The Kingdom Scribe – Matthew 13:51-58

I love the book of Hebrews. One of the things I love most about it is seeing the brilliant way the author (whoever he may be) handles the Old Testament scriptures and communicates the gospel message through them. It is obvious he has spent incredible time and energy studying these scriptures and seeing their implications for the new age in Jesus.

This author is like Jesus, and the way Jesus described what every teacher of the kingdom must be like. He explains this to his disciples after he finishes teaching in parables.

“Have you understood all these things?” They said to him, “Yes.” And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

And when Jesus had finished these parables, he went away from there, and coming to his hometown he taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, “Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?” And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household.” And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief. (Matthew 13:51-58 ESV)

Jesus finishes teaching in parables but first drives home a principle to his disciples.  The job of the scribe was to transmit the text of God’s word to the nation, and this included not only copying the text but interpreting it.  Like the master of a house who owns things handed down from his family and who also creates his own treasures, the disciple-of-Jesus teacher must know how to take the treasure of the old covenant and understand it in light of the new covenant being fulfilled in Jesus.

In one sense we may say that all that Jesus taught in the parables is envisaged in the Old Testament scriptures.  Particularly, the messianic prophecies that predict Messiah’s suffering imply that there will be a phase of the kingdom’s coming that includes rejection, animosity, a selective belief by some and not all, leading to slow but enormous growth, and an eventual judgment that will need to be made to separate the lost from the found.  Jesus had mastered the Scriptures and could teach all this in a new way as the leader of this coming kingdom.  He was the master scribe. So must be his disciples.

That continued unbelief and animosity that is leading to Jesus’ suffering is the rejection he experiences in his own hometown of Nazareth.  Those who know his family (Joseph is only mentioned as “the carpenter” and so is likely no longer alive) resent this man’s claims to represent God and his call to repent.  They know his mom, his four brothers (James and Judas will later write two of the epistles in our New Testament) and his sisters (we don’t know how many Jesus had), whom Mary had after Jesus was born, children through her marriage to Joseph (she did not, as Roman Catholicism teaches, remain a virgin after Jesus’ birth).  So they take offense.  Jesus does not do many miracles because there is lack of faith.  What an opportunity they missed to be taught by the Faithful Scribe.