I am not at all a big fan of tests. Academic, medical, endurance, character, you name it, if there is a test involved and my signature has to go on the top of the page, I'm not very happy about having to put it there.

This dislike of mine has deep roots--from my earliest memories--1st grade, maybe?--of having my teacher unsmilingly hand out wide-spaced composition paper; of having to wait, number-two pencil in sweaty hand, butterflies in fluttery stomach, lonely and anxious there at my little, formica-topped desk, waiting for that dreaded first ax to fall:
What does 2+2 equal?
How do you spell cat?
Who was the first president of the United States?

And then, once the test was over, the now-smudgy, eraser-torn paper turned humbly and vulnerably face down on the desk; there to be collected and consigned back into the solemn care of the teacher to be mercilessly graded and marked.

And then, days later, of having to sit there once more at my lonely spot, waiting again all sweaty and butterfly-y for it to be returned to me, inscribed in red with a letter grade at the top, and, if you were lucky (well, if you had studied anyway), not slashed with angry red x-es all over your work.

And the funny thing about this dislike of tests of mine was that I was actually a good student, a conscientious student (maybe a little too conscientious some of you might be thinking right now). Except for math, particularly the times-tables which were my particular undoing, I got very few red slashes and usually didn't have to worry too much about showing my parents my test results.

So it wasn't that I was a bad student, or that I was even a bad test-taker. It wasn't that I thought all teachers were grim and merciless sadists--after all, some of the most influential people in my life, including my own beloved father, ahve been teachers.

No, it was just that I hated the whole lonely test-taking process, and I continued to hate it through 20-plus years of continued education, as I still do today--
as I think many people do, too.

LIke many, maybe even like most people, I suspect--although come to think of it, there was always that one kid in school who would raise their hand in class to say: "Miss Blumgarten, wasn't there supposed to be a test today?"

Whereupon all the other kids would groan and smack their foreheads with their hands and shoot that poor kid such looks that if looks could actually kill, he'd have never made it though elementary school. And if he did somehow manage to make it through elementary school, then he'd be maybe like the bridegroom-to-be for whom, along with his fiance, I once provided premarital counseling--who when I handed them both copies of a Premarital Inventory to fill out and said to them--in order to allay any anxiety, I thought--
"Please don't think of this as taking a test"--

This bridegroom-to-be who replied happily, "Oh, I love taking tests!"

So, of course there are these exceptions--and if any of you reading this are one of them, then I heartily apologize for my blatant over-generalizations. But in general, I suspect, there are precious few of us in this trial- and test-laden world of ours who happen truly, honestly, really to enjoy those trials and tests.

Whether it's pop quizzes or spelling bees, PSATs, SATS, GREs or GDEs; whether open-book, closed-book or blue-book; whether cholesterol test or EKG exam; productivity analysis or personality profile, credit check or character assessment--even with you exceptions to the rule, still, very few of us I would argue, who deep down feel right at home with, comfortable with and comforted by the prospect of being faced with them.

Especially of being faced with them alone.

Of having to sit alone at the little formica desk in the classroom, or on the hard-backed chair in a doctor's waiting room or in the cold interior of a corporate office waiting for the ax to fall-even on a wooden church pew, of having to sit, anxious heart clenched, sweaty hands gripped, and there anticipating the utter, awful loneliness of yourself being put on the line when the chopping starts.

Of being faced with an agonizing moral dilemma, handed a life-changing decision and then and there, of being found wanting--of your being found not capable enough, of not having studied enough, worked enough; of not being good enough, tough enough; not endowed with bodily health enough, blessed with spiritual strength enough--

Of being put on that line and believing--terrifyingly, finally believing--you are the only one there--this, I think, has to be the worst of all this test-taking we do in life:
the sheer loneliness of it all.

Of having to journey through the wilderness of this trial- and test-laden world,
our own smudgy, eraser-torn selves lying face down and vulnerable before all the powers of heaven and earth that be, and there believing ourselves to be all alone when the red marks start slashing.

Yet, that's not what we really believe, is it? Or not what we say we believe, what we confess we believe, anyway.

Even though any of us who have been living our lives more-or-less honestly, humanly on this planet--who acknowledge our deficiencies, who know all the ways during the course of our journeys, in thought, word, or deed, we have been found wanting--
Who have come to know for ourselves just how real those red shashes really are--

Even though we face these tests and these slashes of ours knowing and confessing how real they are--yet we do so also knowing and confessing--clinging in and with our faith to our belief--that we are not alone in the facing.

