*I feel compelled to offer a trigger warning here, as I’ll be writing about suicide and the guilt experienced by survivors.*
Isaiah 40:1-2
Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.
Her term is over. Good news.
Her penalty is paid. Good news.
She has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. Good news???
How is it a comfort to know that God has exacted upon you a punishment for your sins that is double what you would have expected? How could this ever be considered a tender word?
As I’ve wrestled with this question in recent days, I’ve had to wrestle, too, with my own guilt. Because it seems to me that the only way in which receiving double punishment for your sins could be considered good news is if you’re desperate to pay for what you’ve done, to make amends, to somehow put things right…if you consider your sin so great that you believe you deserve an extreme consequence.
God’s people were broken. Babylon had destroyed them. And I imagine they thought that surely, if God had allowed that terrible destruction and devastation to happen to them, then they must have done something to deserve it. Their sin must have been so great that the only way to make things right was to live in exile for years and years and years–until finally their term was over and their penalty was paid.
Today marks twenty-three years since my brother Mike, at age eighteen, died by suicide. And like so many suicide survivors, I have lived with a grief that is compounded by guilt. My last conversation with Mike was filled with misunderstanding and frustration. There was a wall between us that I did not have the tools to take down at the time. As much as I try to be tender with my younger self, the guilt is so strong. Why didn’t I do more? Why couldn’t I express how much I loved him? Why did we come through so many of the same sorrows, but his life ended and mine went on?
A punishment that would make things right would come as a relief. But there is no making this right. There is no price I can pay to free Mike from death’s grip and fill him–finally–with love and life.
There’s no term I can serve, because Jesus has already served it. There’s no price I can pay, because Jesus has already freed Mike from death’s grip and filled him–for eternity–with love and life.
Do you carry the weight of a guilt that cannot be relieved?
God speaks tenderly to you this day, and tomorrow, and every day for the rest of your life…you are free. You can’t make this right, but I can. In fact, I have already made it right.
Jesus comes to serve this world’s term, to pay our terrible penalty–not to appease a God who demands punishment for sins, but to comfort all creation with the promise that nothing is beyond redemption, that there is no failure on our part that could ever separate us from the love of God, that we are not the sum of our worst mistakes, that the guilt we carry is no longer ours to bear, that all is forgiven.
You are forgiven.
That guilt you’ve been carrying since yesterday…that guilt you’ve been carrying for the better part of a lifetime…it’s no longer yours to bear. As our song for today declares, guilt and suffering are over.
You are free, beloved.
Come, Jesus, come. Set us free from the guilt that weighs so heavily. Speak tenderly to us this day. Comfort us with your love–a love that knows us better than we know ourselves, a love that sees all we’ve done and left undone and adores us just the same, a love that refuses to leave us lost in shame but insists on leading us to freedom. Amen.
Today’s accompanying song is the familiar hymn, Comfort, Comfort Ye My People, sung by The Many.