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Twelve Months of Sundays – Year A
Ordinary Time
Proper 14


Genesis 37.1–4, 12–28
Romans 10.5–15
Matthew 14.22–33

A recently published letter from Qumran (4QMMT) helps us to see what Paul is talking about here. It mostly contains priestly regulations. But the last part is a fresh telling of the story of Israel, from the great promises of Deuteronomy 28—30 to the author’s own time. Deuteronomy 30 is read as a prophecy of what is happening now, as God is at last renewing the covenant. Disobedience has brought about the covenantal curse; now at last the time of blessing is beginning.

Paul’s theology is a kind of second cousin to that view; Romans 9—10 as a whole corresponds to that story: 9.6—10.4, one of the most vital parts of the whole argument, tells the story of Israel from Abraham to the Messiah, pulling out of the rich tapestry the single dark thread that ran on to the Messiah’s own casting away. God’s purpose in having a ‘chosen people’, it seems, was that they should be the place and
the means whereby the sin and sorrow of all the world would be brought to a head, so that the world might be saved. All this was to become, alone and uniquely, the destiny of the Messiah. ‘Christ is the goal of the Law, so that covenant membership may extend to all who believe’ (10.4)...


Taken from Twelve Months of Sundays Year A by N T Wright

Published by SPCK

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