Thinking Deeply about Suffering on Good Friday Before Easter Sunday

Hey, everyone, and welcome to another episode of MU Talks. Very excited to welcome every single one of you. In the studios of Malawi University, we are today with another special guest.

That's right. This week we welcome Dr. Derek Chin to the studio. Dr. Chin has over 25 years of pastoral ministry experience. He's passionate about how the gospel is revealed through diversity in all areas, including race, culture, class, socioeconomics, age, and education. He believes that diversity teaches us extraordinary things about Jesus and that other people's stories are important for us to hear. So welcome to the podcast. Eric.

Hi. Thank you very much. Yeah.

Well, today's discussion is focused on Good Friday. Our listeners. Today you're listening to this. It's Good Friday or after, even though we are recording this earlier. And so we wanted to focus on questions surrounding Good Friday today. Good Friday is when we as Christians remember the death of Jesus Christ. We set aside today on our church calendars to think on the suffering of Jesus and his sacrifice even unto his own death. Today we've invited Derek to talk about this very thing and to think together about what happens when we settle on this day and we don't skip straight to the resurrection. What are we offered in our own suffering when we allow the suffering of Jesus to take focus on Good Friday? So to start with, Derek, let's just start with this. Do you agree that sometimes we are apt to rush to the end? Like, skip to the end, skip to the resurrection too quickly?

Yeah, most certainly. I think certainly the challenge of remembering Good Friday and thinking about Easter is we want to definitely go to the resurrection and certainly all the good things that are associated with it. And I think we reflecting on Good Friday, even thinking about the Passion Week as we move into that, to reflect on what Christ was going through, to be thinking about certainly what he was anticipating, it's a little uncomfortable. I don't think there's anybody who likes to settle in and think about grief, think about hard things, because that's too difficult. It's uncomfortable. It puts us in a place where perhaps we're challenged, maybe even theologically, where we're thinking about all the benefits that God gives to us. And we expect and anticipate something manifested in terms of, say, wealth, health, well being. And when that doesn't hold true, it can be unsettling. It challenges our theology. It challenges our understanding of who God really is. And we'd rather have the resurrection story and look, go to the end of revelation as opposed to perhaps experiencing what Job experienced. It's an uncomfortable place to be.

Yeah, I Think even sometimes we accept this false idea that forgiveness from God shouldn't have cost God anything, that that should have been also free for him to give. Sometimes you hear this in the question, like, why doesn't God just grant us forgiveness? Why doesn't he just like, almost wave a magic wand and just. And just make that happen? Almost like it seems Jesus is doing in the Gospels when he forgives people who have come to him? But how might you approach this misunderstanding? How do we think about this in a way that is more helpful to acknowledging the suffering of Jesus?

Yeah. Oh, that's a great question. I think. I think about it more from a. Perhaps a pastoral perspective. You know, certainly this question could be posed with our theologians, our resident theologians, and said, you've got me. So I'm certainly going to be looking at it more from a pastoral perspective. And I. I think coming alongside people and resting with them and being with them in the midst of wrestling through the implications of Good Friday, of what Jesus experienced, I think it's a harder thing to do. It's harder to. To be quiet. It's harder to. To have answers that you want to direct people to and to encourage them. So I think it's a challenge, even as a pastor to. To walk alongside people in the midst of challenge and asking questions about, well, you know, how does. How does the resurrection play into what I'm experiencing? How does the cross play into or have significance with what's going on? So I think. I think it's a challenge to sit there, but I think we go into it, we press into it, because I think of the relational aspect of it. I think what comes to mind for me is not just simply recognizing the theological components of the atonement reconciliation, but I think as I reflect on it, I'm struck by the relationship that Jesus has with the Father and that relationship that he actually invites us into to have with the Father, and that it's grounded in trust. It's grounded in a place where you see the Son completely abandoning himself to the Father, even when he's as. As a human doesn't know what lies ahead. I think about when Jesus is in Gethsemane and he's praying and he's asking that the cup would be passed from him. People will argue over what. What this wrath is, what it means, what the cup is. Is it God's wrath? Is it separation from God for eternity? You know, we don't know. We don't know what Jesus was thinking. We could imagine what he might have experienced as a Human. So he doesn't have. Certainly lacks the divine knowledge because of the kenosis, emptying himself. So he's plating himself in a place where he's completely dependent upon the Father, trusting that the Father will do something according to. As Jesus states his will, the Father's will. And that amount of trust, that abandonment is something that I think boggles my mind. I think it's something that Jesus invites us into, is to get to a place where I would trust God enough where I could just abandon myself in my grief, in my suffering. And I think that's a hard place to go to. It's an uncomfortable place to be. Yeah.

