Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

In Psalm 49, one of the psalms assigned by the lectionary this morning, we read about a clear contrast. 

The psalmist aspires to be among those who are oriented fully towards God, who belong to the Kingdom of God. On the other hand, one may ignore this spiritual dimension, and thus live a stunted and blind existence, oriented only towards physical objects.

One of the points of contrast in this psalm is fear. Understanding this text typologically, the children of God can trust in Christ’s salvation — not merely from the Father’s anger at sin, but rather from the ultimate reality of death and from the slavery of our sinful impulses. That trust brings us into a state of love, and ‘perfect love casts out fear’ as St. John says. By contrast, those who do not trust in God must look to all kinds of physical objects to distract from the ever-present fear of death and the disintegration of life caused by our baser impulses.

Many of the so-called ‘passions’ described by the early Church fathers imply an unnecessary fixation on the body as an end-in-itself. Others actually move in the direction of inactivity, numbness, unconsciousness, and ultimately, annihilation. All of them, however, leave us exposed to our eventual death and a sense of dis-ease with regards to our mortality.

Rather than succumb to this fear, however, the Children of God are called, amongst other things, to prayer (see this morning’s Heth portion of Psalm 119), an orientation to God that integrates the spiritual and physical dimensions of our being (since we are made in God’s image), a living-in-presence that allows our ‘passions’ to die and our fear to be dispelled. Prayer denies the emptiness of a purely physical existence and stems the negative energy of our destructive impulses — through the Father’s infinite love, the Son’s ultimate sacrifice, and the Spirit’s cleansing confirmation.

Let us pray with the hope that God will transform us into Children of the Kingdom.

Yours in Christ,
Justin