Drop your guilt

John 15:1-11

            You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. As Lent began, I urged everyone to lay aside any feelings of guilt. No guilt trips, let the feeling of inadequacy go, and KNOW, that you are a loved person of the creator. You are forgiven. Abide in Christ and you are forgiven.

            It is wholly appropriate then, that this is a reading for today,  the Feast of Martin Luther. He was that Roman Catholic Priest that stood up and said stop! He pointed to some of the many flaws in the Roman Catholic tradition which endeared him to virtually no one except the sensus fidelium, the masses of the faithful that knew in their hearts that he was correct.

            One of the issues that Matin Luther pointed to was what actually achieved forgiveness and salvation. Was it good deeds? Was it a penance of a sort meted out by an ordained priest? Was it money handed over? I believe the expression that Martin Luther used was 'by faith alone'. Abide in Christ and you are forgiven.

            To someone who grew up in the Roman Catholic faith this makes much more sense. Is forgiveness found in the string of Hail Mary's and Our Father's that we were told to recite to achieve forgiveness? Even at 11 years old we were able to say 10 of each in 3.2 milliseconds. Our only risk was that our count could not keep pace with the speed with which we were saying the prayers. Invariably we wound up saying one or two more of each. Equally as silly was a penance that was unreasonably difficult to achieve. Something un-doable. And then there was the condemnation which one was left feeling, like you were certainly going to hell in a hand basket. Worse still, being told outright you are going to hell. None of this sounds remotely like the loving Christ that we experience in scripture.  A wiser pronouncement, a more Christian thing would have been to help us figure out the why of what we had done or perhaps an understanding that at every age we cannot be expected to be robotic christian soldiers. We ware simply human and that is what Jesus came to embrace along with a message of never ending love and hope.

               Embrace the never ending love of God, our creator. Abide in His love and you are forgiven. That does not excuse you from trying to be better, from examining your conscience and discerning the why and why not's of the way we live. God gave us a brain and it is meant to be used to live, to learn and to discover Him.  

                Drop the guilt, know you are loved and forgiven. 

‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. ²He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes^* to make it bear more fruit. ³You have already been cleansed^* by the word that I have spoken to you. ⁴Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. ⁵I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. ⁶Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. ⁷If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. ⁸My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become^* my disciples. ⁹As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. ¹⁰If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. ¹¹I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.