Proper 24 Year A
Taken from Twelve Months of Sundays Year A
Description
Ordinary Time - Proper 24
Exodus 33.12–23
1 Thessalonians 1.1–10
Matthew 22.15–22
The multiple echoes of Exodus 33 bounce around the New Testament. The first letter to the Thessalonians, held by many to be the first surviving Christian writing, offers another reminder that the gospel’s basic call is to worship the true God rather than idols.
To pagan ears Paul’s message would have sounded profoundly Jewish. There is one God, the creator; man-made idols are lies and delusions. The true God is alive and life-giving; idols, lifeless themselves, cannot give life. But Paul’s message went further. Ever since Exodus, Jews had believed that no one could see God face to face and live. Paul believed that the true God had been made known personally in and as Jesus of Nazareth, the summation of Israel’s destiny, the Messiah...
Taken from Twelve Months of Sundays Year A by N T Wright
Published by SPCK