Some people tend to overeat when they are stressed. That is why we have such a term called “comfort food” that people turn to for familiarity and emotional security. We sometimes use food to shield ourselves from ourselves. Not only food, but we use perfumes, undergo cosmetic surgery, buy branded goods, go to cinemas, make noise, engage busyness and chase adrenaline—what we called creaturely comforts and activities—all these are not bad in themselves but they sometimes appeal to our fear of facing ourselves. The first Sunday of Lent challenges to enter the desert in order to face ourselves.The desert today beckons us, like it beckoned Jesus to abandon his fears, his security blanket and go in search of the real him before God. In order to understand what the desert means for us, take a look at the first reading. Adam and Eve were created perfect. They may be the best of God’s creation but nevertheless, creatures.
As such, the temptation of Adam and Eve is set within the context of creatureliness, meaning within the context of our reliance or dependence on God. Adam and Eve struggled with swhat it meant to be perfect and yet dependent. They may be perfect and but yet they were constrained by the boundary between good and evil. Imagine the serpent’s temptation. “You sure there are certain things you can’t do? You are sure you are not God yourselves?” The Devil’s temptation must be seen in the context of luring the creature to deny this dependence on God.
According to St Paul in the 2nd Reading, sin entered the world through one man. Sin entered the world through this single lie of self-sufficiency. That is why the desert is a challenge metaphor because its starkness provides no space for hiding from ourselves, nowhere to run from the truth that we are not self-sufficient. The first Adam failed the test of dependency because creatureliness was deemed a curse rather than a blessing. Instead of dependence as a relationship of love between the Creator and the creature, a relationship marked or characterised by “limitation” which we otherwise know as “moral standards” or as mentioned earlier, the boundary between good and evil. In this relationship of dependence, we obey God’s laws because of love. The Devil, on the other hand, introduced the notion of dependence as slavery. Limitation is slavery. Why must you listen to God? Why can’t you decide to do what you want to do? Our notion of freedom is self-decision independent of God. Is that not our notion of freedom, especially the freedom of the self-made man?
But the answer of the 2nd Adam, Jesus, to the Devil includes the very notion that the created being is of necessity dependent on the Creator alone. In the desert, shorn of all that can hide us, be they creaturely comforts or excessive activities symbolised in Jesus’ temptation as food, prestige and power, we have no choice but to face with ourselves. The truth is that we prefer to hide, like Adam and Eve hid from God and lived in denial. The fig leaf in the Garden of Eden is a metaphor for what we use—alcohol, crass material wealth, noise or busy-ness—to hide away from the loving gaze of God who sees us for who we are, not who we pretend to be.
We have also become adept or good at running away from ourselves. For example, busyness could be a symptom of running away. And many of us have this personal phantom “trainer” who drives us and tell us that we have to be elsewhere and not here. We can be a better husband elsewhere, not here with my present wife. I can have a better career elsewhere, not here in my current job. I can live in a better country elsewhere where my gifts are appreciated, not here where there’s always discrimination. I should be elsewhere except here to make a stand to be a better person. It seems that I cannot encounter God here but elsewhere. Busyness is a form of running away from facing ourselves.
That is why the desert is not a physical place but an interior space for God to see us, to commune with us and to love us. It is only possible when we do not run away from facing ourselves. But, we are a generation that feels really bad about itself. If we weren’t so then there must be an explanation why the constant need to market ourselves? We are a generation of emotional pygmies because we look for our validation, justification or affirmation not from God but from what we can do or achieve. Many of us are afraid that God dares to love us and we are deceived by the Devil to think that God’s love can never be greater than our sins. Our notion of God is a God who hates not just the sin but ALSO the sinner.
The point is: so what if you were a sinner and so what if you were unworthy? That’s the reality of who we are. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that God can and even dares to encounter us. The devil’s job is to convince us that we are so utterly useless that God cannot love us. That’s his lie. So, the person who stays away from Church for years out of the fear that God cannot love him or her is not staying away from God but is rather running away from himself or herself. He or she is afraid to be encountered by God. That is why alcohol often comes in. After a few beer or shots of whiskey, I feel good about myself. I don’t need God to make me feel good.
Jesus in standing up to the Devil shows us that Lent is the here to stand utterly naked before God, without the fig leaf of false security that we find in our comfort food and in our running away, etc. By standing still, Jesus acknowledges his total dependence on God for who he should be. For us, however hideous our sins may be, it is time to allow them to come to surface and realise that God’s gaze is a healing gaze and not a condemning glare. We too can be who we should be but only if we dare to stand naked before God.
