and then having that echo out in all these different ways of how we spend our life, provide our life, use our life in the goodness of the kingdom for others.

[00:38:22] Anthony: I can almost hear a listener going, “Okay, I’m hearing all this good news of the abundance of God, the goodness of God, how God confronts sin in his own person.” And yet in the last two parables, we hear about fire. We hear about weeping and gnashing of teeth, God separating out the evil from the righteous. What would you have to say about that? How do we see the goodness of God at work in texts like that?

[00:38:55] Marty: It is, of course, the difficult thing for everyone to think that at any point God does anything against anyone. The nature of the Psalms, the psalmist is constantly praying for exactly this kind of thing to happen.

[00:39:10] Anthony: That’s right.

[00:39:10] Marty: Destroy them and all that. So, to say that it is part of the tradition ― Jesus lived and breathed the Psalms, so it was everywhere. Even hanging on the cross, Jesus is quoting Psalm 22. So, he lives within this awareness that there is a world of people who are destructive towards the purposes of God, and a recognition that in the end that he will be the king who sits on the throne.

And to say that the nature of these people in this life to recognize, as I read this week, when somebody kills a rattlesnake in front of you or a cobra that’s about to attack, you don’t say, “Why did you do that? It was a living thing.” Your children were playing there and this rattlesnake was about to get them.

Nobody asks the question about the destruction of things that are destructive towards life. And so, to say there is something in the nature of what is going on here that we have to see as an echo of God will say yes even to evil by saying no to it. And so, the whole sense of that which calls that which is evil and chooses to continue as evil and to say no to it so that it does not do the destructive work that will be done is clearly part of what it is that is part of what is going on here.

I don’t think that it’s intended at all to create a fear in people, that people are wanting to hear this as a sermon and say, ” I don’t want to be end up in the fire. I guess I better make the choice,” right? So, to say the consequence of rejecting life, like stopping breathing or jumping into the water and drowning, there is a stopping of life that if one knows that the consequence of that is death, that one would choose not to do it.

But in these parables, it’s really the choice of life that is present and the consequence of death that is there, which J.B. Torrance said, “we have turned the gospel into something that we have made it so conditional that we’ve forgotten that the “if you don’t do this” are merely the consequences of what has happened. If somebody says, “If you stand too close to the edge of that, you might fall off that cliff and get killed,” it’s not a conditionality. It’s a consequence of the decisions that one makes to do things that are not life-affirming.

Anthony: Amen.

Marty: And so, there’s an acknowledgement, and this is why the Torrances and Barth said, “We are not universalists. We believe God loves even that person that’s standing too close to the cliff and falls down.” To say, “Does God love them?” “Even if I make my bed in Sheol, thou art with me.” People choose to reject God, and they live the consequence of that by rejecting God, not by being rejected by God.

Even in the parables of the kingdom, I think that we can say there is a respecting of the consequences of choices that people make that lives on. But as C.S. Lewis said in The Great Divorce, every day God sends a bus down from heaven, loads of people on the bus goes up so they can see it, and at the end of the day, they get back on the bus and they go back down to hell. They cannot give up their independence to be their own managers of their own life.

And so, I think to recognize that is to say there is built into the nature of Scripture and the nature of God the capacity for people to say no and to bear the consequences of that. But we can never say that is the intention of God.

As Ray Anderson said in a book I read just a week ago, “We have made death to be God’s judgment on sinners.” Anderson said, “No, it’s simply the consequence of rejecting God.” His will is to save humanity. And if you read the whole Bible, what he’s doing at every step of the way is working for bringing his lost ones home. So, to say death and what we’re seeing here as these destructive things, these are the consequences that God has not chosen, and he is doing everything with the kingdom to reverse them, that life might be the message, that life would be the story.

But the whole story is there, and it doesn’t make any less of the judgment of God is that in Christ he has come into the world so that we say, “Who shall separate us from the love of God? Neither height nor depth, angels nor principalities, things present, things yet to come. Nothing can separate us from the love of God.”

