The Narrative of Good Friday

Good Friday is often described as paradoxical—a day of deep sorrow somehow called “good.” In this moving episode of the Allender Center Podcast, Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen invite us into that paradox, not just as observers of the crucifixion story, but as participants—people whose own stories of betrayal, abandonment, and suffering echo the narrative of Jesus’ final hours.

Together, they explore what it means to enter into Good Friday by entering into our own “Fridays”—those dark and disorienting moments of our lives when we’ve not only been betrayed, but also betrayed others. The conversation invites us to reflect on the intersection between personal pain and collective suffering, and to consider how our experiences of humiliation, violence, and even despair connect us to the story of the cross.

But this episode is not one of despair alone. It’s an invitation to sit honestly in the tension of a day when evil seems to win, and yet—somehow—we dare to believe redemption is being forged in the depths of that agony. As Rachael says, it’s a time when we’re forced to confront the death of a dream, the silence between what is and what is promised. And yet, even in the sorrow, there is a movement toward hope.

This topic is not easy—but it is so important to engage. We hope today’s conversation offers space to weep, to name, and to consider how our own stories might be met and transformed by the suffering and love of Christ.

Episode Transcript:

Dan: Rachael, a couple questions I want to ponder with you before we jump into the topic that we have. What’s your history of being betrayed by people whom you have loved and helped grow? You don’t have to go into a lot of detail, but just a thought or two about that question.

Rachael: Just that I have a history of that. It’s deeply painful and I would say I’m very much still in a season of wrestling with the agony of betrayal and longing for repair.

Dan: Andat least I’ll say my experience in that has at times led to a heightened degree of hypervigilance, certain degree of suspiciousness, if not outright small “p” paranoia. Any of that language feel accurate?

Rachael: Yeah. Yes. I would say I tend to be a fairly preoccupied person. I tend to be more hypervigilant, but I would say when I experience betrayal, I swing the other way. I move to avoidance, but a kind that is really like I’m putting up all kinds of barriers so that I’ll never make the same mistake again, so I move much more away than assuming. It’s just like, well, I just will not connect in the same way or give in the same way or trust in the same way.

Dan: Second question, those who you have felt betrayed by, have you at times felt their mockery and felt so foolish for having given something of your own heart to them,

Rachael: Less experiences of that or if I do have that experience, I’ve just chosen not to see it or feel it.

Dan: Which is a way of saying yes, but not fair enough, and in the middle of having to wrestle with not only the betrayal but the feeling of foolishness. I’m assuming that you’ve had an experience of wrestling to escape all that you felt and all that you know were going to suffer as a result.

Rachael: Yeah, I think that’s what I’m putting words to it in some ways. If I could find a way to go about life and the way how God’s made me to go without having to trust other people or delight in other people or dream with other people or share vulnerability with other people, I think like many people in this world, I would do that, but I also keep betraying myself.

Dan: Yeah, for those of you who have betrayal and mockery either your own or others and wrestled to the point where it felt like you would sweat blood, we’ve got a day for you. And today that we want to consider with you. But let me bring a passage. Hebrews chapter 12 “For the joy set before him, he endured the cross, scorning it, shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Here’s the passage we’re wanting for us to consider him who endured such opposition from sinners so that you’ll not grow weary and lose heart as we enter into a discussion on maybe one of the most paradoxical days, Good Friday, we want you to not only consider him who has endured such opposition from sinners, but you really can’t, at least from our standpoint, enter good Friday as a narrative unless you are willing to enter your own Fridays. And there are no question unless you have lived basking in the sunlight of Eden and never stepped east of Eden. You have known, you have known betrayal. And you have known mockery and foolishness, and you have known to some degree what happened in Gethsemane crying out “may this cup pass”. So all that to say as we enter into this conversation on Good Friday, what things do you want people to engage before we just recount some of what occurred, and from my standpoint, good Friday does not begin at 12:01. It begins actually even before, we don’t know the exact time that the Lord’s table on Maundy Thursday, command Thursday the great command to love one another as I have loved you. Yet there are things that happen on Thursday night that move into Friday morning. In one sense, we view all of that in the frame of Good Friday as we jump into this. Rachael, tell me what you’re thinking as we’ve introduced this topic.

