Don't Postpone Joy

Lent 4C: Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32

2 Corinthians 5:16-2; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

The Rev'd Cameron Partridge

March 30, 2025

About a year ago I had the pleasure of doing a house blessing. I’ve done several of them since I’ve been at St. Aidan’s, and each has been a privilege. Each has struck me as a ministry of accompaniment, as I along with others from this community have come alongside the person who is making their way from one locale to another, one life chapter to another. They have also been ministries of hospitality offered to me and others by the person whose home is being blessed. St. Aidanites and other community members were being welcomed, even as we were joining that welcome; being hosted even as we joined in that hospitality. On the occasion I am recalling, as I walked down the hall into the living room, I noticed a little niche in the wall at eye level, a small shrine of sorts. In it was a stone cross with a sun in its center, a small rooster, a lit candle, a single yellow rose, and above this collection a bumper sticker that read “don’t postpone joy.” Don’t postpone joy. I loved it. The news of this world, the actions of politicians and repressive movements all around us can lead to quite the opposite sentiment. I have had so many conversations with you since November and January about your feelings of sadness and anger, grief and disbelief, anxiety, fear and general overwhelm – peppered with determination to make a positive difference in this moment. It could be tempting to ward off joy until after you feel you have done enough, after all the complex circumstances causing these challenges have changed. But please don’t accept that logic. Don’t postpone joy. Our readings today invite us to see in joy, in practices of rejoicing, a wedge into walls of despair, and a key aspect of resistance to tyranny. Joy welcomes the in-breaking of God’s just reign.

  Our gospel passage particularly centers this idea. This may be a surprising interpretation. Especially if you are familiar with it, the Parable of the Prodigal Son might not strike you as a story about joy. You might associate it more with the complex dynamics surrounding forgiveness, a topic we have been discussing in connection with Kaya Oakes’ book Not So Sorry in our Lent formation series, “Forgiveness, Revisited.” There is much to wrestle with about forgiveness in connection with this parable, and I invite you to join us in doing that on Wednesday evening, even if you haven’t attended earlier sessions. I also invite you to come back next Sunday when Kaya Oakes will be with us for a forum after our 10 AM service. But this morning, I want to foreground the power of joy, of rejoicing, in this parable.

The first clue about the role of joy in our parable emerges from its setting in chapter fifteen of Luke’s Gospel. The parable is Jesus’ third and crowning response to grumbling about how he “welcomes sinners” – tax collectors and other disreputable people – “and eats with them” (Luke 15:1-2). In response to this grumbling, two brief parables precede ours. In the first a shepherd leaves ninety-nine sheep in the wilderness to bring back the one (Luke 15:3-7). In the second, a woman sweeps her whole house and finds a lost coin (Luke 15:8-10). In each case the person who locates the missing object or creature does not retire in quiet satisfaction. Instead, they invite their friends and neighbors, saying “rejoice with me! I have found what I lost!” They celebrate. Let me tell you, when we got our cat Timbale back in November of 2023 after five terrifying months trying to locate and lure him back inside, that phrase was on the tip of my tongue as I stopped neighbors on my walks or pulled over to tell the mail carrier. Rejoice with me! Our orange fur baby is found!  Something larger is lost if you simply move on when you experience a significant restoration. The grief you’ve been carrying, with which you may well still be marked, can paradoxically be acknowledged through the release of joy. Joy need not deny grief, anger, or pain. Rather, rejoicing can move us into processes of restoration.

Transitioning into restoration may sound like an odd way of thinking about rejoicing. After all, is it not simply an expression of thanksgiving? It certainly is that. Each week we rejoice, gathering around this table to give God thanks in the Eucharist – Eucharist meaning “thanksgiving” – often singing or “shouting with joy” the “holy, holy, holy.” But as the Eucharistic prayers themselves dramatize in their multivalent storytelling, rejoicing is capacious. It can remember pain and acknowledge complex emotion. I hear such spaciousness in the father’s initial reaction to his youngest son’s reappearance. I am always undone by how he sees the son in the distance, is moved with compassion, and runs to greet him, throwing his arms about him. The two had been disconnected for quite some time, and the separation had clearly been painful. The return for the son was fraught after questionable decisions made along the way. How would his father react? Their reunion is filled with a whole panoply of emotion at which our text only begins to hint. Amid this flood, the father turns and immediately clothes the son with care and calls the household into a celebratory feast. The father’s instinctive reaction to this hugely emotional reunion is to rejoice, and not simply on his own but with others – “rejoice with me,” to use the line from the earlier two parables.