And speaking to what you talked about before, going there with people, I think that. I think we need to go there with other people. Right. I mean we see, we see the, the effect of Jesus friends abandoning him. Right. And, and what a different story it would be if. If he had gone there with people. And how we can kind of walk in that do with others.

Yeah, well, I think it's interesting. I mean, sort of a double entendre. I go there, we go there ourselves, certainly individually, but I think going there with others, going there in community, that's significant. I mean to bear one another's burdens to, to grieve together, to support, to lean on one another. I think certainly it's almost antithetical to individualism, pull oneself up by their own bootstraps to think we don't need others. That. That independence runs completely contrary to. I think the community that even Christ is inviting us into or not simply invites us into, makes us a part of thinking about the eternal community of Father, Son and Spirit and being invited into that. But then going alongside that know with others, our brethren, that's significant place to be.

I'm so thankful for this conversation that we have on such an important subject. I feel in the society we live in America or actually in the Western world, but America has a specific thing to it. The same way that social media and the, the reduction of how much information can get. We have. We have split things in small particles, you know, 120 characters, two to four minute videos. And people can only now really consume information in smaller pieces. And that is impacting because our book is a long book. Right. We are servants of a very long book. How do you communicate the truth of the Gospel in a society that only consumes small, small pieces of content? The same way that that change is now providing some challenge for us to actually communicate. I feel the same challenges for us to really understand suffering In a society that works very hard just to run away from suffering. So how do you reconcile somebody that comes from Eastern Europe that grew up in the generation that I grew up, I'm not going to date myself, when I grew up, people would hire professional criers and professional people to cry at funerals to add a level sadness. I mean these people were professional, professional criers. They would come and they just, they'd be wailing. I mean it was just the level of, of grief. And the more the grief, the more the person was appreciated in life. And, and that's how you appreciate it because people would actually cry. Significant. There's so you had to see the pain. And people did not run away from pain because they were surrounded by it. People would die in many ways. You know, the people didn't live to 100 too many of them or 90. Here at America people start and then they go to college.

Right.

And it's a whole. So it's a, it's a different vibe for the. But, but the society faces suffering and goes through it. Yeah, just lives it goes through it. And I've seen the first funeral that I've been to in America. People were high fiving themselves. It was a celebration of life, of the person's life. Right. And culturally was such a shock. I'm thinking like did they cry before you? Did they not hire anybody to come and prefer this. What's going on in this place? But, but how is really avoiding and running away, you know, on a scale of 1 to 10, what's your suffering? And you know, when you go into the hospital and they want to make like they just want to bring it down at any cost. The point is to run away from suffering at any cost. Whether it's emotional, whether it's physical. How does that really impact us? Truly understanding the suffering, the level of suffering that Isaiah 53 spends quite significant time going in detail and truly understanding the. What suffering, the role the suffering has in the gospel.