Rachael: Well, honestly where I’m going is this feels connected. So if I go rambling on a rabbit trail, you’re like, bring it back in. You can just make a sign to me.

Dan: I know your affinity to rabbits now. So yeah,

Rachael: Actually my mind went is that in my tradition growing up in the Southern Baptist Church, we did honor Good Friday, but the emphasis was much more on our sin and failure of God, which again, I don’t necessarily think in our day and age where a lot of people can’t own failure, can’t never are never wrong, are distorting the gospel in ways that are horrific, not new, but very explicit right now, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing to be like “you need to think about your sin.” All I’m saying is I actually, we didn’t really practice lent my Catholic family did that. There was not a Lenten practice leading up to Holy Week and Good Friday often felt like I’ve got to basically not manufacture sin, but in some ways if I’m going to do this right, I’ve got to really find some things that are bad enough to have caused God’s wrath and the death of God. It was such an emphasis on individual sin and there’s something about these categories of betrayal and humiliation and mockery, abuse, abandonment, that I think extend far beyond my personal… I just think without some imagination for the corporate ways in which we participate in these things against other people. So it’s actually like your invitation to remember and have to honor the places we’ve experienced this suffering of God is a different orientation than what I grew up with. And in some ways where a lot of my theological education took me was much more understanding. What does it mean that Jesus is the high priest who’s gone before us as you’re bringing Hebrews into the mix. And so it’s a little bit of a more tender ground to enter and it’s good for me because right now, if I’m honest, the part of me is I would like for everyone who doesn’t understand the heart of the gospel or is delighting, is participating in mockery, is like participating in betrayal. I would like for you to come ponder Good Friday, so you’re helping me in some ways get a little more in my body.

Dan: Well, and as a meer aside, at times I’m so grateful that I knew nothing of religion, nothing of the ways that the text has been used until much later in life. I don’t have the confusion of all the struggles I did have still with my mom and dad. At least they didn’t bring God into this. At least they didn’t take me into worlds that at one level I love the way you put it. There is something about owning your own sin because I haven’t just been betrayed, I’ve betrayed, I’ve mocked and in so many ways I’ve caused others to wrestle. So it’s not as if I am but a victim. But I think without having the awareness, this text is so crucial for understanding the nature of how to live, not just indeed I glory in my redemption based on the blood of Christ covering my sins and, not but, and there’s something about Good Friday that when I read the narrative and start again from the Lord’s upper room at the Passover, that’s why I often begin in Luke chapter 22, but then moving from the interaction with the mob into prayer and the Mount Olive, the blood being literally shed before the cross and what we understand to be a level of agony that none of us can comprehend. But I do know my own agony and I do know that sense of asking friends to be with me and having them fall asleep. So again, how do we enter into this story if we’re not willing to engage those nights that we’ve just not been able to get off the floor, the nights in which we have felt no one on the earth will enter and hold what I’m suffering. So as we begin this process, the story begins with agony and abandonment. That’s part of your life. It’s part of all of our lives. Now, we may not have the same experience of being arrested and then having someone like Peter disown us, but you’ve not been disowned. Especially I say to those of you who have operated within the sphere of ministry. I mean, I don’t know a Christian leader who’s not felt as if they have been disowned by people whom they have spent sometimes decades serving, especially in our hyperpolarized, politicized world, if you don’t speak the right language according to certain people, you are not only dangerous, you are actually more dangerous than the so-called liberals who we hate. You are like near us, but you are betrayal is even more vile because you seem to have known God and given that you’re not doing and thinking as we are, you’re more worthy to be disowned. Thoughts?

Rachael: I think I’m having a trauma response. So no, you’ve got to keep going. I was connecting your opening questions. I was making new connections in a visceral way that actually fragmented my brain.

