Spiritual Sublimation

Pentecost,  A p 8 July 2, 2023
Genesis 22:1-14 Psalm 13
Romans 6:12-23   Matthew 10:40-42

Lectionary Link

Long before Freud wrote about the sublimation, or deflection of basic instinctual drives into socially appropriate behaviors, we have had the Christian mystical tradition of St. Paul.

St. Paul might be called the godfather of the 12-step program especially as he wrote in the Epistle to the Romans.

A very basic issue of life for every human being is what might be called impulse control.  Impulse control is not the same for everyone because each person is different in one's personality make up and in how one's specific personality has interacted with the various kinds of influences in their social environments.

One of the definitions of sin that might be gleaned from reading Paul's epistle to the Romans, is sin is having a wrong relationship with oneself.  Sin is the lack of ability to harness the basic life energy as the driving engine for good things which pertain to appropriate enjoyment of self in one's life situation as well as tapping one's life energy for making the lives of others better through the practice of kindness, love, and justice.   

Most often, we don't have the maturity to help others when our own lives are in such a disarray of mismanaged energy which results in various forms of selfishness and varieties of addictions.

A mismanaged life occurs when the powerful spiritual force of desire which can only find the proper object of worship in the Plenitude of God, gets short circuited and projected upon all types of objects, situations, persons, and things.  When the profound desire of our lives is not given the avenues to focus upon the greatness of God, desire can settle for trying to make the ungodly into the divine.  Such focus of desire on the wrong things in the wrong ways ends up being the distraction and the resulting lack of impulse control in our lives.

St. Paul had always been a religious person, a person of the law, but he found that he had let his religious passion become a froward desire expressed in wanting even to kill his religious opponents.  He was confronted with the irony of seeing his religious passion being exposed as his actual sinful state.

How many people in their devout religious passion end up wanting to "get rid of" or do away with people who don't share their exact passions.  In this way, it is easy for our religious passion to become our very sin and expressive of our mismanaged impulse control.

Once St. Paul came to his senses, he experienced the power of Holy Spirit to allow the energy of his life to animate his body, soul, mind, emotions, actions, and speech to present God as welcoming to everyone, and especially those who had previously not been given a welcome.

One of the signs of attaining some success in our impulse control is that we have the power to turn outward and welcome others.

One of the ways that we can know that our religious life has become sinful life is in how we  practice of welcome.  We know that many religious groups spend their time identifying themselves around who is not welcome in their group, and this is indicative of religious practice which has actually become sinful practice.

Let us know today that welcoming hearts and welcoming practice to all is the sign of the Risen Christ attaining within us success in our quest for the impulse control of our lives.  Amen.