Which brings us to the reaction of the elder brother and his interchange with his father. The brother is incensed. He has been there the whole time. He has played by the rules. Never has the father rewarded his loyalty and hard work with so much as a goat. He cannot understand why his younger brother’s irresponsibility should be so rewarded. He also amplifies the dynamic of shame surrounding the younger brother – where the narrative had earlier vaguely referenced “dissolute living,” the older brother now levels accusations of sexual impropriety.[1] Does he know something additional to the ambiguous initial description, or is he making assumptions? What dynamic was in play between the brothers and their father before the youngest decided to depart? Might whatever that was, have influenced his departure? There is so much we do not know. The father’s response to his oldest son’s anger continues a capacious call to joy. First, he assures him, “all that is mine is yours” (Luke 15:31). You need not fear what remains for you – we are in this together right now. Then he continues, “But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found” (Luke 15:32). The tone of this rejoicing is different than the brief earlier parables. Here it comes across urgently, as a necessity. It is critical that we celebrate. Not – I would add – because everything is fine now. Not because everything is resolved. Not because nothing has happened that still needs unpacking. But as a first step in a new chapter. As an affirmation and reclaiming of a lost relationship, a beloved one who had disappeared and was now returned. As a transition into newness of relationship, a resurrection reality that holds space for the experience of loss, pain, and indeed death. We had to give thanks for this opportunity for repair. The steps of that process will need to unfold in the days to come.

Now, we do not know what the brother does from this point. He may have needed to continue staying away from the celebration – it surely seemed too much for him given his initial reaction. We do not know how or whether the older and younger brothers were able to mend their relationship, and how the older brother’s connection with his father was impacted going forward. This parable holds that ambiguity and complexity, reflecting the reality of lived relationships and experiences across millennia. But what is clearly expressed is the father’s conviction, we had to rejoice. Sharing joy was a necessity for him in that moment and to launch him into the chapter ahead.

We are assigned this story on this particular Sunday perhaps because it is Laetare Sunday. Like Gaudete in Advent, this Latin term means “rejoice.” In each context these calls to joy emerge amid seasons of preparation and penitence.[2] They provide foretastes of the fullness of joy soon to be unleashed: Christmas after Advent, and Easter after Lent; the Divine Word becoming flesh and living among us; and Christ risen, liberating us from death’s dominion. The wisdom of Laetare, as of Gaudete, is its refreshing reminder of the joy that undergirds and fuels the faith by which we walk. The road we tread in this world is arduous. We are not spared from struggle. Movements for justice, often inflected if not directly influenced by faith traditions, share this wisdom as well. In her book Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church, Barbara Holmes writes of the Civil Rights and Black Lives Matter movements:

No person or community can be healthy in a constant state of resistance. There must be respite, celebration, and relief. Without this respite, post-traumatic injuries contribute to the deterioration of personal and communal health, and to intra-communal violence. These symptoms are then used by dominant culture as proof that oppression is necessary and justified. In response, we heal ourselves in community through our contemplative practices praying together, dancing together, and caring for one another.[3]

Shared joy – rejoicing with – strengthens all who struggle to carry on the collective work of justice that God calls us to in this world. Joy breathes new life into us, inspiring us to participate afresh in the in-breaking of God’s dream.[4]

I feel this wisdom in Transgender Day of Visibility, officially tomorrow, March 31, but observed by many in events around the world this weekend.[5] Launched by Rachel Crandall in 2009 as a life-centering counterpoint to Trans Day of Remembrance, which takes place on November 20th, this is a day to honor and celebrate the life and beauty of trans and nonbinary people.[6] The everydayness of trans life as much as the more dramatic victories. Yesterday at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine’s service of Trans Joy and Resilience my friend and colleague Aaron Scott preached a fantastic, fiery sermon. He said, “It’s a beautiful day to be alive. It’s a beautiful day to exist, in flagrant defiance of executive orders.” Later he declared, “No powers and principalities are going to hand our joy and our thriving to us out of their benevolence. That’s not how change happens. Change comes because we demand it, and we labor for it. So today we celebrate our joy—and tomorrow we get back to work organizing to defend our joy.”[7] Joy is an expression of our humanity fully alive, to route Aaron through Irenaeus of Lyons.[8] Or to circle back to Barbara Holmes, joy performs defiance in the face and the wake of death.[9] So, dear friends, on this day, rejoice with me. Rejoice with one another and with the God who made us and calls us to manifest the joy of the in-breaking divine dream. Do not postpone it. We have to celebrate.  

[1] Rohun Park notes this amplification in “Revisiting the Parable of the Prodigal Son for Decolonization: Luke’s Reconfiguration of Oikos in 15:11-32.” Biblical Interpretation 17 (2009): 516.

[2] https://www.episcopalchurch.org/glossary/laetare-sunday/ and https://www.episcopalchurch.org/glossary/gaudete-sunday/

[3] Barbara A. Holmes, Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2017), 160-161.

[4] As always, the phrase “the dream of God” draws upon Verna Dozier, The Dream of God: A Call to Return (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Press, 1991).

[5] https://glaad.org/tdov/ 

[6] Jessica Carreras, “Transgender Day of Visibility plans erupt locally, nationwide.” Between the Lines News, March 26, 2009. https://web.archive.org/web/20130327152446/http://www.pridesource.com/article.html?article=34351

[7] “Celebration of Trans Joy and Resilience – a Sermon by Aaron Scott,” March 29, 2025.  https://www.transepiscopal.org/blog/celebration-of-trans-joy-resilience-a-sermon-by-aaron-scott

[8] Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies 4.20.7. Available online at https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103420.htm

[9] Holmes, 161