I know that you can see, just by looking around our sanctuary this morning, that something has changed. We've moved into a new season in the church year, the season of Lent. Many of you were here last Tuesday night to properly inaugurate Lent with pancakes and Dixieland jazz at our Shrove Tuesday celebration.

We had lots of questions all through the week about the meaning of those customs, so let me try and clarify. Shrove Tuesday is the English translation of Mardi Gras. "Mardi" means "Tuesday" in French. Now, of course, if you're lucky enough to live in Rio de Janeiro or New Orleans, Mardi Gras is not just a day, it's a period of several days of parades and revelry preceding Lent.

Mardi Gras is the last party before the forty days of Lent, a season in which the Christian is to pray, fast, give to the poor, all to prepare one's soul for the great joy of the Easter Resurrection. Historically, Chris-tians were admonished to fast all through Lent-one spare meal a day and no meat. The custom of having pancakes-several of you asked "why pancakes?"-came from the need to eat up all the non-Lenten food in the house, all the fat and sugar and other fattening things, before the penitential season of Lent began.

Those of you who had been to the Healthy Dining event the week prior, or who have been paying attention to the advice given through our Health Ministry Council, expressed concern about pancakes not being very healthy! God bless you! Well, they're not too healthy, but thanks to the efforts of the Shareringers group, they were delicious. A great time was had by all-and knowingly, or unknowingly, we were participating in that ancient custom that links us to our forefathers and foremothers in the faith.

Just one more thing, to better understand this season that we're coming into: what does "shrove" mean, anyway? It comes from "shriving"-confession and absolution-that took place just before Ash Wednesday to make oneself ready for the fast of Lent. Cleaning the unhealthy things out of one's house was the equivalent of cleaning the sin and unhealthy things out of one's soul in order to keep a holy Lent and prepare for God's greatest gift, the resurrection of Christ from the dead.

And so, having feasted on pancakes, we have "shriven" the décor of our sanctuary, so that its lean, sparse feel will remind us each week, as soon as we enter this sacred space that we are to be doing the same work of cleansing our souls. To begin that Lenten work, many came for the imposition of ashes and confession of sin on Ash Wednesday. Many are involved in our small Lenten spiritual growth groups. Forty days and forty nights, Lent is a season for soul-work, for spiritual seeking, for fasting and prayer. Lent is a time to go deep, to practice the ancient spiritual disciplines and draw closer to the heart of God.

Shrove Tuesday. Ash Wednesday. The first Sunday in Lent. The journey begins. This year's Lenten theme of "Forgiveness" also came from you. The pastors and staff all reported having received a variety of questions about forgiveness from you: What is it, really? Do I have to? Why is it so hard? What is it that God is really asking of me? How can God possibly forgive me for this thing that I have done?

Questions about forgiveness. And so, for these four Sundays, Larry and Greg and I will all be preaching on different aspects of forgiveness to help us not only understand what it's about, but to do it, right now, in our lives and in our relationships. Forgiveness is a journey of letting go, of healing, and of the gift of new life. It is hard spiritual work, maybe the hardest. I invite you all now into this Lenten journey, that you might know the forgiveness of God in your life and extend it to those who have hurt and wounded you, and catch a glimpse of the new life it can bring to our world.

It's not all deadly serious. I heard a funny, true story about one person's need for forgiveness last week, reported in the Wall Street Journal. In Louisville, Kentucky, a guy broke into at least three churches and stole money and credit cards. It seems that one of the stolen cards was used later the same day at a nearby Christian bookstore to buy several copies of a Bible study called Making Peace with Your Past, and a follow-up study called Moving Beyond Your Past. The thief, who has been arrested, has pleaded innocent to the charges.

I don't know what the Louisville criminal justice system will make of all this, but those book titles point us right into the heart of the dynamic of forgiveness: Making Peace with Your Past. Moving Beyond Your Past. The lesson from today's Psalm, Psalm 103, is that God has done it already. Forgiveness begins with God.

