This Sunday was the first Sunday of Lent, a time when Christians around the world give up something they enjoy for the sake of Christ. It’s a season of sacrifice that culminates in Christ’s sacrifice. It’s a season of emptiness that culminates in an empty tomb. It’s a time when we reflect on our own mortality in relation to the fullness of God.
But why is emptiness so important? In the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness we are given some clues.
Following Jesus’ baptism and before he begins his ministry, he spends 40 days alone in the desert, fasting. During that time, he is visited and tempted by Satan.
Here is Jesus at a point of emptiness, at a point when you think he’d be most vulnerable. He is certainly hungry. So Satan strikes there, tempting him into turning rocks into bread. Jesus’ response is from scripture, that "man does not live by bread alone."
Satan then tempts Jesus a second and third time with power and fame. Jesus responds again with the word of God.
In a sense, Satan offers Jesus what he offered Adam and Eve. He tempts with basic physical needs and with more emotional ones as well. He offers food to take and eat, and he offers power and fulfillment and happiness. And really, is there anything wrong with these things?
After all, doesn’t God want us to be happy? What’s wrong with pursuing happiness? Isn’t it one of our God given rights?
First off, God is not opposed to earthly pleasures, He infuses them with a foundation of meaning. Jesus isn’t a Gnostic, nor are his followers, they don’t disconnect the spiritual from the physical. Calls to fasting aren’t meant to deny ourselves of physical things so that we can concentrate on “spiritual” things, but so we can redeem the physical things as spiritual things. Food can become substantive and enjoyable instead of one more thing we shove into a gaping hole. So can entertainment, relationships, sex and other pleasures.
A theologian named Pascal once wrote about a “God shaped hole” that exists in all of us. He argued that every human being was created with a place inside of them that can only be filled up by the presence of God. He went on to say that humans make the mistake of trying to fill that hole with other things, the things that make them “happy”.
The God-shaped hole in the human heart is in fact an infinite and terrifying abyss, Pascal said, which I try to cover over with all sorts of false facades. But then a crack appears in the facade, and I see through it the well of eternal nothingness plunging down forever, and I hurl myself back in total horror.
Can I pour alcohol through the crack in the facade and fill the primordial abyss of nonbeing and remove the unbearable terror? This does not work for very long. Sigmund Freud said in Civilization and Its Discontents that no mood-altering chemicals ultimately perform this job satisfactorily. For a while Freud thought that cocaine could safely do this, and had to learn the hard way, through his own personal experience, that in the long run it worked no better than alcohol.
Neither does money or sex or power or security. We’ve seen evidence, either through witnessing it, or by first hand experience.
Only that which is infinite and completely transcendent, Pascal said, could fill such an infinite abyss.
The Bible says that we cannot love both God and mammon. Mammon is just a word for “stuff” or things. We cannot love both God and things. God is to be loved and things are to be used. And it is increasingly important that we love God and use things, for there is much in our gadget-minded, consumer-oriented society that is encouraging us to love things and use God.
Satan tempts Jesus with provision, wealth, and power. He tempts Him with what he tempts us. The pursuit of happiness. The American Dream. But we are called, as Christ did, to pursue holiness. Remember Jesus’ words to Satan, “man does not live by bread alone, but by the word of God.” Jesus knows where his blessings come from. His time in the desert has been a reminder of that. His time in the word was a reminder of that too. That’s why he can use it to sustain himself in the midst of temptation. He knows to put the giver before the gift.
The devil is always suggesting that we compromise our calling by offering us what is good in place of what is best. He plays on our hunger and he plays on our fear. We’re so afraid to face our own emptiness that we’ll consume anything to make that emptiness go away.
So, in this season of Lent, we follow the example of Christ in the wilderness and make a conscious choice for emptiness.
There are schools of religious thought that teach an embracing of emptiness as the key to happiness. That we must die to ourselves. That a denial of our physical selves will, in and of itself, redeem our spiritual selves. That the physical is bad and the spiritual is good. That is not what we proclaim. We proclaim the physical and spiritual are connected and we witness that in the incarnation of Jesus. If we deny ourselves, it is only so we can take up the cross of Christ. If we die, it is only so we can live again. If we embrace emptiness, it isn’t with emptiness as the end goal, but as a means to an end, experiencing the fullness of God. If we stop grasping at stuff, it is so we can grab hold of God.
I encourage you, if you haven’t already, to give something up this Lenten season. Something you really like. Something you’ll miss. Something that you use as a crutch to sustain you, to keep you from being lonely or quiet or empty, to keep from looking into that abyss. I encourage you to ask God into that time and that place that you normally fill with television or chocolate or shopping. Let this season of Lent be a time when you embrace emptiness in order to better understand the sacrifice of Christ and to be more filled with the Spirit of God.
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