Walk Dusty

Raul Garcia III

Ash Wednesday

February 14, 2018

Let us pray:

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

Amen.

Good evening everyone.

What a rich tradition that we just participated in. Today is the start of Lent. This 40 day faith journey. The forty days Jesus spent in the Wilderness being tempted by the devil. Lent is actually 46 days but we don’t count Sundays.

Here’s a little old testament lesson for those who were here two weeks ago when I preached and listened or you were here and didn’t listen. A little refresher. The last objective of a young jewish person was to make it to bet midrash where they would ask a rabbi if they could follow them. This rabbi in turn would grill them and quiz them about torah, scriptures and oral traditions and if they were good enough they would tell this young person. You are good enough, Come follow me. They would leave everything behind. I mean everything. So this young person would follow this rabbi everywhere. I mean everywhere. This young person/student would be right behind this rabbi. So at the end of each day this student would be caked in whatever the rabbi had stepped. I’m sure there were times it probably wasn’t pleasant stuff either. They would be covered with the dust and muckiness of their journey. These students would find the beauty in this muckiness because they were following someone they loved, admired and who they wanted to be like. That is why I want you to wear these Walk Dusty buttons whenever you want. During our faith journey in these 40 days of Lent reminds us of our sinfulness and mortality. We received that ancient blessing when we came up to the front for ashes, Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. We are like the student who follows their rabbi everywhere all day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. We follow Jesus not because we chose him but because he said we were good enough and he chose us. Jesus chose us to follow him. There will be days that are great and festive and awesome and there will be days when we walk in the muddy muck of life and it feels not so good. It is then when Jesus sees our beauty in our brokenness and sinfulness and how we need to remind each other about how we see each others beauty amongst our brokenness. We are all broken and not perfect. This is a house of saints and sinners. We are all welcome. In this faith journey we are  going to be caked with everything you can possibly think of. How beautiful is it to remember the promise of our baptism and the promise of Jesus resurrection, that we are going to be okay. In our faith journey during Lent or in life we need to WALK DUSTY. Let me leave you with this last blessings: May you walk alongside Jesus with strength and confidence and may you be covered in the dust and WALK DUSTY with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!   

Amen!!