Dan: Well, people sometimes wonder, do you have your plan together? Always worked out, notes typed every sentence planned. There should be plenty of indication that’s not the case, but this would be another one. But I will go ahead to say that I think when I try to step into Good Friday, one of the ways that I have done so is to name the intersection between who have I abandoned and know that I have and who has abandoned me, who has disowned me. And sometimes having those names and faces, which of course always brings back the scenes, the context, the process. There’s the sense in which exactly what you’re experiencing is mine as well. That sense of I almost can’t do this, I can’t think about it anymore. What I would say though is as the narrative progresses, even before the more severe humiliation, the guards are beating and mocking and insulting Jesus. So even before daybreak being brought, before the council of elders and before Pilot and before Herod, you have Jesus being beat to a pulp. Eventually, as we know, and we’ll step a little bit more into the interplay with Pilate and the Herod, but you have Jesus being, and again, there’s no word for this, but the word abused. He’s being physically abused. And the way scripture reads, particularly with regard to when he’s on the cross, he’s naked when they are gambling for his garments, it includes his underwear. And so Jesus is physically abused, beaten to a pulp, he’s emotionally abused. The God of the universe who created all things beautiful is being verbally humiliated. And what we don’t often talk about is if you think men who have power and who are verbally and physically humiliating are somehow not going to sexually humiliate again, the data of almost all torture around the world involves some degree of sexual degradation. So when we step into this, again to underscore and not go into detail, but I have known physical abuse, I have known emotional abuse, I have known sexual violation. And in that process, this is where can we bring our story to the story that’s being told? And as you enter this, what I’m saying is if you can read this and read it like a narrative and start with Luke 22 and just read it through, oh, it’s awful. It’s terrible what Jesus suffered. If you can read it without fragmenting, I don’t think that’s out of your maturity. If you can’t read this without at one level being enraged, I don’t think that’s due to your maturity. And I think especially for me is I can’t read this without weeping. There’s something so horrifying that this is God bearing what I have known. And now holding this text, I can barely read it verse by verse without in one sense stopping and having to almost catch my breath and then say I need to continue. But not necessarily in that same five minute, 20 minute period of time. Again, how are you as we talk?

Rachael: Yeah, I think where my mind keeps going, not to add another layer of despair, but in light of all we’re talking about in that deeply how it connects with our own suffering. I think for me an even greater horror of Good Friday that I can imagine if I suspend the story, if I don’t jump too quickly to Sunday, I think about these followers of Jesus who are not just wanting to be close to someone who does miraculous things or they’re wanting all to be made right. And they believe that Jesus is one who in this moment in place and time is going to overthrow the powers and principalities of this world in the physical political empire that they are under threat in and the religious powers that they are acquainted with and a part of that they are under threat with, which actually to me in this particular season feels very, feels like, oh, I think I’m tasting something of what these followers of Jesus would’ve been feeling, the sense of despair and defeat and shock and the death of a dream that the dream of heaven coming to earth in the way that you are made for, you’re meant for. Actually having to face the brutality of the empire you think that God is going to make right and overthrow and establish something. I feel myself like that’s probably the place this particular good Friday today that I feel in my bones like the most resonance with. I can almost become okay with the fact that God knows something of my suffering. I can barely tolerate the waiting and the agony of what does this mean for the places where it feels like death and destruction and violence and degradation and humiliation and abuse actually win the day and not just the day, but when the future win the now win the past, so to speak. So that might be too much despair, but I’m holding on to Sunday in that Jesus is doing something toward that end. But I’m just seeing in some very embodied ways, things that I’ve logically seen and understood.

Dan: Well, and to not engage politics is to not see the story. So what happens on Good Friday is that you have Herod Antipas who is a Jewish leader and centrally in charge of Galilee, and he’s the son of Herod the Great. Herod the Great was the one who sent essentially a holocaust into play as he killed those who were male and under two and under.

Rachael: Palestinian, Palestinian, Jewish babies.

