Long ago, Liz was visiting a historic Roman Catholic church in Argentina when her companion paused in front of a carving of Christ on the Cross.
“This is how we evangelicals are different from Catholics,” he said. “We don’t have Christ on our crosses. Because we know he has risen.”
Jason McMartin
Liz Hall
Kelly Kapic
He meant it as a point of theological pride. And in may ways he was right: The resurrection is everything. But something in the comment caught Liz’s attention, causing her to revisit that memory time and time again. Might we be missing something?
Even as Christians around Easter rightly focus on the Resurrection, might there be an unintended consequence? Those who only look upon an empty cross may believe dwelling on Christ’s physical suffering is somehow a failure of faith. Or maybe even a denial of his resurrection. Maybe only his “spiritual” suffering matters, but not his body, not his real physical, mental and emotional pain.
One potentially unintended consequence is that people begin to imagine the only spiritually correct posture is to look quickly past Good Friday toward Easter Sunday. When we do that, it hurts us.
Every Easter, the same thing happens in many of our churches. We go from palm branches to empty tomb, from “Hosanna!” to “He is risen!” — and somewhere along the way, we speed past the fullness of the Cross. And included with that cross is the deep solidarity of Jesus’ body experiencing debilitating pain and suffering.
“Who wants to linger on suffering when victory is right around the corner?”
It’s understandable. Resurrection is the good news. Who wants to linger on suffering when victory is right around the corner?
But here’s what we’ve found after almost 10 years of researching how Christians cope with suffering and interviewing nearly a hundred people navigating cancer diagnoses: When we skip Good Friday, we leave people alone in their pain.
When Liz received a cancer diagnosis at age 45, there was a particular kind of loneliness that came with it. When she walked into church, someone would ask how things were going. The honest answer — I’m afraid I’m going to die — would stay unspoken. “Fine, thanks,” was easier.
The unrelenting positivity of worship, however well-intentioned, contributed to a feeling of disconnection. The faith being celebrated on Sunday didn’t seem to have room for what was happening on the other days of the week.
She wasn’t searching for theological explanations. Not looking for God to justify Godself. Just needing to know the pain had a place in this faith.
It didn’t always feel like it did.
We are extraordinarily skilled at avoiding pain. We take pills for mild headaches, keep our homes climate-controlled, fill our hours with personalized entertainment, and tuck the elderly and the sick into facilities designed to keep death out of sight. We are so good at this that when suffering inevitably crashes into our lives — and it will — we’re utterly unprepared for it.
And our churches, often without meaning to, can reinforce that avoidance.
Consider the Psalms. Scholars estimate roughly 40% of them are psalms of lament — songs of raw, unfiltered pain addressed directly to God. Yet a recent study of contemporary hymnals found only about 4% of hymns reflect this kind of lament.
In many of our churches, we’ve quietly edited out the parts of Scripture that sound most like how suffering people actually feel.
“We’ve quietly edited out the parts of Scripture that sound most like how suffering people actually feel.”
When Jesus hung on the Cross, he didn’t quote a psalm of triumph. He quoted Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” That is a lament. The night before, in Gethsemane, he had wept and prayed with loud cries and tears. This is the Son of God bringing his anguish honestly to his Father.
If we skip Good Friday, we skip the part where God shows us how to suffer. And that God is attentive to our suffering, even entering into it through his incarnate Son.
The Christians we interviewed taught us what they need most isn’t an explanation for why God allowed their suffering. Most of them weren’t even asking that question. What they needed was a faith that could hold their fear, their grief, their anger and not shatter.
One woman, Monica, described the theology she’d grown up with: “I was taught: ‘God works it all out for good, so praise him in your troubles.’ And if you don’t praise him through your troubles, you’re missing the blessing.”
But when cancer came, she couldn’t manufacture that praise — and the expectation that she should left her feeling like a spiritual failure.
That’s what triumphalism costs us. When Easter becomes only about resurrection and never about the Cross, we communicate — however unintentionally — that suffering is a problem to be solved quickly, a phase to move through, a detour from the real story. We leave people like Monica believing their honest grief is a deficiency.
But pain brought to God is faith. Lament is not the opposite of trust; it is trust in action. God may not promise the absence of suffering this side of glory, but God does promise his compassionate presence and grace.
The church has carried something for centuries that we are in danger of losing: The practice of bringing our suffering honestly to God rather than hiding it behind a performance of spiritual wellness.
The Psalms of Lament have a shape — they move from crying out, to complaining, to requesting, to remembering who God is, to praise, not because the circumstances have changed, but because something shifts in us when we are honest before God. Pastor Eugene Peterson said this is the lesson of the Psalms: “All true prayer pursued far enough will become praise. … It does not always get there quickly. It does not always get there easily… But the end is always praise.”
“That journey from lament to praise is the journey of Holy Week.”
That journey from lament to praise is the journey of Holy Week. Good Friday is not a detour around the good news; it is part of the good news. The Resurrection does not erase the Cross, but redeems it. And our suffering is not a detour around the life of faith. It is part of the life of faith.
This Easter, before you get to Sunday, consider spending some time at the Cross.
Pray Psalm 22 or Psalm 13 — the psalms Jesus himself prayed in his darkest hours. Let them give language to whatever suffering you’ve been carrying. Be honest with God about what is hard. You will not shock him. You will not fail some invisible test of spiritual positivity.
Christ suffered. He brought that suffering to his Father. And he invites us to do the same — not to stay there, but to begin the journey toward ultimate resurrection from a place of real honesty rather than performed joy.
Good Friday matters. Not because suffering wins, but because God meets us there. Here is solidarity and promise, grace and forgiveness, hope and courage. We need both the Cross and the Resurrection.
Our God does not abandon us.
Liz Hall, Kelly M. Kapic and Jason McMartin are co-authors of When the Journey Hurts: Finding Meaning in Suffering for Heart, Mind, and Soul, which draws on 10 years of interdisciplinary research with hundreds of Christians navigating suffering. Hall is a clinical psychologist and professor at Rosemead School of Psychology, Biola University. Kapic holds the Honorary Chair of Theology and Culture at Covenant College. McMartin is a theologian at Biola University and has served as an urban missionary and bivocational pastor.