She stepped in my office thirty minutes before worship, like I was taking attendance. In a meek voice she announced, “I’m here but this is my least favorite day of the year.”  It was Good Friday. “I can’t bear to hear about his suffering on the cross. If were up to me, I wouldn’t be here.”

She has company.  Good Friday isn’t the most popular day for worship. When I began the ministry, Good Friday services were just starting to decline in popularity. Businesses were beginning to tighten up their policy of closing the office in order for workers to attend services. While the market still closes on Good Friday, few companies maintain the tradition. Our midday vigil is faithfully but sparsely attended by no more than thirty or forty in a service. The first vigil I preached was an ecumenical service 29 years ago in a downtown Baptist church, a big old cathedral that seated over 1,000. The bottom floor was filled.

The old Baptist pastor leading the worship leaned over to me and apologized that there was only 500 to hear me preach. I was shaking.  It was the largest congregation I’d ever preached to; but he remembered the days when the balcony was full and people were standing in the back, waiting for a pew to open up.   He offered the wisdom of fifty years of ministry to a young preacher who had been alive for only half of those years. “People don’t like suffering, not even when the suffering is for their salvation. So now they go in hiding until Easter.”

They go in hiding until Easter. This is the tradition of the church because the evidence in the gospels is sketchy about who made it to the first Good Friday.  Before Jesus is on trial, Matthew weighs in saying, “Then all the disciples deserted him and fled” (Matthew 26:56b). It is hard to argue with scripture but with all due respect to Matthew, either he is overstating to make a point or he needed a good editor because two verses later he says “Peter was following him at a distance.” (Matthew 26: 58a). We know this because that’s where we left Peter last night, following Jesus to Caiaphas’ courtyard, staying with him through the evening but denying knowing him just as the cock crowed. We left Peter, weeping bitterly just at dawn of Good Friday morning. Where he weeps, we do not know.

Later in his gospel, Matthew is very specific about who he reports as witnesses to the suffering of Jesus on a cross.  He lists Roman soldiers, Jewish officials, passersby who mocked Jesus, and the two men crucified at the same time. Then he writes “Many women were also there, looking on from a distance; they had followed Jesus from Galilee and had provided for him. Among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.” (Matthew 27:55-56). There is no mention of the disciples. One would think that if they were there, he would have said so.  At least from Matthew’s view of Golgotha, the disciples and Peter are absent, in hiding until Easter.

Mark offers a similar position. “There were also women looking on from a distance; among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome.  These used to follow him and provided for him when he was in Galilee; and there were many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem.” (Mark 15:40-41).  Salome shows up along with a number of unnamed women. But there is no mention of the disciples.

To find a reference to a disciple you have to look over the gospel of John.  Instead of standing at a distance, they are near the cross, close enough for Jesus to make eye contact and talk to them. John says “…standing near the cross of Jesus “were his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.” (John 19:25b) But John adds this important dimension. “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, "Woman, here is your son." Then he said to the disciple, "Here is your mother." And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.” (John 19: 26-27)  Finally one of the disciples witnesses the suffering of Jesus. Tradition holds that the beloved disciple was John. One of the disciples didn’t go in hiding. Is there any possibility that any of the others made it to the cross? Did Peter stay in hiding until Easter?

Maybe, but there is a slim possibility if we look only at Luke’s report. It’s just one verse, but it holds some promise if we ignore the other three gospels’ narrow description of witnesses. It reads, “But all his acquaintances, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.” (Luke 23:49)  Weddings, funerals—I hear the question. How many do you think will show up?  I don’t know, but all of his acquaintances should be here.

I suppose it depends on whether you put your emphasis on all or acquaintances.  One might argue that all means everyone, all of the disciples. An opposite position might suggest that acquaintances are just that, people who knew Jesus but weren’t really his followers, his apprentices, his disciples, his friends. Is Peter really in hiding until Easter or is he hiding in all of the acquaintances on Good Friday, witnessing the suffering from a distance?

Peter, were you there when they crucified my Lord?  Maybe he was because in the first letter signed with Peter’s name he’s identified “as an elder myself and a witness of the sufferings of Christ…”  (1 Peter 5: 1). Are you saying you were there, Peter? Do you have to be present in person to experience the suffering of Christ?

