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.