Dan: We’ve got heartache at the very core of the birth of Jesus. Again, we’ve done enough, shall we say, invitations in the context of advent to say this is war. This is a war zone. What happy little picture you have with your crèche, if you don’t have a dragon near it, it’s not enough to actually tell the story. But here we have his son who’s actually an enemy of Pilate who’s a Roman, and he’s the one who basically is asking the most important question that a Roman ruler can ask, are you a king? Are you the King of the Jews? And again, as you see Jesus in some sense of the word deathly serious play saying, and you say I am, I need not tell you because literally all he has to say is I am. And everyone knows that isn’t just a subject with a verb, it’s a statement of I am who I am in Exodus chapter three. So we’ve got the core playground here of so much violence, and yet as it says in the text, it’s just a little line like a passing little line. And from this point on, Herod and Pilate who were enemies have now become friends. Jesus unites people in hatred. And there are a lot of people who in their so-called engagement with Jesus find solace and political powers that are not friends of Jesus. At least it’s in this text. And so as we play with the text, it’s clear that as you see that eventually Pilate grants to the crowd. He tries to free Jesus several times, but the crowd cries out to free Barabbas, literally an assassin and a murderer and one who had physically tried to overthrow the Roman government. He gets released. And it’s a question that to me is similar to the question of, and what would you have done, Dan, if you were a baker across from Dachau? And if you were in 1820’s and ’30’s living in certain portions of this country, and would you have owned a human being? So that whole question of and whom would you have shouted for? And all I know is the frenzy of the crowd. I know something of the erotic power and play of the crowd, and also the danger in having a voice that says something other. So am I guilty for slavery? Damn right I am. Am I guilty for the Holocaust? Absolutely. How do I know that? Because I would’ve shouted Barabbas. What we have as the passage moves it’s taking us again to the fact that as we see Jesus moving into Golgotha, and again important to know this is outside as a stranger, the city gates, this is the place of shame. This is the place where the lamb, who was the so-called black sheep, would be taken to be sacrificed. And so Golgotha is the place where the ruler sneer the soldiers mock, even a criminal being crucified next to him mocks. So at some level, the frenzy, the frenzy of this in one sense, manic energy to humiliate again, physical, sexual, emotional humiliation. Again, where does your heart go as you hear all that?

Rachael: I think kind of back to what you just put words to that, also the terror. It’s like I actually have a lot of compassion for Peter. You’ve just witnessed the frenzy and the mockery and the terror. And even if everything in you is screaming out, this is wrong, this is wrong, stop not having the courage and not having enough… I think also connection, right? There was such a fragmentation of the community of God and where in order to stand against this kind of violence, you really need a sense of connection almost being arm in arm. And that’s not what happens in this moment, right? They’re fragmented out. They did not have imagination even though Jesus told them, they did not have imagination that this is how things would go. And every turn they were waiting for this miracle worker that they believed is God in whatever way they could conceive of that or the Son of God, right? The Messiah, the chosen one, the one who would redeem and make all things right. So just I think about also our trauma responses and everything you put words to when we hear this language of the great high priest who goes before us in every way, I think it’s good news in a very paradoxical way. For those of us who know wordlessness and fragmentation and terror and even a paralysis or a flight fight or freeze or a fawning, we’re going to stay in line that that’s not something outside of the experience or imagination or body of God, so to speak.

Dan: Yes. Well, and to me, you’re underlining that we have to enter death here and death is coming well before the crucifixion and his literal death and his capacity to say forgive them for they know not what they do, and it is finished. If we can enter death, we are entering it through the avenue of betrayal and abandonment and humiliation and mockery and physical and emotional and sexual harm as we enter our story. Again, it is no easy thing to enter the story of God, but when we bring in our own story in the connective link, it will not be what feels like Good Friday. If anything, there is this playful but deadly serious use of the word good. That should be jarring to us. And yet I find as I go through, and sometimes I have to read four or five times through this whole significant day, but I always come to the one thief. I can’t wait to meet him. I mean, it is, I think a fun question of who do you look forward to meeting beyond likely your parents and people who have mattered to you? I get all that. I get all, but outside of dear friends and family, which of course you must be anticipating, who are some of the people that you go, you dunno, that you want to meet? Well, when I think of it and people will say, I can’t wait to meet C.S. Lewis. And I’m like, oh yeah, yeah, I’m good for about 10,000 years before I meet him. But oh, just I think he’s going to be busy for a long time. But the thief is like my number one. I want to talk to Paul, I want to talk to the writer scripture, but this dude, this dude got it. And I’m like, I need to hear your story, man. How did you come to say when you come into your kingdom, I want to be with you. Thoughts?

