30. Ministers as Scribes of the Kingdom
by Graham Kings
Date added: 24/03/2026
Introduction
On 3 Nov 1998, I preached at the Cambridge Theological Federation Football Eucharist. Peter McEnhill, the current Principal of Westminster College, like me, played for the Federation team and took part in the service.
Unlike me, he did not play in the team in the 1970s, 80s, 90s and naughties… I have the sermon here. It’s not very good - but the liturgy was.
Instead of the peace, we shared quarters of oranges.
At the dismissal, I declared:
They think it’s all over.
The congregation responded:
It is now.
So, let us try that, echoing Kenneth Wolstenholme in 1966:
Concerning your Durham and Cambridge Awards:
They think it’s all over.
It is now.
Or is it?
My title this evening is, ‘Ministers as Scribes of the Kingdom’.
We will be looking briefly at three passages, in the Psalms, Ecclesiasticus and Matthew, together with three aphorisms about Ministers as Scribes.
1. There are always greater depths to be sought out - Psalm 19.
Please turn to the front of your service sheet.
Here, in a mahogany door panel, is portrayed Psalm 19: a scribe studying the Torah.
In 1991, I commissioned Benson Ndaka, artist in residence at Tigoni Benedictine monastery, near Limuru, Kenya, to carve six door panels and one longer sculpture for our new library building at St Andrew’s College, Kabare, Kenya. They are amazing. The other six may be seen on my website.
I worked on the theology of the carvings with Benson. This is the right-hand door of the library, the Word of the Lord in the Hebrew Scriptures. Its pair is the Word of the Lord in the New Testament, the Parable of the Sower.
Throughout your ministry, I would love you to meditate on God’s Word like this scribe. He pores over the Torah. He is sitting on a njungwa, a three-legged Kikuyu elder’s stool. He is also writing comments on the Torah. The Sun above is described in the first six verses. Then, the subject flips to the Torah in verses 7-13.
C. S. Lewis has a beautiful chapter in his book, Reflections on the Psalms. Chapter 6 is entitled, ‘Sweeter than Honey’. In the carving, the scribe has turned his back on the honey pot and on the gold. Lewis writes:
Then at once, in verse 7 he is talking of something else, which hardly seems to him something else, because it is so like the all-piercing, all detecting sunshine… The Law is ‘undelfiled’, the Law gives light, it is clean and everlasting and ‘sweet’. No one can improve on this and nothing can more fully admit us to the old Jewish feeling about the Law; luminous, severe, disinfectant, exultant.
C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1958), p. 64.
I’ve written a poem on each of Benson Ndaka’s carvings and will leave you to read my ‘Lavish Law’ hymn on the inside back cover, when you are at home. Try singing it to Tallis’s Canon.
So, there are always greater depths to be sought out. My nephew, Joe Grimwade, lectures in Latin at the University of Southampton. He helped me turn my aphorism into a neat gerundive phrase: semper profundiora quaerenda. It is inscribed in slate above our small chapel at home.
2. It takes the whole world to understand the whole gospel - Ecclesiasticus 39
This aphorism goes neatly into Latin as:
cuncto orbe terrarum opus est capere evangelium cunctum.
It takes the whole world to understand the whole gospel.
Before we come to Ecclesiasticus 39, let me remind you of Ecclesiasticus 32.3:
When you are old, you are entitled to speak, but come to the point and do not interrupt the music.
Chapter 39 is about the scribe - for us, the minister as theologian - who, according to verses 1-3, ‘studies wisdom of all the ancients, prophecies, sayings of the famous, and subtleties of parables.’
Now you have your Durham and Cambridge awards, keep studying. It is not over.
Verse 4: The scribe ‘travels in foreign lands and learns what is good and evil in the human lot’.
All theology is contextual and it is worth studying contextual theologies throughout the world. This is why the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide is sharing its charism with the Federation.
One of the founders of African Christian Theology, John Mbiti, wrote in 1976:
It is utterly scandalous for so many Christians in older Christendom to know so much about heretical movements in the second and third centuries, when so few of them know anything about Christian movements in areas of younger churches. We feel deeply affronted and wonder whether it is more meaningful theologically to have academic fellowship with heretics long dead than with living brethren of the Church today in the so-called Third World.
John S. Mbiti, ‘Theological Impotence and the Universality of the Church’ in G. Anderson and T. Stranksy (eds), Mission Trends No 3 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), pp. 6-18.
Verse 5 says the scribes ‘sets their hearts to rise early.’
That phrase ‘set their hearts’ or ‘devote themselves’ has resonances with the pioneering scribe, Ezra. Ezra 7.10 is engraved above the library entrance at St Andrew’s College, Kabare:
Ezra set his heart to study the Law of the Lord, and to do it and to teach it in Israel.
On 25 Sept 2005, I invited a friend to preach at St Mary’s Church, Islington, for the silver jubilee of my ordination. Oliver O’Donovan included this challenge in his sermon, which I pass on to you:
The main thing is, Graham’s ministry must not cease to be, even while he sits here in the Vicarage, a journey around the world. The whole Scriptures, the whole apostolic doctrine, the whole Christian life, the whole world church must break in on Islington through his ministry.
Oliver O’Donovan, The Word in Small Boats: Sermons from Oxford (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), p. 5.
So, remember, ‘it takes the whole world to understand the whole gospel’.
My wife, Ali, has had that embroidered on my football shirt.
3. Finally, Be like God, become completely human - Matthew 13
This goes into Latin as ut Deus, esto homo omnino, and is on my tennis shirt.
Sam Gibbs came up with this aphorism. He read medicine and played jazz double bass at Trinity Hall, lived with us in Harlesden, London, when I was a curate, served as a doctor with CMS in Tanzania and then was a Dermatology Consultant in Swindon. He died, in 2020, far too early.
There are many layers in our reading in Matthew 13 concerning the Scribe of the Kingdom.
I love the answer of the disciples to Jesus’ question in verse 51:
Have you understood all this?
They answered, ‘Yes.’
We may well say to ourselves, ‘Yeah, right!’
Someone once pointed out that English has double negative phrases (litotes) such as ‘a man of no mean city’ but does not have expressions of double positive. To which the only answer is, ‘Yeah, right!’
Matthew 13 verse 52.
Jesus says, Therefore every scribe who has been trained - through the Durham awards - for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.
Matthew writes himself into his gospel at this point as a vignette. His whole gospel draws on what is old and what is new.
Jesus is the ultimate scribe trained for the kingdom, who draws on the Hebrew Scriptures and reinterprets them with newness of life.
Thirdly, you are called to be such scribes, by imitating Jesus.
The intriguing aphorism of Sam Gibbs, ‘Be like God, become completely human’ sums up, in a nutshell, the Incarnation, Christology and the call to discipleship.
Conclusion
So, this evening, we’ve heard the calls from Psalm 19, Ecclesiasticus 39 and Matthew 13:
‘There are always greater depths to be sought out’
‘It takes the whole world to understand the whole gospel’ and
‘Be like God, become completely human.’
May God be with you all, in all your ministry and mission, wherever God calls you. Amen.
