Innocent Dies, Guilty Walks Free: I Am Rhonda

Two short lines on a sign can say a lot.  My kids and I stopped at the red light of a busy intersection near our house.  Many times we had waited there, but this time we noticed something different.

A handmade sign poking out of the ground read: “Rhonda killed 3, and gets away free.”  Next to the sign was fresh dirt and 3 white crosses marking the spot where I assumed a car accident had ended three lives.

In the time it takes to sit at a red light, I could imagine the whole story.  One person’s reckless driving had caused grief to many mourners, but the injustice of the final sentence compounded their pain.  In two short lines that rhymed, I could feel the anger and outrage of the family and friends who did not get to see Rhonda pay the just penalty for her wrongdoing.

My kids and I got animated talking about it.  “What does that mean, ‘gets to walk free’?” one asked.  We chatted about the court system and how the judge decides if an accused person is “guilty” or “ not guilty.”

Suddenly, I remembered the book I just read on grief by Jerry Sittser.  How ironic, that the same sign could have been written by him!

In one car accident, he lost 3 generations of his family: his mother, his wife, and his daughter.  As Sittser learned that the alleged driver of the other car was acquitted at the trial, he described the strong feelings he had to find justice and vindication for the suffering he endured. 

“I was enraged after the trial, which in my mind turned out to be as unjust as the accident itself.  The driver did not get what he deserved any more than the victims, whether living or dead, had gotten what they deserved.  The travesty of the trial became a symbol for the unfairness of the accident itself.  I had to work hard to fight off cynicism.”  (Loc 1403). 

In my own story of suffering, loss, and grief, I, too, have felt that sense of injustice at times, for things that didn’t seem fair.  I have wept over the wrongs of others that left me in pain.  A little trail-lawyer rises up inside me wanting to take my offenders to court: “How can he get away with doing this to me?!” 

Suddenly, I remember another guilty man, who got away with murder, and got to walk free.

“Release Barabbas!”  I hear the crowd screaming (Luke 23:18). 

I woke up thinking about that sign: “Rhonda kills 3, gets to walk free,” but I could not get Barabbas out of my mind. 

Here was a guilty man who had been thrown into prison for murder, while an innocent man, Jesus, was simultaneously being falsely accused. 

In a short, upside-down trial, Pilate announces about Jesus, “I find no basis for a charge against this man...he has done nothing to deserve death.”  Yet the voices insistently demanded in unison: “Away with this man!  Crucify him!”  (Luke 23). 

“...and their shouts prevailed.  So Pilate decided to grant their demand.  He released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, [Barabbas]. . . . and surrendered Jesus to their will.”  (Luke 23:23-25).

Now here is a great injustice!  Jesus commits no crime, gets falsely accused, and he gets the death sentence, while Barabbas commits murder and gets to walk free!

Even the criminal crucified with Jesus could see the injustice: “We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve.  But this man has done nothing wrong!” (Luke 23:41).

How can we forgive the Rhondas in our lives?  How can we stand the injustice of watching people who cause us pain get away with it?  How can we bear to watch them walking free, while we ourselves are left with the mess their wrongdoing has caused?

I see the key that will set me free:

I am Rhonda.

I am Barabbas.

I am guilty. 

I have sinned against God.  I have not loved him with all my heart and soul.  I have not loved my neighbor as myself.  I have stolen glory from God and have committed spiritual adultery by turning to things other than God. 

I deserve death.

“For the wages of sin is death...” (Romans 6:23).

I think of the injustice of grace.  Why should I get to walk free, while Jesus, an innocent man, died in my place?  Why should I get sentenced to eternal life while Jesus drank the cup of God’s wrath on the cross in my place?  Why should the Father’s only son die just so that I could be adopted as his daughter?

This injustice is mind-blowing!

Suddenly I am glad the world is not totally fair.

Sittser writes: “In such a world I might never experience tragedy; but neither would I experience grace.” (Loc 1419).

“There is no grace in a [perfectly fair world], for grace is grace only when it is undeserved” (Loc 1419). 

Maybe I have suffered loss or pain because of someone else’s wrongdoing. 

But Jesus suffered pain because of my wrongdoing.

Maybe I have experienced injustices because of another person’s sin. 

But Jesus experienced injustice because of my sin. 

Maybe someone who hurt me didn’t get the punishment he deserved. 

And I didn’t get the punishment I deserve.  I get mercy. 

This is the scandal of the cross: 

“He committed no sin...He entrusted himself to him who judges justly. 