Wow, that's a good one and certainly a good observation. I appreciate hearing, hearing that perspective. I think, you know, certainly suffering and maybe the, the strength of it as well as the weakness of it is it makes us dependent on other people. Maybe it makes us acutely aware of how much we need other people. Because certainly to walk through grief and suffering alone, physiologically, I can't imagine the impact. I mean certainly they talk about studies that have been done on people who, you know, when they, when say a spouse passes, how much stress it puts on that individual when they've lost A loved one. And I think it's because, again, we're part of a community where we're made to be connected to other people. So suffering perhaps reveals how much we need other people because we can't walk through grief alone. We might try, but it's not very healthy. And so I think being happy or giving the illusion of happiness and being able to be strong and navigate what's going on, you know, it satisfies our. Our desire to be independent, our desire to. To. To walk alone. But I think, yeah, certainly God's wired us the way we are. He's made us who we are to be dependent on one another. So again, the suffering hopefully draws us closer to others. And maybe it's that time where you actually also let down some of your inhibitions. You let down your walls, the things that you would use to protect you. Because everybody knows, no, this is the real place, and we all share it. We all have lost loved ones or will lose loved ones. We'll all be in a place where we need others. I mean, yeah, I guess suffering probably brings about vulnerability. And if we're uncomfortable in being in that place, I could see where you'd want to run in the other direction.

So in John Stott's the Cross of Christ, where of course, he just goes into every possible facet of the cross, he talks about the suffering this way. He says, I could never myself believe in God if it were not for the cross. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? What do you think about that idea? That idea that does God become more accessible to us as people because. Because we see that he's participated in suffering or. Or what is that? What does that change for us? Why does that become easier for us?

I think that's the very thing, certainly with the incarnation, Jesus experiencing the things that we experience as humans, it certainly. It makes him more relatable, certainly draws to. Draws to us. Draws for us a picture of the heart of God towards us. If he is identifying with creation and there's no longer this distance, I think we probably might more readily identify with it. When we think about, you know, TV shows like Undercover Boss where, you know, a CEO goes into a restaurant or goes to a, you know, manufacturing facility and is walking alongside, working alongside the employees and going through what they go through, getting chewed out by a supervisor or acting like they don't know anything and seeing how people respond to them, we think, wow, what a great boss. You know, they're. They're just like us, or they're willing to remember what life was like before they had built this, you know, great organization. And you know, the boss is willing to reflect on the things that they could be doing better and how they can be serving their people better. And they get, you know, it becomes this feel good story at the end. We understand that. And so it's not that difficult to think, wow, God does this. And what are the implications of that? I mean, yeah, there's, there's an element of my identity, but I think it's also, I think God even goes above and beyond when certainly with Jesus, God the son going to the cross. I mean, we have a picture and sense of it with Isaac and Abraham and seeing that, well, Isaac doesn't die in this particular situation. Jesus does. He is. That's going above and beyond and it's giving to us a picture of God's extravagant love. I mean, just what he's willing to do. And I think that's a little mind boggling the identity that Jesus is willing to, I guess, go through to be like us, to be his people and co heirs with him eventually. That's, that's profound. I don't know that we just refine that in other faith, faith based, you know, religions and I don't know if. Yeah, that's just too radical. I think.

The, what a great opportunity this, this Good Friday to pause a little bit. You can, you can even sense the, the rhythm of our podcast, this episode. And I really appreciate the fact that we get a chance to just slow down a little bit and reflect on, on the fact that if we are honest with ourselves and whether you come from research, whether you come from any area of life, from, from the psychology of humanity, from whatever area of life, our roads will somehow lead us to the cross in one way or another. Because that cross has changed this world in a very powerful way. I was listening. I was at a conference, which was not a Christian conference. This Researcher did their PhD on the concept of humility. This is not a Christian conference. This is a researcher standing in front of an academic community and saying, we have traced back with no, with no confusion and with clear proof that the concept of humility in the world only became a value in any society after Jesus Christ and his death on the cross. Before that, the Roman Empire, the value in society was pride. It was the pride of Rome and all this and the fact that if you were a proud person, you were appreciated. And right after that. So he traced through societies right after what happened at that cross where at least the story, the narrative is that the God that created everything humbled himself. And I love how Paul repeats this theme of, to the point of the cross, right? He humbled himself and took everything but humble. So the big one, the great one, lowered himself so to elevate somebody else. And that shifted actually in non Christian societies in, in, you know, not in theocracy, in democracy, in anything became a value of humanity, that if, if he's a humble person, that's a value. So I want to pause somehow, if we can slow down this day to just observe how many things, even in the ways that we don't know, we don't understand this cross and this event, the greatest story truly ever told, has actually impacted and changed the world.

