A husband was out with his wife celebrating their 25<sup>th anniversary when he was killed in the recent attack on Westminster Bridge. Kurt Cochran was one of four fatalities that day and his wife Melissa was one of 50 people who were injured. Andreea Cristea was also in London to celebrate that day. But as she walked across the bridge with her boyfriend, Khalid Masood drove his car down the pavement, knocking her over and into the river Thames. She survived the fall but suffered multiple injuries and died later in hospital. Her boyfriend revealed that he had planned to propose that day.
Both of these stories add pathos to the attack that was reported in the news because of the gaping disparity between grand expectations for that day and the grim reality.
The space between celebration and grief, between tragedy and triumph, is a difficult place to occupy. It's why Holy Saturday is such a strange day. Should we mourn the crucifixion or should we anticipate the resurrection? Should we remember his words of pain and distress? Or focus on his words of hope? Perhaps that is the conundrum of the Christian life. Do we mourn the brokenness of our world or celebrate the coming kingdom of God?
The paradox of the now and the not yet is a challenging path to navigate. It is all too easy to get the tension wrong one way or another. There are days when I get overwhelmed by the darkness of our world. As famine wipes out hundreds of thousands of children with a slow and painful death. As more and more children suffer abuse and neglect. As bombs fall on cities and fleeing refugees drown in the sea. As nationalistic sentiments rise and racism and xenophobia increases and people are killed just walking the streets of London, it's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It's hard to believe that things are going to change.
It's hard to see how the gospel will triumph or that grace will prevail. Is justice possible? Will the world really believe?
But then comes Sunday and I am reminded that our almighty God is powerful enough to overcome any infirmity. His Kingdom is coming. And in the meantime heaven will touch earth, revival will break out, the spirit of injustice will be captured and the spirit of justice released, our faith will rise and miracles will take place. Forgiveness is possible, grace is free and hope is sure. Wrongs will be put right and our planet will be renewed. Every knee will bow as Jesus is crowned king of all. The world will finally believe and I rejoice in anticipation.
Which way do you lean? Are you more of a Good Friday Christian or an Easter Sunday one? Does it look like all is lost or that all has been won? The truth is we live in the in-between times. Scripture calls it the 'last days' as we await the reconciliation of all things. We are told that in these last days we should expect both great joy and great pain. There is sure to be persecution and suffering but also the taste of heaven's healing and hope.
For these in-between times we need both Good Friday Christians and Easter Sunday Christians. We need Good Friday churches – those who emphasise identifying with the pain of our world and the darkness of our days and the brokenness of our society. And we need Easter Sunday churches – those who emphasise the faith-raising testimonies of the miraculous with upbeat worship and hope-filled sermons. Maybe if these churches were to intermingle we would be closer to the biblical balance, avoiding the ecstatic oblivious-to-suffering bubble of the one and the doom-laden joy-killer of the other.
Jesus was 'a man of sorrows, familiar with suffering.' He was also the one that brought the new wine of the kingdom. We too need to be grounded in the realities of our world, but we also need to be a taste of the future. In other words we need to learn how to be Holy Saturday Christians.
Dr Krish Kandiah is the author of 'Paradoxology: Why Christianity was never meant to be simple'. His latest book, 'God is Stranger', has just been published by Hodder.
