Justin Appel

‘Let thy steadfast love come to me, O Lord,
thy salvation according to thy promise.’
- Psalm 119:41

Dear Friends,

Both of the psalms assigned to today (Psalm 38 and 119:25-48) have made me reflect on the word ‘salvation’.

Growing up, I was always taught that being ‘saved’ was something that happened at a particular moment, by ‘asking Jesus into my heart’. In other words, salvation was something that definitively happened when I put my faith in Jesus, and often times folks would emphasize the moment of that ‘conversion experience’. I would say, ‘I am saved,’ or perhaps ‘I have been saved’ to describe what, alas, for me was an elusive experience.

Perhaps what I learned was simply an end of a spectrum, a classical ‘conservative’ notion of salvation as fire insurance, something which I needed to protect myself from the conflagration that my sins had lit. I don’t reject that initial idea, because I still believe that faith in Jesus is essential. However, my idea of salvation is much broader now.

Broader doesn’t simply mean a move to a more 'liberal' extreme either, if there is such a thing. By that, I suppose I mean some kind of ‘social gospel’, a salvation by focusing relentlessly on good deeds in the world at the expense of individual faith.

No, I think the psalmist, and the early Christian writers, present a much richer notion of salvation. Listen to how the psalmist laments his condition: ‘There is no health in my flesh’, ‘my wounds stink and fester’, ‘I am utterly numb and crushed’. The psalmist does not ask for God to take away his guilt and give him a free pass to heaven. No, he asks instead to be delivered from the inner dysfunction that results when he turns away from God. I believe that the ultimate dysfunction, the real enemy, is death: both the physical death that separates our souls and bodies (which rightly belong together), and the spiritual death that begins when we push God away.

Is salvation personal? Deeply so! It begins in the dark crevices of my soul, allowing me to respond to God and to be open to him. Does it happen at a point in time? Possibly, but it goes on and on until we die, or until we become an actual ‘living flame’. People who do so are called a ‘saint’ in traditional terms. We would do well to dwell on the possibility that we can all become ‘saints’ in this sense. That is a rare phenomenon, but possible.

A wise theologian once said that the purpose of liturgy is to make us feel a nostalgia, a desire to become a saint. That sounds more like salvation to my ears.

Does salvation end there, in the individual? By no means! It pours out into society and into the natural world, into structures, taxonomies and hierarchies, into relationships. God is in the business of creating gardens, and we can all play a part in that work.

I find these psalms to be explicitly about salvation, because they mimic the process of repentance, that daily process of changing one’s mind, of turning back to God, experiencing a process of inner renewal.

Thanks to what God is doing, I can say ‘God has saved me’, ‘God is saving me now’, and ‘God will save me in the end.’

Blessings,
Justin