And the gospel story of Jesus in the wilderness is one on which and to which this faith of ours is invited to cling--the story of Jesus sitting, not at a desk, on a chair, or a church pew, but in a Scripturally unspecified part of the biblical wilderness. Sitting there, or, now 40 days out and with not a single calorie to eat, maybe more accurately lying there, face-down, skeletal and vulnerable--so famished that not even a butterfly is left in his stomach, when the devil decides to administer some tests.

Bible scholars tend to agree that in the story the devil--or "the Satan" as he is also sometimes called--is there with a mission, and it's actually a divine one:
To test just how capable this Messiah is--how able Jesus of Nazareth is to bear the weight of all that is to come as he journeys in the world in his mission to save the world.

We know in the story that, even starving and at death's door, still Jesus "aces" the three test questions the devil poses to him--but we also know from the Satan's own mouth that this is to be a two-part test.

Satan will be back.

Approximately 40 days after Lent's start, we know, don't we, from knowing the rest of the story, just how the test will be re-administered: Jesus will be alone again. This time there will be red slashes, and they will be very, very real. This time death's door will close behind him.

So what is it in this story, at Lent's beginning, to which our faith migiht especially cling? What is it as we journey deeper and deeper into Lent and into our lives--as test- and trial- laden as they are, as incapable as we will so often prove to be, and as alone as we can be so tempted to feel--what in this story can we hold onto?

Well, here's two things for right now:
We can hold onto our belief that in the story, out there in the lonely wilderness, Jesus is taking those tests of his all and only for us.

The same one who we believe gives his body and sheds his blood; who lives his life and dies his death for us--he is the one and he is the one alone who also now takes those tests for us too. Who, holding us in his heart, who takes them to let us, and to let all the powers of heaven and earth know, that in the worst of our test-taking moments; in the most unforgivingly wrong of our decisions made and the most mercilessly unfixable of our dilemmas resolved--that this Messiah is willing and able and ready to bear the responsibility of changing them.

"Do not put your God to the test," Jesus says to the devil today and yet, here's the incredible news--in the story, in Jesus, God putting God's own self to the test for us, and then acing it! Acing it, so that we in our own stories can be sure that God's forgiveness and mercy will be for us the only decision that counts and the only resolution that lasts.

So that when the rest of the story is resolved--when the opportune time comes and when death's door slams shut for us as well--now, in Jesus and now for us, the new story: the certainty of that door opening into--and only into--life.

For you--hold onto that.

Smudged and eraser-torn as we all are, now together turned and made clean and whole--and alive.

Tgether--Which brings me to the second part of the story to which we cling--and this, also our confession and belief, this looks into the face of that lonely wilderness of ours and right then and there, spits in its eye.

Spits in its eye--our belief not only that Jesus once entered a lonely biblical wilderness for
us, but that he did then, and does still today, with us.

As we believe we were there with him in his heart as his body grew weak with hunger, as the tests loomed and death's door beckoned--so we believe he is with us now. With us at our desks, in our chairs, on our pews, with us when the ax starts to chop, and with us when it seems like it will never stop chopping:
With us.

He comes and he journeys and he takes our tests with us. We are not alone--and we never will be.

The author Reynolds Price in his essay "Letters to a Man in the Fire" writes of the experience of an 87-year-old woman who faced some terrifying medical tests. Who, lying alone and scared on her hospital bed, sweaty hands clenched in prayer, envisioned herself suddenly on a Galilee hillside in a crowd gathered around a man where, she said, "I stood on the outskirts intending only to listen.

"But the man looked over the crowd right at me and then asked, 'What do you want?'

"I said, 'Could you send someone to come with me and help me through these tests, because I don't think I can manage them alone.'

"He thought for a minute and then said, 'How would it be if I came?'"

This, as we enter our Lenten journey, is something of what God would have us journey with: our deeper and deeper realization in our wilderness, in our tests, in our fears, not of how much we are moving nearer to, working harder to be with and for our God, but of how much, in Jesus, God is actually with and for us right now.

With us right now--tell each other that!--God our refuge and our fortress, as near as on our lips and as in our hearts, through every wilderness, in every test, God with us and for us now and forever.

I ask you--believing this, confessing this, together clinging to this and to this alone, I ask you:

How can we possibly fail anything?