Description
Twelve Months of Sundays – Year A
Ordinary Time
Proper 17
Exodus 3.1–15
Romans 12.9–21
Matthew 16.21–28
Peter, like Moses, hid his face, afraid to look upon God. He wanted to see God’s messianic movement launched, but not like this; Moses had wanted to see Israel liberated, and had indeed begun his own one-man project to that effect, but was not prepared for the God whose chosen symbol was the burning bush. So much easier to do things one’s own way, to fight evil with evil, to overthrow violence with violence.
So much harder to stand before the fire and then before Pharaoh. So much harder to follow the way of the cross.
But only thus is God’s name revealed – in so far as ever it is. Not simply ‘The Lord’, a bland and perhaps remote deity, but yhwh, challenging imagination and pronunciation alike. ‘I am who I am’; ‘I will be what I will be’; the deepest source, the highest court, the final cause, the One Who Is, the Person behind all personality...
Taken from Twelve Months of Sundays Year A by N T Wright
Published by SPCK