Proclaiming the Parables Quotes

“This parable calls us to look for the advent of the kingdom, the inbreaking of the life of God, in places of utter failure and grinding hopelessness.”
― Thomas G. Long, Proclaiming the Parables: Preaching and Teaching the Kingdom of God

“He shows this authoritative power when a sudden storm on the Sea of Galilee threatens to swamp the boat carrying him and his disciples. We sometimes speak of this story as “Jesus stilling the storm” (4:35–41), but “stilling” is not a strong enough word. The storm is not a low-pressure front on the Weather Channel; it’s a demonic maelstrom whipping up the strong winds and high seas of chaos. Jesus doesn’t gently calm this storm; he shouts into its fury and rebukes it, just as he will later rebuke Peter for slipping over to the dark side and identifying with Satan (8:33). To put it in proper theological language, Jesus denounces the hell out of the storm, literally.”
― Thomas G. Long, Proclaiming the Parables: Preaching and Teaching the Kingdom of God

“Perhaps the best way, then, to read the tough language in Matthew that all sin and all sinners will be burned up in the fire of God’s judgment is to understand it as a graphic expression of what is ultimately a glad, confident, and hopeful promise that nothing that mars God’s goodness will endure. There is no cancer, no killing virus, no Alzheimer’s, no plague, no child abuse, no tyranny, no cruelty, no oppression, no lynching, no placing of children in cages, no homelessness, no tragic tears, no suffocating loneliness, no torture, no death in the kingdom of heaven. God and God’s kingdom will be revealed to be all that truly exists, all-consuming, and nothing outside of it will have any reality at all. All that has destroyed and maimed and oppressed and polluted creation and the human prospect will be burned away like straw.”
― Thomas G. Long, Proclaiming the Parables: Preaching and Teaching the Kingdom of God