On Good Friday, the gospels ask us to notice who remained. Not the crowds who shouted. Not the disciples who promised loyalty and then scattered into the shadows. The ones who stayed were the women—standing at a distance, close enough to see, close enough to grieve, close enough to be marked forever by what they witnessed.
John’s gospel writes with almost startling simplicity: “Standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother… and Mary Magdalene.” 1 Matthew and Mark quietly confirm it: when the others scattered, these women stayed.2 Good Friday is not only about Jesus’ suffering, but it is also about the courage of presence. It is also about the courage of those who refused to look away.
Who Stayed When Others Fled
Crucifixion was a form of public torture. Rome used it to humiliate, to warn, to break bodies slowly and visibly. Pain was prolonged. Nails through flesh. A body sagging against gravity. Breathing reduced to labor. Trauma was not incidental; it was the method.
Rome perfected crucifixion as a warning: this is what happens to those who challenge power. Yet this violence was not Rome’s alone. The religious leadership and state aligned in fear, and an innocent man was executed in the name of stability. The physical pain of crucifixion was deliberate and public.
But the cross was not only Roman violence. It was the result of a bitter collusion—religious leaders anxious to preserve order, imperial authorities eager to crush disruption. Jesus did not die as a tragic accident or a misunderstanding. He was unjustly killed by systems that claimed their own righteousness and legitimacy.
And yet, the women stayed. They stood at the foot of the cross in their own agony and pain.
Mary, his mother, watched the slow unraveling of a life she had carried, nurtured, and loved. The sword Simeon once foretold finally pierced her heart.3 Mary Magdalene, healed and restored by Jesus, stood in loyalty when gratitude alone could not explain her presence. These women bore witness not because they were brave in a heroic sense, but because love would not let them leave.
Love That Refuses to Leave
In a world shaped by spectacle and domination, their staying was an act of resistance. To remain present to suffering—especially unjust suffering—is to refuse the lie that violence gets the final word. The women may speak little in the gospels, but their presence itself works upon sorrow. They keep it from being hidden. They keep it from being forgotten.
The gospels are quietly insistent on this detail: the women stayed.
The Romans were there in military uniform, armed with iron weapons.
The Jewish high priest and Sanhedrin were there—in accusation, consent, and conspiracy.
The crowd was there—in cruelty, cowardice, or compromising collusion with the brutality of the government.
The disciples were different: they were entirely absent. They gave in to their fears because proximity to Jesus was dangerous; it was guilt by association. Those who stayed, the women, accepted the risk. The gospels don’t tell us if they spoke at the cross. They were there, it seems not to preach or protest, but to witness, to see and not look, to stand and not to walk away, to refuse the lie being lived out as Jesus’ body finally gave in to death.
I’ll say it again: the women walked nowhere; they stayed. They stood where love, loss, and loyalty intersected, where grief was raw, where God did not intervene. Francis Weller might call this an “apprenticeship of sorrow.”4 And this must never be forgotten: they stayed, not knowing how the story would end. For me, they become the truest example of discipleship—not in bold declarations or sophisticated theological dicta, courageous confessions, but their refusal to abandon Jesus. We must never forget: they would be the first entrusted with the reality of resurrection because they were the last to leave the cross.
The Cross Reveals What Power Does
The cross exposes what power does when it feels threatened.
It also reveals what love does when it refuses to abandon.
Empire mocks and humiliates.
Religion protects itself.
Love stays.
Love watches.
Love remembers.
There is something profoundly human here—not only in Jesus’ suffering, but in the suffering borne by those who loved him. Because the women stayed, Jesus did not die alone. The women absorbed the cost of staying. They carried the images, the sounds, the slow, agonizing death. Their fidelity was quiet, costly, and enduring. They stand before it, allowing grief, injustice, and love to remain unresolved. Their faith is not certainty; it is presence.
And presence, on Good Friday, is everything.
The women stayed—standing at the foot of the cross in silent solidarity, a quiet protest against state-sponsored violence, bearing witness to the loyalty, faithfulness, and love they held for Jesus.
The other disciples’ feet carried them elsewhere—into hiding, into fear. Rome might turn to them next, claiming them as threats, victims of the same machinery of power.
The man of peace was treated as a man of violence. And one of his own—Judas—stood with the authorities, siding with temple police armed with swords and rope to bind and detain the prisoner.
Despite Rome’s bravado, the ruler in Israel—Pilate—was a coward, unwilling to risk his position to stand up for what is right. Caiaphas, the Jewish High Priest, believed he stood with God, as if God needed him to protect against a new upstart movement around a young rabbi-carpenter from Nazareth.
Roman soldiers stood near the cross as guarantors of death. Yet one stood apart from the others at the very moment of Jesus’ death and declared, “Surely this was the son of God.” 5
Even in the face of unjust treatment, a small minority, it seems, will always stand on the side of what is just, true, and right and against that which diminishes our common humanity by the violence of human systems against God’s justice, love, and mercy.
Good Friday Invites Us to Stay
Good Friday does not ask us to fix the cross, but to stay near it. Good Friday invites us to stand with the women—to resist the temptation to rush toward Easter before we have truly looked at the cross. It invites us to remain near the places of execution in our own world: unjust violence, state power turned cruel, lives deemed expendable, grief that refuses to be easily dismissed.
I wonder for you as I ask myself: where have I turned away from in cowardice, fear, or indifference? Where have I chosen to remain silent in the face of that which I believe to be wrong, unjust, immoral, or just plain cruel?
The women stayed. And because they stayed, love was not absent from the worst thing humanity could do. Because they stayed, the story did not end in silence.
Practice:
In the days after your Easter celebration, ask this question: “Where do I stand when faith becomes costly?”
- Do I stand in courageous solidarity even in the face of danger?
- Do I stand away in fear of a threat?
- Do I stand against those who create fear, risk, and danger?
- Do I stand apart—silent and hiding, unwilling to risk?
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This spring, Keith Anderson and Rob Loane are creating space for leaders to tend the inner life together in A Leader’s Journey in a Fractured World. You can read more and register here.
Keith Anderson, D.Min., is a Faculty Associate for Spirituality and Vocation at VantagePoint3 and President Emeritus of Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. He is the author of several books, including his most recent: On Holy Ground: Your Story of Identity, Belonging and Sacred Purpose (Wipf & Stock, 2024). His other works include Reading Your Life’s Story (IVP, 2016), A Spirituality of Listening (IVP, 2016), and Spiritual Mentoring (IVP, 1999). In his writing, teaching, and mentoring, Keith seeks to set a table for people looking to enter the “amazing inner sanctuary of the soul” in the most ordinary and extraordinary moments of life.
1 John 19:25
2 Mark 15:40-41, Matthew 27:55-56)
3 Luke 2:35
4 Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow, p. 1
5 Matthew 27:54