Awkward Saturday

The proper term for today in the church year is “Holy Saturday”, but if they had asked me I would have called it “Awkward Saturday.”  It’s awkward because it is the day in between the greatest tragedy in history and the most triumphant event in history and it leaves me trying to figure out how one is supposed to feel and act on such a day.

We are supposed to be in mourning because Jesus was crucified on the cross, a horrific painful undeserved death that we remember each Good Friday.  But I know that tomorrow I won’t have to mourn because Christians around the world will be celebrating Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.  So why waste time and emotion mourning?  Why bother feeling the guilt and pain of knowing that I and my sins are the reason Jesus had to die?  It would be so much easier to just bypass that sorrow and celebrate but then I feel guilty for not recognizing the sorrow of the crucifixion. 

Even if I could figure out some sort of compromise between mourning and rejoicing, doing anything besides mourning and doing anything besides rejoicing would tarnish either extreme.  It’s awkward.

And so on Awkward Saturday I am forced to embrace the tension between Friday and Sunday, to struggle to find a balance, to consider all that the tension means.

But what really frustrates me is that the awkwardness doesn’t stop on Easter Sunday.  In reality, an awkwardness on a whole deeper level began that first Easter Sunday.  It is the awkward period of time in history, that in-between period when we know Jesus is coming back some day to restore the world to the perfect creation that God created in the beginning but we still have to wait for an unknown amount of time in this mess of a world for him to come back.

It’s not just awkward like an uncomfortable awkward conversation you have with someone you just met.  It’s an acute tension between now and what is to come.  The tension between the complete brokenness of humanity and the earth and a world of perfection on a level we cannot even comprehend.

Humanity has been waiting for about 2000 years and I’ve often felt impatient waiting while there is so much suffering, brokenness, and anguish.  I know I should continue to have hope and look forward to what is to come, but I often can’t see past the suffering and our feeble attempts to repair the brokenness of our world.

We must live in the awkwardness and the tension.  It is the longing for restoration that drives us to work for restoration, to turn to God and seek what we can do to be a part of God’s plan for restoration.

Just like the resurrection means nothing without the crucifixion, the restoration of creation means nothing without experiencing the brokenness of it, without struggling to understand, without so many failed and some successful attempts to create a better world.