Hear again those beautiful words that opened our Ash Wednesday services: "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits-who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy. . . . He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities . . . as far as the east is from the west, so far he removes our transgressions from us." These are the ways God benefits us: God forgives, heals, redeems, crowns, and as far as the east is from the west, so far God removes our transgressions from us.

We Christians have a bad habit of talking as if the God of the New Testament is the God of love and grace, while the God of the Old Testament is the God of law and judgment. If nothing else today, I hope you can see that the God of the Old Testament, the God of the psalmist, is also the God of overwhelming, incalculable, immeasurable, awesome love and grace! And, the psalmist tells us, this is because God persists in being God, being who God is. God is the God of mercy and loving kindness. God is the God of compassion and steadfast love. This is the God who created the creation "good" in the beginning. This is the God who set the rainbow in the clouds after the flood. This is the God of the covenant with the people Israel. This is the God and father of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. This is the God whose very nature and whose will for the creation is compassion and steadfast love, removing from us all our sin, all our transgressions, as far as the east is from the west. And if you can let yourselves believe this and trust this, you will be healed. Your sin is forgiven.

Forgiveness begins in God's compassion for us and in his steadfast love. God would, therefore, much rather forgive than punish. When we confess our sin, acknowledge our need for forgiveness, and accept that God has the power to do this and will do this for us, the healing process has begun. Dr. Norman Cousins, author of Anatomy of an Illness and The Healing Heart, has said that "life is an adventure in forgiveness." Where does the adventure begin? The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. And on the journey of forgiveness, that first step, must be the opening of our hearts to receive the forgiveness God promises.

I know, from my own spiritual struggles, and through conversation with many you, that sometimes, often, forgiveness seems far beyond our capability. It's not humanly possible, we say. And we're right. We humans are flawed, imperfect, inconsistent, prone to sin, and those around us are the same, and so is the world in which we live. For us, forgiveness is not humanly possible. That much we get right.

But the problem comes when we stop there and let the matter drop. We start with ourselves, and, thinking that the only power we have is the power we generate ourselves, that's as far as we get. We put ourselves at the center of our universe. We get caught by our own overly individualized sense of ourselves. But when we start with ourselves, we start at the wrong place, and we don't get very far.

The faith of the psalmist calls us back to start with God. "Bless the Lord, O my soul," the psalmist is telling himself, reminding himself to start always with God! Bless the Lord, and remember, remember all God's benefits. Remember that God forgives our sin and removes our transgressions from us as far as the east is from the west.

Our starting place on this journey of forgiveness is God. We forgive because God has forgiven us. We forgive because we are created in the image of that very God. We forgive because we are beloved children of the God whose heart is defined by mercy and steadfast love. As Flora Slosson Wuellner, the author of our study book for Lent, has written: "How is forgiveness possible? Forgiveness exists already-now and eternally. We do not create it; we enter it." We forgive, not because we can. We forgive because, having ourselves been forgiven, we must.

To conclude this morning's sermon, I'd like you to take out your hymnal, and turn to the back to number 884, one of our Statements of Faith that comes to us from the Methodist Church in Korea, a strong and growing church.

And let's read together, the first four "We believes." Let's read aloud-but not too fast. Read slowly and listen to the words as you speak them.

We believe in the one God,
creator and sustainer of all things, Father of all nations,the source of all goodness and beauty, all truth and love.

We believe in Jesus Christ,
God manifest in the flesh, our teacher, example, and Redeemer, the Savior of the world.

We believe in the Holy Spirit,
God present with us for guidance, for comfort and for strength.

We believe in the forgiveness of sins,
in the life of love and prayer, and in grace equal to every need.

God promises, we believe, or try to believe . . . and so the journey begins. Make peace with your past. Move beyond your past.

May this be for you a holy Lent, a time of prayer, of fasting from the unhealthy things of body and spirit, of giving generously to the poor and to the poor in spirit, and of entering into the new life offered through the forgiveness of sin.

Amen.

© Patricia E. Farris, 2003. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution. All other rights reserved