The Gift of Joy

A sermon preached on 4 June 2025 at St Martin-in-the-Fields by Maddie Naisbitt

Last week I read an article about a woman who had travelled to Palestine early last year, and within the article she was referencing a strange phenomenon she had observed in many of her conversations with the Palestinian people. A phenomenon of joy. Despite the most horrific, unjust and soul-crushing circumstances, they had joy.

Before I had even come across this article, I had begun to think about joy, it is mentioned 245 times in the bible and rejoice is mentioned 154 times, so it does feel like we should pay attention to it. And it is a word and concept that does float around in the atmosphere of Christianity but can often be something I personally don’t stop to dwell on.

And so, I wonder if joy feels like a phenomenon in your own life. Does it feel remarkable? Does it feel accessible? A luxury? Is joy something you even think about at all? Tonight, I’d love to re-ignite a love for not only cultivating joy in our own lives but to also pay attention to what exactly joy is and how it can become a steady stream of life bubbling away within our souls.

Joy can be simply the feeling of complete happiness or pleasure or delight. But that definition does feel robust enough for our/my purposes. Happiness or even pleasure feels too fleeting, too dependent on our outward circumstances. Whereas joy feels distinct, it feels more concrete. Joy is a small flickering light that refuses to be dimmed by the reality and complexity of our modern world. So, what else is joy?

Joy is a discipline that takes practice.

I would argue that joy is all around us all the time. But it is only when we choose to sit and notice that it comes alive to us. I read another story a few days ago of a priest who when he prays, he instead does something called ‘gazing.’ He goes for a walk with his dog and after some distance will find a peaceful spot, sit down, and just become aware of the landscape around him. He allows his mind to pay attention to the green of the trees, the colour of the flowers, even just his breath, rising and falling within his chest. And slowly but surely, he finds joy bubbles up to the surface of his soul.

Do we make the time to slow down long enough to allow the vapours of joy to stir and permeate our spirits once again? To recognise all the ways joy has broken into our lives throughout the day/week.

Not only is there a discipline of practicing joy by slowing down. But, I think there is also something to be said for expressing joy when it happens spontaneously. The ‘rejoicing.’ What I mean is perhaps that moment when you’re with a loved one and you feel so at peace with them, enlivened by their presence and company, that you just feel compelled to express that love and delight. It is when you hear a piece of music, like a few weeks ago at BFTW, that you can’t help but clap along. It’s when you greet a friend or family member at the airport and you feel your feet running towards them before a joyful welcome. Allow yourself to not only feel but to embrace these spontaneous moments of rejoicing. They are precious gifts. As G.K. Chesterson argues seriousness is not a virtue… it is a vice. It is easy to be heavy; hard to be light.’ We must choose and practice joy every day and keep on choosing it and practicing it.

Joy can also be resistance.

Returning to the article I referenced earlier, a quote from one of the Palestinian people which has stayed with me says this “we must have joy, because the oppressors want to take away our joy.” The act of joy despite occupation, murder and starvation is resistance within itself. Joy is not just about feeling good but a deliberate choice to find strength and resilience despite the reality of the world or our own circumstances.

Taking this point further, philosopher and civil rights activist Audre Lorde explains “In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change.” Joy being one of those sources of power and also energy for change.

This is why art, literature, and creativity are so important and are things that we ought to champion. Of course, many pieces and works of art are borne from pain, but so much of it is also borne from joy, from devotion, and from love. It is an outward expression of our human capacity for joy. Oppressors limiting these expressions has been a common tool in squashing the lively and joyful spirit of many communities around the world. May we not allow joy to be so distorted or corrupted  that it becomes a foreign concept to us.

Now, whilst those of us in this room may never have personally experienced some of the aforementioned  expressions of oppression. We will have or perhaps are in the midst of experiencing heartbreak, disorientating grief, and unexplainable or unjustifiable loss or  simply sadness or weariness. As the late Pope Francis explained “joy adapts and changes, but it always endures, even as a flicker of light born of our personal certainty that, when everything is said and done, we are infinitely loved.” Joy is the river that can slowly revive us even amidst the deepest suffering. This joy is not given by the powers that govern the world, so it cannot be taken by the world. As we read in tonight’s passage, Jesus reminds his disciples of the very same thing “So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.” Resist all that could quench a desire or capacity for joy.

Joy is not an escape or distraction

Perhaps a certain person or a caricature of what a joyful person is like springs to mind. An element of that image could be someone who doesn’t seem to be quite in reality or someone who maintains as culture has now coined ‘toxic positivity.’ Someone who seems unable to sometimes embrace reality and even themselves. But this misunderstands what joy is. Joy is not an escape from reality nor ourselves but another companion on the road.

Joy grants us the security and safety to face truth of what is happening within our inner and outer worlds. It becomes the rope that holds us steady as we abseil down into the harder places of our souls. The places of despair, disillusionment, and grief. It reminds us that we will not be lost to those places.  Or as the theologian and anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer says “the joy of God has gone through the poverty of the manger and the agony of the cross; that is why it is invincible, irrefutable. It does not deny the anguish, when it is there, but finds God in the midst of it, in fact precisely there; it does not deny grave sin but finds forgiveness precisely in this way; it looks death straight in the eye, but it finds life precisely within it.” The joy of God has been tried and tested and has been found to be strong enough to hold all that could bury us.

This joy can also mitigate the temptation to become numb to all that ails the world. May we pray that we might not become numb but instead cultivate a resilient joy that is determined to find God and humanity amidst the suffering and hardship. So, we do not, hopefully, desire to be people with our head in the clouds disconnected from reality or ourselves but equally we do not want to be people who turn pessimistic or completely incapacitated by the world. Chesterson again “Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labour by which all things live.” The world needs our attention, our prayers, and our stubborn joy.

Lastly, joy is the antidote to despair.

When we meet Jesus and the disciples in tonight’s passage, it is merely hours before Jesus is arrested and taken to be crucified and in classic Jesus fashion, he is speaking in very figurative language, raising more questions than answers. Where is he going?  Why will the disciples be grieving? Why would people even want to take away their joy? What does it mean for their joy to be complete?

Jesus goes further later to say that the disciples soon will all scatter, abandoning him and Peter will even deny ever knowing him. But the disciples are most likely completely unaware of all the despair to follow this conversation, they perhaps won’t recognise the value of Jesus’ emphasis on joy until the despair hits.

But then I imagine the disciples gathered in the upper room, processing the events of the last few days, and then perhaps one of the disciples is turning this conversation about joy over and over in their mind and remembers that Jesus has acknowledged that yes the disciples will grieve, they will be disorientated but more importantly, they will see him again and they will rejoice. This for me is a bedrock of the Gospel, in Jesus there is a joy which transcends our despair and breaks our worlds open again and again and again. The late Pope Francis again, expresses is like this “Jesus…constantly amazes us by his divine creativity. Whenever we make the effort to return to the source and to recover the original freshness of the Gospel, new avenues arise, new paths of creativity open up, with different forms of expression, more eloquent signs and words with new meaning for today’s world.”

Jesus did not just tell one of the disciples that they would grieve but soon have joy, he told them as a group so perhaps when one of them did not feel strong enough to stand in the truth of that joy, they would have one another. Just as we can share in one another’s grief, hopefully we can continue to share great moments of joy from our lives too. Sharing these moments are gifts within themselves reminding us that our joy can become more and more complete.

So may your joy be practiced, noticed, allow us to resist all that could numb us, may it be  a refuge not an escape and may it be shared.

Amen