"Surprised by Joy" | The Rev. Heidi Thorsen | April 3, 2026

Sermon Preached: Friday, April 3, 2026 at Trinity on the Green

Good Friday: Acts 10:34-43 | Colossians 3:1-4 | John 20:1-18 | Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

May I speak in the name of Jesus, the author and perfecter of our salvation. Amen.

My eleven month old daughter has recently discovered the joy of peekaboo. I believe she learned this trick at daycare, and as far as I can tell she learned it in her high chair— because for about a week, my daughter would bring her greasy, food-covered hands up to her face compulsively during dinner time to show us this new trick. Where’s Nomi? There she is! More zucchini in the face. Repeat. Where’s Nomi? There she is! We watched with amusement as my daughter discovered the wonders of object permanence over and over again.

To an eleven month old baby, this is what resurrection looks like. Something is gone, and then it’s back again! Gone, and back again. And while it may not seem like such a significant thing, the joy on her face is indescribable in that moment of resurrection. If only we could have a small fraction of that joy ourselves, as we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ today.

Because that is what Easter is about: joy. Joy, because death was not the end for Jesus. Joy, because we are invited to eternal life through Jesus’ life and sacrifice. Joy, because we are not alone whenever we feel burdened by the weight of sin and death in our lives. Joy, because Christ is Risen indeed.

Joy is not an unfamiliar concept. We sing Joy to the World at Christmas to celebrate Jesus’ birth. We bake Easter cakes out of a book entitled The Joy of Cooking. We scour our Halloween candy bags for Almond Joy, to eat it or to trade it for a better treat. Joy is not an unfamiliar thing— but it is, perhaps, a misunderstood thing. All too often we expect joy to look like happiness. We expect joy to be sunshine, and rainbows, and babies playing peekaboo. We expect joy to be the opposite of sadness, the opposite of struggle. 

There is a problem with this understanding of joy. First of all, if we understand joy in this way, joy will always feel out of reach. If joy is simply happiness, then how can we find joy in the difficult times in our lives? How can we find joy, as long as there is war, hunger, sickness, political polarization, heartbreak in the world? Joy might feel especially unattainable to those who struggle with mental health challenges, challenges that so many of us face. Joy might feel especially unattainable in this time of conflict in our country and the world.

But here is the good news about joy– joy isn’t really about happiness. Joy is about something deeper. And this day, Easter, is all about joy: joy that lives alongside grief and struggle; joy that resists the powers of sin and death; joy that we know through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I’d like to offer you a different definition of joy this morning, and it comes from the Anglo-Irish author, scholar, and theologian C.S. Lewis. Toward the end of his life, Lewis wrote an autobiography called Surprised by Joy. This book focuses more on the spiritual events of Lewis’ life, rather than biographical details. Lewis describes his journey from being raised culturally Christian, to becoming atheist, and then eventually returning to his faith in Christ. 

This spiritual journey begins with memories from childhood– memories that seem almost insignificant from the outside. For example, he has this vivid memory of his older brother making a tiny garden with moss, a miniature world in the upside-down lid of a biscuit-tin. Years later, but still a child, Lewis remembers having a memory of that garden, a memory that stirred him to a holy experience that Lewis describes in this way:

“It is difficult to find words strong enough for the sensation which came over me; Milton’s ‘enormous bliss’ of Eden… comes somewhere near it. It was a sensation, of course, of desire; but desire for what? Not, certainly, for a biscuit-tin filled with moss, nor even (though that came into it) for my own past…. And before I knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased” (p.16-17). Some pages later, Lewis gives a name to this feeling.

“I call it Joy,” Lewis writes. “I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and from Pleasure. Joy (in my sense),” Lewis writes, “has indeed one characteristic… the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again. Apart from that… it might almost equally well be called a particular kind of unhappiness or grief. But then it is a kind we want. I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world” (p. 18-19).

Lewis describes Joy as a spiritual experience. It isn’t necessarily happy. It isn’t necessarily sad. Joy, in this sense, is a longing for a longing. It is a sense of desire that draws us out ourselves and into the world. It is a sense of possibility. It is love, and beauty, and grief, and hope all wrapped up in one. It is the conviction that we are part of something far greater than ourselves.

Does this definition make sense to you? Is this kind of Joy something that we can even define? Perhaps we are foolish to even attempt to define it. But I hope you will know that Joy when you see it. I hope you will know that Joy when you feel it yourself.

I recognize this particular kind of Joy in our Gospel passage for today, when Mary recognizes the risen Jesus. This takes event place in a different garden– not the garden of Eden, or the garden of a child’s overturned biscuit-in– but the garden where Jesus’ crucified body was laid to rest. Not only has Mary lost Jesus, her friend and teacher; she now believes that his body has been stolen from its final resting place. Simon Peter and the other disciple come and go, and then Mary is left alone in the garden, crying.

Overwhelmed by grief, Mary seems unable to comprehend what happens next. First, two angels speak to her from the darkness of the tomb, asking why she is weeping. Then Jesus himself appears behind her and asks the same question, but she doesn’t recognize him. Everything changes when Jesus says her name— Mary!— and she is filled with instant recognition, and Joy. It isn’t happiness, but it isn’t grief either. It is Joy. It is that longing for a longing that C.S. Lewis describes in his autobiography. It is longing for Jesus, and longing for everything that Jesus represents. It is longing for the kingdom of love and justice that Jesus came to proclaim. A kingdom where we are known by name– known from the best version of ourselves we’ve ever been, the worst version of ourselves Known, and loved completely, all the same. A kingdom made possible only when we are able to return that love that God has for us, and to share it with all of our neighbors, loving them even as we love ourselves.

“Do not hold onto me,” Jesus says, revealing another truth about Joy: that in this life, Joy is always fleeting. It is here, and then gone again. Here, and then gone again. But that doesn’t mean that Joy is flimsy, or fake. In reality Joy is one of the sturdiest things—far more sturdy than happiness or pleasure— because Joy is a window into eternity. Joy is a window into that possible future that Jesus proclaimed, a kingdom of love and justice that we Christians call the kingdom of God.

What does Joy look like for you today? Where do you see glimpses of that eternal life, peeking into our world? Maybe you see it in a child’s garden made of recycling and moss. Or perhaps you see it in the communion bread that we bless, and break, and share– reminding us that we who are many are made one body, through the mystery of Christ. Perhaps you are surprised by Joy in the first flowers of spring, the ones that are always there but you forget about them until the bulbs break open and stubborn flowers bloom. Or perhaps (even more surprising) you find Joy today in the midst of a loss, a change, a transition happening in your life. Joy isn’t simply happiness. Joy is a longing for a longing. Joy is a holy interruption in our everyday lives. Joy is a glimpse into the kingdom of heaven.

I hope you will be surprised by Joy in this season of resurrection. Surprised, like a child removing their hands from in front of their eyes to find that their beloved parent is still there behind them; and in fact was there all along. God is with us, and the resurrection is still unfolding in our lives– in the flowers of spring; in the longings of our hearts; in the hope of a world transformed into the kingdom of God. Amen.

Works Referenced:

Lewis, C. S. (1955). Surprised by joy: The shape of my early life. Harcourt Brace.