Two men live 800 miles apart. One is the constant caregiver of their dying mother. The other offers support, to him and to his mother, long distance. At her death, who has suffered more? The one present or the one who couldn’t be there?

The phone rings the terrible ring of accident. A father rushes to the emergency room. A daughter is dying.  Her mother is out of town, on a business trip, trying desperately to get home, wondering if she can make it in time. Who is suffering more? The anxious father making medical decisions or the mother who is suffering because she can’t get home?

Did Peter suffer because he was with “all of the acquaintances” seeing from afar Jesus nailed to a cross? Or did he suffer in hiding?  Which suffering is greater? Do you have to be present in person to experience the suffering of Christ? If so, the cause of Christ would not have made it much past Easter, let alone into a 3rd millennium.

Peter would say that discipleship requires suffering. It’s the seventh principle of his life.   Throughout 1^st Peter, we hear that we are to suffer with Jesus, to share in Christ’s suffering.  He says, “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.” (1 Peter 2:21) Whether he was an eyewitness to the death of Jesus or hearing about it in hiding, second Peter says discipleship requires suffering. We are to follow in Christ’s footsteps and suffer.

In a world that struggles with personal tragedy and pain, we have difficulty with this. We don’t have much tolerance for this. We want things fixed, immediately. That’s because we confuse suffering with pain. “Pain, according the American Medical Association is “an unpleasant sensation related to tissue damage.” Pain originates in the body. The hurt comes from swollen joints, fluid-filled lungs, damaged nerves, invading tumors. More often than not, you can lay your hands on pain.

You can find the place that hurts and press on it, eliciting a howl or at least a groan. Pain happens in the flesh.[1]  On the cross, Jesus suffered terrible pain.

Suffering, on the other hand, happens in the mind. The mind assigns meaning to pain, whether it’s physical pain or emotional, spiritual pain. The mind decides what pain means and whether it is deserved.  The mind notices who comes to visit and who does not. The mind remembers how good things used to be and are not likely to be again. The mind makes judgments, measures losses, takes blame, and assigns guilt.”[2]  The mind says, “If only,” like Mary and Martha at the death of Lazarus. “Lord, if only you had been here, our brother would not have died.”

But now it is Jesus, our brother and savior, who has died on a cross. We can only imagine the suffering that he went through, the emotional turmoil he experienced, the mental anguish, dying for us even wondering if God had forsaken him. Peter describes it this way:   “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.  When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2: 22-24)  

Peter says that it is this type of suffering which marks the footsteps which we are to follow.

If discipleship requires suffering with Jesus, then we dare not go in hiding until Easter.  “I can’t bear to hear about his suffering on the cross. “If it were up to me, I wouldn’t be here.” Well, it is important that you are here. You are here to be a witness to suffering as surely as you will witness the resurrection in a few days.

We witness the suffering of Christ because it reveals his love for us.

We witness the suffering of Christ because by his wounds we are healed.

We witness the suffering of Christ in order to stand in solidarity with our fellow Christians. Peter reminds us that “your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering.” (1Peter 5:9) Discipleship requires entering into the suffering of those around us. We are to weep with those who weep, and mourn with those who mourn. We are to look with love at the lost and the broken. We are to have compassion on the hungry and thirsty, to touch the lives of those who are neighbors and those who you’ve never met.

Look, we all know how we struggle to understand suffering because there is so much of it in our lives. There is suffering that is being human…the death of a spouse, a divorce, an emotional breakdown or crisis. It is impossible not to suffer this way.

There is suffering that is sin, when we deliberately turn from God. Unfortunately, this too is impossible to avoid.  But there is also suffering that is uniquely Christian, the suffering that we are called to as we stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Was Peter in hiding until Easter? It is hard to imagine that one who challenges us to share Christ’s suffering wasn’t there but no one really knows where he was. Whether he was present at the cross or absent, he was suffering along with Jesus. We stand with him today, this Peter with whom we have walked many miles, as he confronts the truth of what it means to follow the Christ, the son of the living God. Today, we suffer.

But hear this good news from Peter on the others side of the cross: “…And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you”  (1 Peter 5: 10).