The Intersection of Guilt and Regret

“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

The intersection of guilt and regret has the potential to be a defining moment, depending on which direction one chooses to turn. If the choice is to turn into one’s guilt, bearing responsibility for one’s actions, and leaning towards the One who has the capacity to forgive, then such a moment becomes sacred, even sacramental in its possibility for restoration.  But if one’s choice is to turn away from one’s guilt, eschewing responsibility, fleeing the moment and the one hurt, then regret forms the pathway and trajectory of the rest of one’s life.

In this verse from Luke’s Gospel, Luke reveals that impactful “moment of awareness” that overtook the crowd when the reality of what was just done to Jesus on the Cross hits them.  They “beat their breasts”—a symbolic and kinesthetic gesture of regret and guilt, of sorrow and grief. Yet, they “went away”—perhaps in shame, perhaps in helpless resignation. Like those who voyeuristically stand by, capturing on camera another person being brutally beaten, yet not stepping in to help, we recognize our blindness to social responsibility only after the surge of lustful vengeance is complete and we are left in the vacuum of our banal human condition.

Yet who knows what happened to those in that crowd? For even in their moment of sin, the reality of Jesus’s lordship still met them invitationally—literally, with arms spread wide open.

Lord, thank You for meeting me in the moment of my sinfulness—whether I am aware of it or not. Amen.