Our society has an entire
industry that it is built around creating emptiness and desire to fill that
emptiness. It’s called advertising. And lest you think I am casting stones at
something in which I have not sinned myself, let me assure you I worked in advertising
for several years. We sometimes called it public relations, but in the end, it
was advertising.
Advertising, a long
time ago, used to talk about the product. Advertising touted the attributes of
the product. The sort of things that told us a product was reliable, or would
be useful, or why it was better than another or previous product.
Now, we advertise
“life style.” We advertise by showing people what their lives will be like if only
they will buy what is advertised. For advertising to be effective, we have to create
emptiness, a lack, or a desire, a hole in the person seeing or hearing the
advertisement because they do not have the product. Advertising stimulates
greed by creating emptiness.
A few years ago I
read a wonderful essay by Anne Fadiman about mail order catalogues. Fadiman
wrote, “My problem – is that I never want the item, I want the associated
fantasy.”[1]
And Fadiman is right, most of us don’t need the product, or maybe even want the
product, but we buy it. We buy it because we want the associated fantasy. We
want to feel good about ourselves, or glamorous, or rich, or powerful, or
smart, or sexy, or whatever might be portrayed in the advertising. We all think
we are immune, but we are not. The world, the flesh and the devil are very much
with us. We buy because when we feel emptiness we get greedy. We want to see if
whatever we buy will fill that hole within us.
The terrible thing
about all this is that just like today’s gospel, advertising offers us
something that is not its own to give. Advertising offers us a way to feel good
that is not in its power to give. We may feel good momentarily, or feel some
security once we have obtained what we thought we were lacking, but soon that
hole in us will be empty again. Soon what we thought we wanted will seem hollow
or useless and we will want something else.
The devil was
selling greed to Jesus. Whether you believe in a personified evil one, or evil
as a force in the world, an emptiness only greed can fill is what the devil
tries to create in Jesus.
What happens here
is that Jesus is clear-sighted enough to recognize that what he is offered is
not the devil’s to give. What the devil offers to Jesus is never in the hands
of evil. The offering of bread, the granting of angels, and even the kingdoms
of this world are never the devil’s to give. They belong solely to God. Only
God can offer these things to us, never the evil one.
What is even more
startling to think about is that these things the devil offers Jesus – though
they are not his to give – can never
satisfy that greed inside of us. That greed inside of us, the greed we think
can be satisfied with more and better; can only be satisfied by God. Only God
can fill the God-shaped hole inside of us.[2]
Only God can satisfy that greed in us because God is who put the greediness
inside of us in the first place. Greed becomes evil when we confuse what it is
we’re trying to satisfy and want more or better. If we try to fill that
God-shaped hole in us with money, power, things, or whatever else it might be,
that hole will still be there and always will be there. The only thing that
will fit and fill that hole is God.
So what would
happen this Lent if we tried to fill that God-shaped hole with God? What would happen
if when we felt that emptiness inside us, instead of buying, or eating, or
drinking, or whatever we fill our emptiness with, we sought God instead? What
would happen if we became greedy for the good, for the One who created us, who
sustains us, and who redeems us? AMEN.
The
Rev Nicolette Papanek
©2017
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