In our backyard there’s a young oak tree. For several seasons, I’ve noticed that this tree does not let go of its leaves in the fall. They dry up and curl up and rattle in the wind, growing more and more tattered as the weather grows harsher. And yet they remain firmly attached to the tree all through the winter. In the spring, expanding buds finally push off these shriveled old leaves. I learned recently that this phenomenon is called marcescence.It’s common among trees in the beech family. And it’s a mystery. Scientists don’t know why it happens. They have lots of guesses. Maybe the old leaves protect the new buds and branches from hungry deer. Perhaps they help the tree retain moisture. It could be the tree’s way of saving their infusion of fertilizer for Spring.

Lent means Spring: in the northern hemisphere, this season corresponds with the lengthening of the days, the swelling of buds, and the releasing of old leaves. Our forty days of Lent are rooted in Jesus’ forty days of testing in the desert. Biblically speaking, forty is a symbolic number, a way of pointing to a season that is transformational, an event that is life-changing, a journey that reframes everything. When the flood came upon the earth in Noah’s time, the rain fell for forty days. The Israelites wandered for forty years in the wilderness after being liberated from slavery in Egypt.

Jesus’ time of testing follows immediately after his baptism. The Spirit of God enters him, bodily, as a dove. A voice from heaven declares “This is my beloved son.” And then this very same Spirit leads Jesus into the desert for forty days. In the Hebrew tradition, the devil or Satan is not an incarnation of evil, but in fact, a dimension of God. This devil is a tester, an adversary, who pushes Jesus to decide whether or not he will live out his God-given identity revealed in baptism. Will he use power to enrich and elevate himself, to dominate and exploit, to depose the emperor and take his place? Or will he be a Messiah who trusts God, who serves God’s creation, who embodies God’s humble power of love?  

Jesus responds to the devil’s three tests by quoting from the book of Deuteronomy, and specifically from a speech of Moses to the Israelites at Mt. Sinai. Here’s the fuller context of Jesus’ reply after the devil seeks to entice him to relieve his hunger by making bread from stones. Moses says to the people of Israel:

Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep God’s commandments. God humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. 

The test, then, is whether Jesus will fill himself with stone-bread or manna from heaven. Whether he will rely on himself or trust God to nourish and guide him. Whether he will give in to delusions of grandeur, or recognize that what sustains life is a gift that can’t be hoarded.

For us, then, Lent is also a time of testing, reframing, and transformation, a time to clarify who we are and whom we serve, a time to seek, in prayer, the manna of God that sustains us. And Lent is a season to lean into the mystery of marcescence. Because the time of testing is also a time of growing. When we feel dried up and dead, tattered and torn, when the news is unrelentingly bad, and our so-called leaders are bent on cruelty and tyranny destruction and stupidity, when foundations we once believed unshakable are quaking it’s exactly then that God’s Spirit is at work—silently and secretly, in ways we can’t see, feel, or even understand—encouraging buds to swell and green leaves to unfurl, and turning all our old dried-up death into nutrients.  

These ashes we receive to begin this Lenten season are a sobering reminder of death, limitation, and fragility, as well as of the ways that sin harms us and holds creation captive. And they are also an invitation to humble ourselves in prayer, and to trust that we will be fed by our God of manna and marcescence. The cross of ash is the mark made on our bodies by empire, by the oppressive forces of greed, violence, and fear. And it is the loving mark of Jesus, who wears our pain and potential in his own body, who turns this smear of dust into life-renewing fertilizer. Amen.