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I think it's, it's appropriate you bring that up and even remind us, because I think it's easy. Even just within the church, we forget that. I think I just heard a phrase that I learned recently was the evangelical industrial complex. And the idea that we have to remember that it's a little scary, but just the idea that within evangelicalism, there's almost popular evangelicalism, there's this need to create a brand, an image, to elevate oneself in order to do this for the sake of the gospel, to get the gospel exposure, which sort of sounds odd, but the whole idea where you end up elevating people, pastors, they know they, they become speakers because they're preaching, they write books, they do blogs, they have podcasts. I mean, they're elevating their name, their image, their brand, if you will. And that seems so much to fly in the face of the humility that you've just described. I mean, what would, what would the message of Christ have looked like? Now if we had all the contemporary things that we have, Twitter, social media, all those things, and Christ came and was living amongst people, what would that look like?

I mean, people would take selfies.

Would you take selfies? You know, having this on, on their phones and, and recording everything, hashtag, great sermon. Right, Right. I mean, what would that look like? I mean, trying to even conceive that, because it doesn't seem to match or fit the humility that certainly we see at the cross. We see Paul talking about, as you say, I mean, we see it throughout the Old Testament. I mean, certainly God humbling himself or his people, pursuing them as they prostitute themselves to other gods, and how he describes his passion and love for his people. I mean, God is humiliating himself to pursue people who reject him. I Mean, they use him horridly. And I think that again, just. It smacks of. This doesn't make sense. This is crazy. And yet this. God invites us continually into a relationship with him that as powerful. But then I think he also says, and come to a place where you would humble ourselves. We humble ourselves to him to, to acknowledge that we need him in our suffering, in our grief, in all the things that we come to a place where we realize we don't have any control. We can't. We can't do anything. We can't. You know, you lose your health, you lose your financial resources, you're at the end of yourself. Where will you go? That's a hard place to go. We don't want to go there.

So we've talked quite a bit about kind of your pastoral perspective on how to. How to maybe walk with somebody and how you have walked with somebody. Would you be willing to also share kind of a more personal perspective on where the cross has met you in your own suffering?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can do that. Something I remember we have a daughter, Mary Beth, who passed before us. And I remember when my wife and I had to walk through that there was a great deal of grief. And as people were comforting us, they were coming alongside us. I think my wife and I realized that we really needed Christ in it because we couldn't see any other way, any way other way out. What, what came to both of us actually independently as we were. We were reflecting on our loss, we were grieving. We actually independently were both drawn to John 6. And John 6 is where Jesus just gives the worst sermon anybody could ever give. And people are leaving.

Lost a lot of people from his church.

Oh, he did, he did. He didn't do himself any favors. And he goes to his disciples, any basilisks. So will you leave me too? And Peter responds, where would we go? You have the words of life. And I think that's where my wife and I found ourselves, that we were grieved. We couldn't do anything. We didn't understand what happened, why it happened the way it did. But we knew that he didn't have the answer, that we couldn't go anywhere else. I mean, to explain or to try to understand something that doesn't have explanation perhaps doesn't seem to have rationale. We had to. We had to come to a place where we realized how much we needed him and where we would find him. We. We found Christ meeting us in our grief as well as how the people that God sent to us to minister to us and how they did in the place where, again, we needed the community and we didn't know it, but how people came out from seemingly nowhere. One was actually a former student at Multnomah. I'll give a shout out to Richard Ross and the grief that he had personally experienced. He and his wife with a daughter that they had and how he cared for us, didn't really know us very well, but through a mutual friend, connected with us and he ministered to us in the hospital. It was quite profound.

Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that with us and just hear more of these same things. Echoed as you share how God brought someone who'd had their own suffering to come and minister to you. And how Jesus came to participate in suffering so that he can minister to us in that same way. And that, that's, that's what this, this day offers us an opportunity to, to sit with, to be thankful for, to be ministered to if, if we're in that season. And I just love how that just continues to reverberate as we, as we talk.

Certainly thinking about Second Corinthians and we comfort out, out of the comfort that we've received. Yeah, it's a, it's a powerful thing to hear from the voices of others who have been in the same spot but have found comfort in Christ and can extend that to us.

Something that Renee said earlier. I think it is easier to worship and serve a God who cries and serve a God who feels pain and understands the pain. Also a God that understands our pain, not just pain in general, but really has walked on this earth and, and we see Christ. Some of the questions in the garden have a very long echo tonight, as you know, as you're listening to this. Take this cup away from me. That is human. That's humanity, that's brokenness. How long. And then you see a Christ. Although the Passion of the Christ. One of the things that Mel Gibson did that I thought was so powerful is that he put his own hand in the movie when the nail was being, you know, was piercing Jesus's hand. And he put his own hand in there, just signifying this, this, this, this movie comes from a conviction of the fact that I believe it was my hand that did this. It was us. It was our iniquities, our sins that have created this level of suffering upon, upon Christ. But. And the Passion of the Christ shows it was the discussion of the fact that it was just too bloody. And a historian actually said it was not bloody enough compared to the reality of what actually really happened. And just to think of this story, the fact that the blood of the God who created this universe just spilled on this earth for the brokenness, for our thing. But he took that suffering. And one of the secrets that I loved in Isaiah 53 is that he looked beyond. He knew that myself, that you, Derek, that. That student from Multoma that stayed with you, that Renee and her family, we will be his offsprings. The offspring of suffering. And he looked beyond the. That might make the suffering at least. At least bearable. Even though the suffering that he experienced we have no. I don't think any human on planet Earth has ever come close to that. But to look beyond. To look beyond and what a powerful thing to know that I have something to look beyond. I will see my daughter that left earlier. As you're going to see your daughter that left earlier. There's something to look beyond just, just the finality of our life here.

Oh yeah, certainly somebody who keeps us company in our suffering. Yeah. Oh, that's. It's, it's, it's a powerful thing to have people who, who know what you've been through, who know what you're going through, who walk alongside. I mean, it's, it's a gift. And to think that God gives us that gift as creator, that's. That's hugely significant.

Concluding thoughts. We're wrapping up this, this episode. Thank you so much for, for coming with us. Any concluding thoughts as we leave this, this Good Friday and we, we move into a reflection period and you know, it's kind of like the, the, the, the game was recorded, was prerecorded. We know how it ends. Like we, you know, I know how, like I know who wins. I really know who wins. But I do think we need to go through this day. I do need. I think it's healthy for us to reflect and I'm so thankful for, for the way you've actually. And maybe reflect. Maybe, maybe we learn after quite a period of pandemic is how much do we really need the other person next to us to reflect with them? Not just to actually move away from people, but move towards people.

Yeah.

Concluding thoughts.

Yeah. Derek, I just want to thank you for not bringing answers today. Right. Like Good Friday isn't about searching up the answer in your concordance and saying here it is and here's why. And now feel okay. Like Aleen said, we're so quick to do so. Thank you for just sitting with us in this hard topic and sharing today.

No, thank you. Boy, if I had answers, I'd write a book and have a podcast.

You don't have to have answers to have a podcast. We're here.

Once again, thank you for being with us. Dr. Derek Chin leads our seminary and graduate school in Multnomah. And definitely you can go to multoma. Edu and learn more about what we do here at Multnomah and learn more about the great work that Dr. Chen is doing with our seminary and the vision that he's casting for seminary. So thank you for being with us. We appreciate it. And of course, the views and opinions expressed on MU talks belong to the people that are just hosting and are invited in at MU talks, and they do not belong to Monoi University.

Thank you.