Into the wilderness (First Sunday of Lent, Year B)

How are your Lenten sacrifices going? Did you forget to give something up? Or like me, did you try to give up all meat and food from animals and only make it to Thursday? Did you forget to fast or did you eat meat last Wednesday or Friday? Well, the good news is I don't think you'll burn forever in hell. At least not for that. The bad news is that you have no excuse. You can begin Lent today. Today's readings show us how.

In the days of Noah and the Great Flood, God set a rainbow in the sky to remind us of his promise to save us from destruction. Whenever we see a rainbow, we remember God's promise.

In the days of Jesus, God set a cross on a hill to remind us of his promise to save us from the power of sin and death. When we see a cross, we remember God has kept his promise.

Lent helps us remember the God who never forgets us.

Mark's gospel today is short and to the point. Unlike the gospels of Luke and Matthew, there is no dramatic confrontation and dialogue between Jesus and Satan. In fact, Mark doesn't even say that Jesus fasted.

Mark doesn't say the Holy Spirit lead Jesus into the desert; he says the Holy Spirit DROVE Jesus into the desert. The goal is the same: to prepare for his life and mission Jesus must confront Satan and overcome temptation.

There are two main characters in the story: Jesus and Satan. There are two groups of extras: wild beasts and angels. And the stage is the wilderness. Only in the wilderness and only by confronting evil can Jesus discover the purpose of his life and the will of God.

And isn't that what we all want to know? What is the purpose of my life? What is the will of God for me?

To find out, we only need to do what Jesus did: enter the wilderness.

Guess what? The wilderness is inside you. The beasts and the angels are inside you. Satan and Jesus are inside you.

You enter the wilderness precisely by giving up things up during Lent, things that distract you, entertain you, amuse you or confuse you.

We don't give up things just to make ourselves miserable for 40 days. We pretend we have sinned so we can pretend we are sorry and after 40 days we can pretend we are forgiven and then at Easter we can pretend to be happy again. Then we wonder why our religion and our life seem like a pretense. Nor should we give up things to try to control God and get what we want and make God do what we want. And the worst reason to give up things is to make ourselves feel pious and holier and better than other people.

No, we fast and we abstain and we give things up during Lent in order to enter into the wilderness of our soul. There we will encounter wild beasts: our fears, our bad memories, our anger, our hatred, our sins. There we will be comforted by angels: love, fond memories, joy, laughter, hope. There we will face temptations: pride, guilt, revenge, self delusion.

There too we will encounter both Jesus and Satan. We learn to distinguish the voice of Satan from the voice of Jesus. Satan says, "You are worthless. You are nothing. Even God cannot save you. Give up." The voice of Jesus says, "I love you. I gave my life for you. You're worth it."

The temptations we face are the same Jesus faced. Feel sorry for yourself. Think only of yourself. Forget your humanity. Seize power. Use people. Betray God. Who would it hurt?

Every sin we commit comes from these temptations.

Satan wants us to forget who Jesus is and to forget who we are and to forget what God has done for us.

You, each of you, are precious children of God, made in God's image and likeness and NOTHING you can do can change or destroy that. Sin makes us forget this.

It's when we forget who we are that evil takes over our lives.

We do not fast and give things up for Lent to earn God's love; we fast and give things up to remind ourselves how much God loves us.

This Lent give up the things, the attitudes, the language that disguise who you are. Give up the diversions that drown out the voice of God in your heart. Give up the habits that distort the image of God in which you were made.

Then you will discover the purpose of your life; then you will know the will of God.

Jesus, avatar of Yahweh

In Hinduism, an avatar (from the Sanskrit word for “descent”) represents a god coming to earth in human form to help out a confused, endangered or wayward humanity. The disguise is necessary, one assumes, so the divine countenance doesn’t freak everybody out. There have been myriads of avatars over the ages, but Lord Krishna is the most famous avatar of Vishnu, the supreme Hindu deity.

In all those colorful pictures of Krishna, especially in the Bhagavad-Gita, blue skin distinguishes him from mere mortals. This clues us in to the divinity hiding behind the human face. My guess is the blue skin of the Na’vi on Pandora was not coincidental.

The movie Avatar affords us an opportunity to take a fresh look at Jesus. Theologians in centuries past wrestled with their understanding of Christ. They came up with the now familiar yet still mind-boggling formulas such as the Word-made-flesh, true God and true man, one in being with the Father. Expressions like “hypostatic union” and “consubstantial with the Father” were their attempts to explain how Jesus had two natures, one human, one divine, yet at the same time was one in being with the Father. Ultimately their terminology remained as inscrutable as the mystery itself.