He himself bore our sin in his body on the tree,
so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness;
by his wounds you have been healed.”
1 Peter 2:22-24

"Release Barabbas!" I hear the Spirit whisper. 

I am free to forgive, because I have been forgiven.

I am free to release the Barabbas in my life, because I can entrust myself to him who judges justly.

I am free from the penalty of sin because of the mercy of God.

I am free from eternal pain because “by his wounds I have been healed.”

Loss, Shock, Grief....and an Empty Tomb?

I have been processing deep grief for quite a while.  Some of what I thought was healed seems to keep gushing up to the surface, even through small triggers.  Will I ever be healed?

In a footnote to another book I was reading, I learned that there was a man who lost 3 generations of his family instantly in one car accident.  I immediately wrote that book title on my reading list.  In an email from a divorced friend, she mentioned that same book.  I had to get that book.

Jerry Sittser in “A Grace Disguised” has become a fellow traveler with me on my journey of grief.  He knows what he is talking about: subtitled “how the soul grows through loss.” 

I am SO encouraged by this theme he draws out: “This book is not intended to help anyone get over or even through the experience of catastrophic loss, for I believe that ‘recovery’ from such loss is an unrealistic and even harmful expectation, if by recovery we mean resuming the way we lived and felt prior to the loss.  Instead, the book is intended to show how it is possible to live in and be enlarged by loss, even as we continue to experience it” (Loc 154).

What a relief!  On many “stages” of my journey, I felt like, “I’m healed!  I have come so far!” and I felt some resemblance of the former me, the me “before.”  But then, something would happen to trigger depths untold, and I felt like I was regressing and not progressing!  How frustrating!! 

Now I am reminded that maybe I never will ‘recover’.  Maybe there never will be a ‘normal’, and maybe I will never return to the me that once was.  But maybe there will be some way to “live in and be enlarged by loss” especially as it is ongoing and continuing. 

I can get disappointed with myself and I get angry at my weakness.  I struggle with comparison to others: “Why does she get over her grief so quickly?” or “why doesn’t she struggle with that anymore?” or “how did she move on and get so strong?”  Ahh!!  What a snare of compare I can find myself in. 

Again, this author encouraged me greatly: “I question whether experiences of such severe loss can be quantified and compared.  Loss is loss, whatever the circumstances.  All losses are bad, only bad in different ways.  No two losses are ever the same...” (Loc 307).

I am reminded, there is no value in comparing.  This is my own story, and it is unique. 

I am reminded also of Peter and John, when Jesus says to Peter: “I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted, but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go” (John 21:18).

I relate so much from Peter in this passage, because when I was younger I got to go wherever I wanted to go.  I traipsed through South America, Europe and Asia, flying on hundreds of planes and exploring foreign cultures.  I was strong and fast and used my energy to pour into tons of other people, even in other languages.  But now, how old I feel, how constrained and confined, how foreign it feels not to be that version of me anymore.  Now I have been given an assignment I would not have chosen. 

But Jesus’ words strike me: “Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God.  Then he said to him, ‘Follow me!’” (John 21:19). 

Here Peter reminds me again of myself, because he turns and looks at John and says: “Lord, what about him?”

Yeah, Peter, I’m with you!  Why do I have to suffer?  What about John? Doesn’t he have to suffer too?

Jesus snuffs out comparison: “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?  You must follow me” (John 21:22).

I hear Jesus saying the same thing to me: “You must follow me.”  If he wants other people to have different kinds of loss or different degrees of strength or different kinds of experiences, what is that to me?  Maybe God has some mysterious way that He has planned to receive glory through my suffering.  I must live by faith.

Isn’t it interesting that in one verse we see people living by faith, but such contrasting things happen?

“[By faith] Women received back their dead raised to life again.  Others were tortured...” (Hebrews 11.35)

Some people get resurrection.  Other people get torture!  “You, follow me!” Jesus says.

I think of some other women who followed Jesus all the way from Galilee, who followed him to the cross, and watched him breathe his last.

I think of the grief and shock they must have experienced, for only a few days prior, their same Lord was riding on a donkey in a procession of people joyfully praising God: “Hosanna!”

What was it like for them to watch him get falsely accused, beaten and crucified?  What was it like for them to hear him cry out: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit”? (Luke 23.46). 

He breathed his last, and did their hopes die? 

“When all the people who had gathered to witness this sight saw what took place, they beat their breasts and went away” (Luke 23.48).

Anguish!  Grief!  Shock!  What a loss!  The man who healed the lame and opened the eyes of the blind!  Dead!  The friend who raised Lazarus from the dead, now lifeless!  On one day, the hopes of Israel were crushed.  With one cry, Jesus breathed his last.

