On the day of our first test, I panicked. I had always been a good student. In fact, school work was all that I felt good at. But as I looked at the problems on this test, I was stumped. The numbers started to swim in front of my eyes, and my hand shook holding the pencil. I couldn’t think straight. I kept erasing and re-writing my answers. Soon, I watched each one of the other students walk up to the front of the room, put their finished test paper on the lab counter, and leave for the day. The teacher had gone down the hall for a cup of coffee, counting on the school’s strict honor code to keep us honest. When the last student left, I sighed, gathered my paper and pencil, and walked to the front of the room. As I placed my work next to the other exams, I couldn’t help but notice that my answers for many of the questions differed from the answers on the other students’ papers. I froze. If they were right, and I was wrong, then I was going to fail this test. Maybe I wasn’t smart enough to go to this school, I thought in a panic. My parents would be so disappointed in me. My teachers wouldn’t like me anymore. It wouldn’t be bearable.
So I peered around the room to make sure that no one was watching. I grabbed my pencil, and erased my answers one last time, rewriting them to make them match the numbers on the other students’ papers.
I ended up making a nice B in summer algebra. I didn’t get an F on that math exam or get caught for cheating. But I failed--I failed my first (but certainly not my last) wilderness test.
“Since you are a smart girl,” the Devil inside my head crooned to me, “you must do everything perfectly. They only love you for your brains, you know. ‘To the one to whom much is given, much is expected,’” the voice added, paraphrasing words that I’d heard even in church.
And I believed the tempter’s voice. Unlike Jesus, I hadn’t bothered to learn any words from the Bible with which to counter his arguments.
We all have something, or many somethings, that cut us off from our bond of love with God. We all have something to which we give our hearts, believing that it alone will make us worthy. For some, it might be the perfectionism that drove my cheating as a teen. For some, it might be the love of busyness and that important feeling that it provides. For others, it might be the powerful feeling of being in charge and in control. Or it might be the love of security and comfort. Or the love of money and success.
I am always struck by the similarity of the Devil’s challenging words for Jesus and our own language about the ways of the world:
“Do you care about your hungry people, Jesus? Of course you do! Simply turn on your power, then, and feed them,” offers the Devil. How often we hear that there are easy, painless fixes for our problems, fixes that we can control with money or gumption. If we buy this product or follow this self-help book, we can “live our best lives now.” But Jesus knows that everything we are and everything we have comes from God alone. Like the manna in the wilderness, God’s gifts can’t be hoarded or ordered from a menu of our own devising.
Next, the Devil asks, “Do you want to bring the nations to God, Jesus? Of course you do! Then rule them with an iron hand, as Rome does, and they will all fall to their knees. Do you want to impress us, Jesus? Do you want us all to turn to you? Of course you do. So just leap unhurt from the highest wall in Jerusalem and sway us with your divinity,” offers the Devil. How often to do we hear on TV that outward success is the true proof of our worth and of God’s blessing? How often do we hear in this world that taking power over others is the only way to survive? Society tells us that we can buy and scramble and cheat and fight and compete for what we need. We can take control of our own destinies. But Jesus understands that true strength lies in vulnerability, that true love only enters a heart that has been broken open, that true power often looks like weakness, and that true life is stronger than death.
Jesus wasn’t tested only during those early forty days in the wilderness. Luke tells us that the Tester would return at an opportune time. And he does:
“You’re not really going to leave us?!” cry the disciples in disbelief when they hear Jesus telling them what awaits him in Jerusalem.
“Take this cup from me!” begs Jesus in Gethsemane.
“You don’t really want me to give THIS much of my hard-earned income to the poor, do you, Jesus?” we plead.
“You don’t mean for me to forgive THIS annoying enemy, do you, Jesus?”
“You can’t mean for me to fail my math test?” cries young Anne.
“Yes, yes I do,” answers Jesus, his own heart breaking over our lack of trust.
Lent is a time to examine our hearts, to look at what fills them and at what makes them shrink with fear. But it is also a time to mark our hearts with a cross, to re-dedicate them to the God who saves us through love, love that is fearlessly poured out into a sinful world, love that is constantly poured out on us, even when we fail our tests again and again. This Lent, O God, help us to dedicate our hearts not to perfection, not to fear, not to shame—but to the God who teaches us how to love, and how to truly live. With Kate Bowler, author of our Lenten discussion book, I pronounce this blessing upon each of us, even upon my own teenage self: “Blessed are you who need a gentle reminder that even now, even today, God is here, and somehow, that is good enough.”[1]
[1] From the preface of: Kate Bowler, Good Enough: 40ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection (New York: Convergent, 2022.)
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