Rachael: Oh yeah. It’s just a certain kind of a really beautiful picture of faith in the midst of agony, a proclamation of seeing Jesus for who Jesus was. So it gives me hope.

Dan: It does. And again, have you thought about him much?

Rachael: I mean…

Dan: Not faulting you if you haven’t. I’m just curious.

Rachael: Recently. No. But yes, this would be someone I wrote papers about in my multiple years of theological education.

Dan: And what did you learn? What did you think about? We’ve never talked about this before.

Rachael: Well, similar to the way Mary who anoints Jesus’s body for burial in some ways is often talked about as one of the first Christians. Or you could even say Mary Jesus’ mother is one of the first Christians, right? With her Mary song of really believing God is who God’s saying God is and what’s going to happen with Jesus. But yeah, I think just that sense of not just cognitive belief, but a visceral experience of longing for liberation, for peace, for wholeness, and that Jesus was the kind of king/kingdom he’d want to be a part of. So.

Dan: What we know, and again, only hesitant on this because of course there was variance across all of the Roman empire, but crucifixion truly one of the most hideous forms of capital punishment that the Romans ever came up with. It was considered to be the extreme of all extremes of death. And generally speaking, those who were consigned to that death had not committed theft or even murder, but usually something that challenged the kingdom, meaning they were revolutionaries, they were the people who had done something to threaten the throne of Rome. And I think that’s kind of an important category in any day, that when you challenge empire, there will be more likelihood of a level of cruelty and humiliation because you’re challenging structures that everyone depends upon, even those who are oppressed to keep in line. And so often, at least in terms of what we can see about the Sanhedrin is nobody wanted to actually challenge the structure and the power of Rome. But obviously there were a few, including likely these two criminals. And in that you have one who mocks and then the other who’s operating with no, at least not that we know any hamartiology meaning what’s the nature of sin? Why is it that Jesus’ death covers my sin? Now, what view of atonement did he have and did he have the right one? And the idea of did he understand the person of Christ and the work of Christ? And all the passage seems to imply to me is desire. Desire for what it was you were meant for desire, for the way things were meant to be. And knowing even if it’s just so intuitive that there is something about Jesus who puts all things right and therefore is actually worthy to die for, I come back to this passage in 2 Timothy 4, Paul at the end of a long life, he’s in Rome, he’s likely about to be beheaded. And he’s talking about in some sense his final words. And he says, now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing. There is something about the longing for righteousness, for what the righteous one brings. And how there will be restoration that creates the capacity not for a kind of in the buy and buy, my hope is in the future, but a kind of my hope is from the future now willing in some sense of the word to take the risk, more abandonment, more humiliation, more cruelty, more challenging the structures and the powers of the unseen world and the seen which often interact in a way in which again, I ain’t claiming to be very mature. I’m just simply saying there’s something about that sweet gift of Jesus saying to him as they’re both in humiliation, naked being mocked about to die and to say, and today you will be with me in paradise. So as I hold, I’m like, I don’t have the ability to hold the complexity of Good Friday. I just barely can understand how Herod and Pilate got to be friends, let alone how Simeon carries the cross, how Mary and Mary stand and John and how Jesus can say to John, essentially, take care of her well. All this is going on. And I’m like, and then I’m supposed to think about my own life. And the answer is, absolutely. So the question is, how will you make use of a narrative that is so disturbing that in some ways it requires of you not only to feel nausea and fury and confusion and heartache? In other words, I think the passage is really meant to take us back to being the disciples. And if so, I think it’s also the question, are you the thief on the cross? And if so, which one? And because you are likely a person of faith, it’s easy to say, I’m not the one who mocks, good. But are you the one who so deeply desires that you get to live out paradise today? And if so, the radical work of the gospel is Good Friday is followed by an even more difficult day. Holy Saturday, a day in which you hold all that Friday prompts without resolve, without attempting to crawl out of the pit. This isn’t self-absorption or just wallowing. It’s: will I hold the suffering of Jesus and everyone else who has followed Jesus, including me? Can we hold this together with anticipation, but no necessary resolve. May it be a Good Friday.