Marty Folsom—Year A Proper 12

Anthony: 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.

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.”

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

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.

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?

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.

Anthony: That’s right.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.