Now, thanks to the immensely popular movie, people may be ready to accept Jesus as the avatar of Yahweh.

There are, of course, extremely important differences between Jesus and Krishna, let alone the fictional character Jake Scully!

The humans in the movie are not going to Pandora to save the natives but to exploit its resources. Interestingly enough, however, Jake’s avatar ultimately does indeed save the Na’vi from destruction. This captures the dilemma of requiring a savior from “above” but who is nonetheless like us in all things.

Few would argue that the human race continues to be confused, endangered and wayward, no less today than 2,000 years ago. The idea that “no one can see the face of God and live” is as prevalent in Judeo-Christian tradition as it is in Hinduism, so should Yahweh choose to come to earth to save us, a human being would be necessary to save us both from our situation and from seeing God face-to-face.

In the movie, the humans use avatars to protect themselves from the toxic air on Pandora. In order to mix with the native, blue-skinned Na’vi race of felinesque humanoids, people must either wear oxygen masks or enter a genetically altered, hybrid human/Na’vi avatar body. To do this, they lie down in a coffin-like computerized container that monitors their every brain wave and bodily movement. The container then slides into a special chamber, reminiscent of the cardboard coffin rolling into the crematory furnace in the opening scene. Their minds and souls, as it were, pass into their avatars and return to their human bodies at the end of the day, once the session is over.

Like the valiant missionaries of centuries past, Dr. Grace Augustine (get it?) spearheads the Na’vi “inculturation” program. Select humans will live among the natives,look like them, learn their language and culture, and hopefully win their hearts and minds. And as happens with earthbound missioners, “going native” sometimes results in identifying with the people so completely we become one of them, even if we are misunderstood as “betraying our own race.”

In the movie’s last scene Jake Scully, the human, dies and then, through the power of the Deity Eywa, opens his eyes in his erstwhile avatar body. He has successfully gone from inculturation to incarnation. He has passed from death through God to new life.

That last “eye-opening” moment best captures Jesus as Yahweh’s avatar, God come to earth in human form to save us; so identifying with us he totally becomes one with us from the first moment of his conception till his last breath on the Cross. Unlike the avatars in the movie, Jesus doesn’t merely borrow a human body so he can conveniently move among us, going back and forth to his divine Self. Remaining God, he becomes totally human to save our humanity through his humanity.

This truth echoes through the hymn in Philippians 2:6, “Although he was in the form of God, he did not deem equality with God something to be grasped, but rather emptied himself, taking the form of a slave and being born in human likeness.”

The prologue to John’s gospel declares, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God…and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

Jesus himself states, “The Father and I are one” (John 12:30) and “The one who has seen me, has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

With this notion of Jesus as the avatar of Yahweh, I invite you to search the Scriptures yourself to see if this holds true.

As for my using the diving name instead of just saying God, I wanted to emphasize it is very much the Jewish God taking human form in Jesus, whose name “Yahoshua” in Aramaic means “Yahweh saves.” The divine name itself translates “I AM WHO AM.” (Ex. 3:14) Thus, in John’s gospel, Jesus himself invokes the divine name declaring, “Before Abraham was, I AM” (John 8:58).

While we should not overlook the symbolism of Hometree and the Tree of Souls in Avatar, more important is their Deity, Eywa, arguably an anagram for Yawe(h).

OK, so a case may be made (and in fact has been acknowledged by Hindus centuries ago) that Jesus is the avatar of Yahweh. So what? Well, here’s the kicker: I believe we are called to be avatars of Jesus!

This process begins at Baptism, when we die to our old self, but it requires a true conversion, not just a change of religion or even a change of heart. It demands a total transformation of self into Self until we, like St. Paul, can say, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).

St Paul tells us “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind and put on the new man” (Ephesians 4:23-24) Sexist language notwithstanding, St. Paul admonishes us to allow the grace, the spirit of Christ, to possess us totally and transform us into new creations.

As avatars of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit, we truly become the Body of Christ, not just in symbol but in fact. This is not just for our individual or even communal salvation, but for all creation which “groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now…waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons and daughters, the redemption of our body” (Romans 8:22-23).

Through Jesus, God saves humanity. Through humanity, Jesus saves all creation. We have our work cut out for us. Open your eyes