So, to say whatever we say with those passages, we cannot say that the love of God has been set aside. That is the persistent message of the kingdom, and the consequences of humans choosing not to accept it is also a real consequence, and that is also made this shadow echo within it.

[00:44:07] Anthony: I think it was C.S. Lewis, wasn’t it, that said, “In the end, there are those that will say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and there will be those that God says, ‘Thy will be done.'” We just choose our own consequences in that way and refuse to come into the party.

Marty: Yep.

Anthony: Wow. It’s hard to believe that would even happen, but here we are. We’re actually recording this on Ascension Thursday, which is good news. We often forget the Ascension. We talk about the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, but the Ascension as well is part of the good news that we see in the person and work of Jesus. So, I just wanted to give you an opportunity here at the end as a final good news thought. I want you to riff on the Triune God of grace as seen and apprehended through these parables. Tell us what you want to tell us.

[00:44:55] Marty: Yeah. So, with these parables I think we have a sense that the Father is not far away, but the Father is the Kingdom of God with open arms present, embracing a crowd of people who are listening attentively. They’re like those who have been orphaned who don’t know their parents, but there is something in this message of the kingdom that the Father’s arms are embracing around them in such a way that they’re beginning to feel there is some sense of finding home that is happening here.

And as Jesus is speaking these words, his words are the words of himself as the kingdom who is present, and he is giving them words that are hearing and penetrating deep into their heart, that the words are becoming a seed that is awakening them to say, “Maybe I am somebody who is known. Maybe I am someone who is loved. The way this person is talking, it’s as though there is an availability that’s calling to something deep in me to come home.”

And the Holy Spirit is dancing around on hearts and minds like tongues of fire on heads so that there is a shining that is beginning as there’s a dawning awareness that kingdom is not a place with castles far away. Kingdom is this presence of: I am surrounded by the very nature of the heart of God that embraces this place. This is a holy place. I almost feel like I should take off my shoes. There’s something about here because of who is here, this Father who calls me his child, this Son who’s calling me to submit to his kingdom, and the Spirit who is drawing me to wake up to that which is of greatest value, and that is to know that you are loved, you are seen, you are believed in. You belong with us and one another as a family that will never be let go.

[00:47:05] Anthony: Friends, as a final word, I want to share something from T.F. Torrance, who said, “The whole universe revolves round the love of God in Jesus Christ, and all its motion depends entirely upon Him.” Hallelujah, praise God. He is good, and Jesus is the proof.

I want to thank Marty for being with us. I want to thank of thank our Gospel Reverb team. What a blessing it is to work with such a fine group of people who make this podcast possible. And Marty, our tradition here at Gospel Reverb is to end with a word of prayer. Would you do the honors for us, please?

[00:47:41] Marty: I would be happy to do that. Dear Abba, we are grateful that you speak to us the words, “You belong to me.” And so, we acknowledge humbly that, yes, we do belong to you because you have brought the kingdom close to us. And Jesus, we acknowledge that you promised, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” And so, we acknowledge that this day we have been crucified to that old self, and now we live in you. We are made new because you are here with us as the presence of the kingdom who embraces us. And Holy Spirit, you have come to empower us for a life of love, not with the power that’s our own, but that which can only come from you.

And so, as we leave this moment today, we go with you into the world to embrace the world that you care for, to scoop them up in our arms as we lift them up in prayer and with our touch and with our help. We lift them up by your work, O Holy Spirit, to go into this world and see the kingdom doing its work ― that is, making the Father, the Son, and yourself known and evident in the world.

And so, we submit ourselves to you. We are one body because of who you are. And so, we give ourself to participate in your life, your ministry in the world because you go before us, with us. And we delight and are filled with joy to go with you. And we pray all these things in your name, you who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Anthony: Amen.

Thank you for being a guest of Gospel Reverb. If you like what you heard, give us a high rating, and review us on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast content. Share this episode with a friend. It really does help us get the word out as we are just getting started. Join us next month for a new show and insights from the RCL. Until then, peace be with you!