Seder 148 Sermon: King Parables

 In a sermon at Church of the Messiah on June 17, 2023, Kyle Kettering talked about king parables, a popular genre of rabbinic teaching used in the exegesis of scripture.  The 465 rabbinic parables identified by Notley and Safrai fall into several categories, king parables being one of the leading varieties.  

The king in the parable usually represents God.  For example, Moses' being denied the opportunity to settle in Canaan is compared to a king who tells his son not to enter the palace.  

Kyle observed that not many of Jesus' parables can be called king parables, and he raised the question of why Jesus did not use this kind of parable very often.  Perhaps, he said, this is because Jesus shaped his teachings around rural life more than elite society.  

One of Jesus' king parables is recorded in Matthew 18:21-35.  The king, representing God, is merciful to a servant who asks for forgiveness of a large debt, but then punishes that servant when he denies a request for forgiveness of a small debt.  

Another one of Jesus' king parables is the parable of the wedding banquet in Matthew 22:1-14.  God in this parable is again portrayed as carrying out judgment.  Kyle raised the question of why God's role as judge is emphasized in Jesus' few king parables.  

Seder 34 Sermon: Dwelling Together

 Certain biblical passages are so familiar to us that we do not recognize how strange they actually are.

For example, isn't it amazing that Joseph's brothers became so resentful of him that they considered killing him, and as it was ended up selling him into slavery (Gen 37:20-28)?

And isn't it strange that Jesus, at age 12. remained behind in Jerusalem after the Passover week celebration without telling his parents what he intended to do, and then seemed surprised when they were worried about him (Luke 2:41-52)?   

In a sermon at Church of the Messiah on Nov 28, 2020, Kyle Kettering reflected on these two accounts, noting that people often behave in strange ways toward members of their families.  Even so, families are a blessing, and we grow in character through all the weird things that other family members do.  

In discussing Luke 2, Kyle mentioned an interesting reading of Luke 2:49 that is different from the one we most often hear.  In that verse, Jesus says to his parents, "Why did you seek Me?  Did you not know that I must be about My Father's business?"  (NKJV)

Usually we assume that Jesus was referring in v 49 to God, who was indeed his Father.  (That is what the NKJV assumes by capitalizing the "F" in "Father".)  But it is also possible that Jesus was referring to his legal human father Joseph, who is called Jesus' father in the previous verse.  (Steven Notley favors this reading.) We know that Jesus' family was notably pious, as evidenced by their frequent pilgrimages to Jerusalem and careful observance of the Torah in general (vv 22-24, 41).   So it could be that while Joseph was a carpenter, his real love was the Word of God, a love that he passed along to his son.  Jesus was honoring Joseph by pursuing that love, which was Joseph's real "business."

Seder 18: Another Messianic Connection in Psalm 110---verse 3b

The Old Testament chapter most often referenced in the New Testament is Psalm 110.  The New Testament references are to verse 1 (about the position of David's Lord on the divine throne at God's right hand) and verse 4 (about the special priesthood of David's Lord patterned after that of Melchizedek).

Verse 3b also adds to the Messianic import of the psalm.  In the ESV, translated from the Masoretic Text, it reads: "from the womb of the morning, the dew of your youth will be yours."

It's not clear at all what this means.  But the Septuagint has a definite Messianic thrust:  "From the womb, before the morning star, I brought you forth."  This translation seems to imply that David's Lord is a Son of God with ancient origins.

On the importance of the Septuagint in bringing out the full Messianic implications of the Old Testament, a good source is Michael Rydelnik's book The Messianic Hope.  In connection with Ps 110:3b, Rydelnik notes that some scholars believe the Masoretes arranged the vowel pointing in order to obscure the messianic implications of the verse.

At any rate, in the Hebrew consonantal text, there is an important word link between Ps 110:3b and Psalm 2:7:  "The LORD said to me, 'You are my Son; today I have begotten you.' "  This verse identifies the Davidic Messiah as a unique Son of God.  The word for "begotten" is common to Psalm 2:7 and Psalm 110:3.

We see a pairing of Psalm 2 and Psalm 110 in some New Testament passages---in Heb 1:5,13; Heb 5:5-6.  There is further evidence in Luke 22:69-70 that this connection was part of Jewish understanding in the days of Jesus.  For more discussion, see the paper "Hebrew-Only Exegesis:  A Philological Approach to Jesus' Use of the Hebrew Bible," by R. Steven Notley and Jeffrey P. Garcia, pp 349-376 in The Language Environment of First Century Judaea, Brill, 2014.

Ps 110:3b, as translated in the Septuagint, was important to early Christians.  For example, Justin Martyr used it to argue in Dialogue with Trypho, chapter 63, "does not this declare to you that [he was] from of old, and that the God and Father of all things intended for him to be begotten by a human womb?"