First, the history.
Let's be honest here: Suicide is confusing for Christians. Although historically, Christians have thought that Scripture is clear in its disapproval, the few instances of suicide in Scripture make this case far less clear.
Must we necessarily believe that those who have taken their own life in order to end suffering are somehow damned to eternal torment? Not if you give Scripture a clear reading.
Of the seven or so suicides reported in Scripture, most familiar are Saul, Samson, and Judas. Saul apparently committed suicide to avoid dishonor and suffering at the hands of the Philistines. He is rewarded by the Israelites with a war hero's burial, so there's no disapproval of his suicide (1 Samuel 31.1-6). And while there's no hero's burial for Judas Iscariot (Matthew 27.5-7), Scripture is once more silent on the morality of this suicide of remorse: Judas is never condemned for having committed suicide.
But it's the suicide of Samson that gives Christians the biggest reason to pause in being so quick to jump to condemn suicide.
Both Augustine and Thomas Aquinas wrestled with the case and concluded that Samson's suicide was justified as an act of obedience to a direct command of God. Let that sink in for a minute.
Now, I also have to admit that objections to suicide have a long history in the Church. But the idea that suicide is an unforgivable sin is less easily traced. Among the church fathers, Augustine was the most prominent and influential opponent of suicide. And early church synods declared that bequests from those who committed suicide (as well as the offering of those who attempted suicide) ought not to be accepted; and throughout the medieval period, proper Christian burial was refused those who committed suicide. Aquinas believed that suicide was a moral sin, since there was no opportunity for a final repentance. Dante put those who commit suicide in the seventh circle of hell; he's probably been even more influential than Aquinas, in my estimation. Luther and Calvin abhored the idea of suicide, but never said it was anything more than tragic; they never condemned anyone for it. Calvin went one step further, and offered a positive argument: The only unpardonable sin is blasphemy, so suicide is not unpardonable. So this idea that suicide is unpardonable has more to do with the medieval penitential system -- separating sins into "mortal" and "venial" ones -- more than anything else.
The only way I think theologians might ever have a real problem is if suicide were freely chosen. Life is a gift from God. To willfully take it, is to be ungrateful.
That said, nearly everyone I've ever known who's committed suicide hardly chose it of their own free will. That's because our lives are so intertwined with others, and most often, in my pastoral experience, folks commit suicide out of pain, out of the desparation to end that pain, than out of some willful lack of thankfulness.
I say this in order to tell the story of one woman, whose suicide, to this day, still haunts me -- and the words that I was given to speak at her funeral changed my mind about suicide forever.
All of this to say Sally's death shook me. She was my age; our birthdays were only a week apart. I thought this was the reason I was so uncomfortable when they asked me to preside at her funeral, but in preparing that sermon, I faced far more than my own mortality.
That's because I learned a lot of secrets about this woman, who'd been driven to such a desperate act.
I'd spent months judging her, sometimes even condemned her, and never respected her.
Until I discovered her life had been as cruel as her death.
I realized that my opinion of Sally and of her death had been wrong, unfair.
At her funeral, I buried my self-righteousness and arrogance for the last time.
So let me tell you about what I learned about Sally.
Sally's father had deserted her when she was three. Her mother filled that void with a parade of temporary replacements, none of whom wanted Sally there. She was discarded. She was passed from aunt to cousin to grandmother and back again, staying with each only as long as patience allowed. Shuffled from school to school, town to town. She only made acquaintances, never friends. Longing for the stability she'd never known, Sally married young -- and poorly.
Her husband abandoned her with three small children, no job, and no high school diploma. Her dreams withered, and she struggled to survive.
All her life, Sally had been neglected, so she started neglecting herself.
Like dominoes, her life started falling. First her job, then an abusive boyfriend. Alcohol and drugs only hastened her descent.
When the last domino fell, she was only 28, the mother of 4, unemployed, and living off the leftovers of neighbors and relatives. That domino tumbled the day she slept in with a hangover and woke up to find her youngest daughter drowned in the neighbor's pool.
When her son came to me -- I was working as an assistant chaplain at the local hospital on my rounds -- and told me that Sally had overdosed, I was angry. I didn't know any of her previous history. I wasn't her pastor. She didn't have a church. So initially I despised Sally. Until her son shared the rest of the story.
This woman who'd lived the hell in her life to which I was so quick to resign her -- what was I going to say at her funeral?
I know what I thought I was supposed to say. "Suicide is one of those sins for which there is no repentance, therefore there is no hope." But I couldn't imagine that God would do to Sally what so many of we humans had done to her all her life. There was no doubt to my mind that God loved Sally more than I did.
So the next day, at the funeral, instead of talking the formulas I thought I was supposed to talk, I talked about grace. I told a story that Jesus told -- about a son who went off and lived it up, only to find myself dead and drawn back to home, to a home of a welcoming father. "Some people think God sits on a throne and dispenses justice for sin. I think God comes off that throne and welcomes home his children. When Sally died, God welcomed his daughter home."
In the telling of it, I knew it to be true.
And I've known since then, that if ever there was a word the Church has to speak at the death of those who kill themselves, that word is grace.