I never before experienced Holy Week through the lens of grief as I do now, having studied more on the human experience of initial shock and waves of subsequent grief and darkness. 

I think of the shock that Jerry Sittser went through as he waited an hour for emergency vehicles to arrive.  Such a sudden instant of life-changing loss, and the shock took days to wear off.

What was it like for those who saw Jesus die?

“But all those who knew him, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.”  Luke 23.49.

What thoughts went through their minds in that moment as they watched these things?  Did it even seem real?  “Is this really happening?  Is he really dead?  What will life be like without him?”

“The women...followed Joseph and saw the tomb and how his body was laid in it” (Luke 23.55).

The same women kept following him to the tomb.  I can’t imagine burying someone so soon after he died!  It is a big deal to bury someone.  It is a marking point of the reality of the loss.  “My loved one is not coming back.  He really is dead.” 

Before the sun set on Good Friday, Jesus’ body was wrapped in linen and laid in a tomb.  And the tomb was secured and sealed (Matthew 27.66).

Saturday.  The Sabbath.  Sitting.  Resting.  Crying.  Processing.  Stunned shock.  “What has happened?!”  They must have sat around talking about all these things, remembering all that Jesus had said and done.

I cannot imagine the confusion, shock, stunned experience it must have been to find the tomb empty on Easter Sunday!! 

How can humans go through so many emotions in such a short time?!  Hosanna one day, burial soon after.  From the perspective of grief, the resurrection must have felt like a dream.  One gospel even said the reports of the resurrection “seemed to them like nonsense” (Luke 24.11).

Never before in the history of the world has a man been crucified and clearly dead before the eyes of plenty of witnesses, buried in a sealed and secured tomb, and then found fully alive and resurrected! 

The shock of their lives was not the crucifixion, but the resurrection.

This gives me great hope.  The shock and grief and suffering and loss of my life is not the defining reality of my story.  It is yet to come.

“Listen, I tell you a mystery:...
in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet....
the dead will be raised, and we will be changed”
 (1 Corinthians 15.51-52).

(An original song in the works: "Your days of sorrow will end"(Isaiah 60:20), by Jessica Becker)

I Should Know

What is it like to have a beautiful, sexy body and never get seen naked?  never get caressed sexually?

I should know.

What is it like to have been a world traveler, to exotic, tropical and famous places, and then grounded for years, watching friends take long vacations while never leaving the radius of my city?

I should know.

What is it like to put 4 kids to bed every.single.night. and never get more than one, maybe two nights break?  to be the only one singing them to sleep and tucking them in?  never to get tucked in myself?

I should know.

What is it like to have spent years in school, gaining hours and years of higher education, piling up a wealth of knowledge and experience, and yet to have no platform for ministry, no classroom of students, few who even recognize my qualifications and passion?

I should know.

What is it like to have gifts and passions and skills that never seem to be used, while instead filling boring days and hours washing dishes and laundry, feeding small bellies and cleaning messes?

I should know.

"I cry aloud to the Lord,

I lift up my voice for mercy.

I pour out my complaint before him;

Before him I tell my trouble.

When my spirit grows faint within me

it is you who know my way." Psalm 142

"To the Lord I cry aloud,

and He answers me..." Psalm 3

What was it like to leave a heavenly throne and become poor, so that you could become spiritually rich?

I should know.

What was it like to be totally alone and isolated in the desert 40 days with no food and in great weakness to face the world's fiercest temptation against the enemy of souls?

I should know.

What was it like to remain celibate my whole life only to be seen naked as men beat and mocked me and made my shame a laughingstock?

I should know.

What was it like to need friends in the hour of death, only to find they had failed to stay awake, leaving me to sweat prayers of agony alone?

I should know.

What will it be like to see my face in glory and to become clothed in robes of righteousness, to receive at last the great love I have for you in all its fullness?

Believe me, I know.

What will it be like when you come into my presence and hear me say, "Well done, good and faithful servant...now enter the kingdom prepared for you and share in my happiness!" 

Believe me, I know.

What will it be like to live forever in a mansion prepared just for you, feasting at my table of delights and enjoying intimate fellowship with me forever?

Believe me, I know.

What will it be like when I wipe way every tear from your eyes and you dance before me as a bride--never to experience mourning or crying or pain again?  to inherit my kingdom and share in reigning with me forever?

Believe me, I know.

"So do not throw away your confidence.

It will be richly rewarded.

You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God,

you will receive what He has promised.

For in just a very little while,

He who is coming will come and will not delay.

But my righteous one will live by faith."

Hebrews 10