Reflection for the Week – 25 August 2026

By Clive Conway

Posted Aug 25, 2026 in Faith

Holy ground, hard choices

Moses is going about his ordinary work, minding his sheep day after day in the wilderness, when his ordinary routine is interrupted by something extraordinary: God appears in the bush which burns without being consumed. It always struck me as a slightly Pythonesque scene as Moses says out loud, with only his sheep present, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight”. It’s hard to imagine how he could have not looked at this rather compelling phenomenon.

So God calls Moses back toward the very danger he had fled; back to Egypt, to Pharaoh, to a confrontation he never asked for. Moses pushes back, questioning who he is to do such a thing, and, for that matter, who even is this God who is sending him. The answer he receives is famously spare: “I am who I am” or “I will be what I will be”. It isn’t a title or a resumé, but a simple statement of presence.

Many centuries later, and another calling in Matthew 16. Peter has just declared that Jesus is the Messiah (Verse 16), a moment of real clarity, but when Jesus begins to explain that this title comes at a price: suffering, rejection, and death, Peter pulls him aside to push back, saying “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you”. Jesus’ reply is sharp – “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me, for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things”. Peter is exhibiting that most human of traits, choosing the easy path – that type of faithfulness that skips over everything really difficult.

Then comes that line that has challenged readers for almost two thousand years: “If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me”. That sounds like a pretty inspiring and rousing catchcry at first but think what it would have meant to Jesus’ audience, in an age where the cross was a symbol of subjugation, torture and public execution. Jesus isn’t suggesting we should be prepared to endure some minor inconveniences, but that this path might literally cost us everything. That sounds hard. Could I maybe just go back to tending my sheep (or in my case, my dog, cat, cockatiels, chooks, fish and turtle)?

Now although this passage has sometimes been interpreted as such, it’s clearly nor an instruction to endure quietly whatever suffering comes your way, or to accept injustice as simply being one’s lot. What Jesus invites us to is a choice, freely made but costly, to keep loving and keep working for what is right even when it is challenging and the world pushes back.

In another of our Lectionary readings for this week, Paul, writing to the Romans, gives us the flavour of that choice – it’s not about heroics, but something quieter and no less demanding: let love be genuine, bless those who persecute you, do not repay evil for evil, live peaceably as far as it depends on you, feed your enemies, look after our world and its people, choose compassion over self-interest.

Faithfulness isn’t about being fearless or unquestioning. Moses argued with God; Peter with Jesus; and we will too. But the call is always there: turn aside, pay attention, and when love asks you to walk toward something hard, don’t talk yourself out of it.

– Clive Conway

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Artwork: Mosaic depicting Moses and the Burning Bush at Saint Catherine Monastery, a Greek Orthodox monastery at the base of Mount Sinai in Egypt.

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