The Harsh Joy of Laetare Sunday
Today is the fourth Sunday in Lent. Otherwise known as Laetare Sunday. It might be best known as the Sunday during Lent when the liturgical color changes from purple to pink — or rose as many priests remind the parish every year.
The name stems from the Latin introit coming from Isaian 66:10–11. “Rejoice, Jerusalem, and all you who love her. Be joyful, all who were in mourning; exult and be satisfied at her consoling breast.” Isaiah’s compelling vision was written to a people in exile after their city had been burnt to the ground. Surprisingly, the prophet calls foy joy. In their captivity, he invites them to turn their mourning into gladness. In their hunger, he envisions a time of plenitude. What may seem like a perverse message to a distraught community is an appeal for certain hope.
Christians are given Laetare Sunday in the middle of Lent to remind us of the joy we’re looking forward to at Easter. On the long 40 day fast — this period of reflection and repentance — Laetare Sunday assures us that Lent does not need to be a time of scourging and self-loathing. Repentance itself is a cause of joy. A change of mind that leads to a change of life orienting us toward the Good, the True, and the Beautiful is always a reason for celebration.
And yet, how can any fair-minded person celebrate during the times we’re living in? The atrocities of war have become so commonplace that they seem like the norm. How dare anyone even contemplate the possibility of joy in such a world when bombings, kidnappings, and starvation are experienced on an industrial scale?
A little over a century ago, the “war to end all war” came to an end. That was clearly an overly optimistic appraisal. Since then, the world has undergone global conflagrations, nuclear bombs, the Cold War, genocides, regional conflicts, economic turmoil, and too many other barbarisms to name. A renewed specter of nuclear war, totalitarianism, and forced famines haunts us all.
Pope Francis regularly says that we’re in the midst of a third world war that’s being fought piecemeal. So, how in God’s name can anyone dare to suggest that we rejoice in such dire times?
The pious will very readily suggest that rejoicing comes from anticipating the paschal celebration in three weeks. Of course, that’s true, but it doesn’t eliminate the unspeakable horrors undergone by millions at the current moment. Instead, this highlights the unspeakably awful living — and dying — conditions for large populations.
And even if it was a single person facing such circumstances, a spirit of solidarity ought to cause the rest of us to identify with that person. As The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Today’s Gospel reading (unless you’re reading the text for the second scrutiny) comes from a conversation Jesus has with Nicodemus in John 3:14–21. It contains verse popularized by placards at sporting events, on billboards, and on all sorts of trinkets. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”
By becoming a slogan, this profound theological truth had become reduced to a trite statement employed in hope of signing people up for some version of Christianity or another.
When you continue reading in John, you encounter a less cheerful outlook in verse 19. “And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil.”
No one is putting John 3:19 on a poster and bringing it to a ball game.
Verdict, as you probably know, has Latin roots that mean “truth” and “to say.” The verdict is supposed to be the truth of what is said in a legal case. We know from the inequities in nearly every legal system that verdicts are often anything but the truth. But this verdict Jesus talks about is undeniable. People prefer darkness to light because their works are evil.
Instead of the word “verdict,” some Bible translations use the word “judgment.” This is the judgment. Jesus announces, “People prefer evil.”
Certainly not everyone all the time, but even the best of us have turned away from what is good and even harbored it in our hearts. Beyond that, it feels like the prevailing trend is moving toward a preference for evil. You don’t need me to list any specifics; you know them all too well.
Considering what he says here, how can anyone rejoice?
Jesus never threw our platitudes just to make people feel better. He and his contemporaries live in a society characterized by war, economic oppression, colonialism, slavery, sexism, racism, domestic violence, famine, human rights abuses, and every other imaginable form of what used to be called “man’s inhumanity to man.” Up to 20% of the population in the Roman empire were enslaved persons, and large numbers lived in economic hardship.
When Jesus told him the verdict, I’m certain Nicodemus agreed — just as we do.
Under that empire, Jesus would endure an unfair trail on false charges and undergo one of the worst imaginable forms of the death penalty ever concocted. Besides the common witness, Jesus pronounced the verdict from personal experience. He knew the evils not by watching them on the news but by feeling them in his body.
The joy of Laetare Sunday may look forward to the joy of Easter, but Easter happens only after Good Friday. There’s no resurrection without crucifixion.
Like John 3:13, this can also be tossed around as thoughtless religious slogan or a blasphemous excuse for doing nothing to alleviate the suffering of the world. It doesn’t cost anything to say we must go through Good Friday before reaching Easter, especially if we’re living a relatively easy life.
Laetare Sunday is no blithe happiness. Instead, it is grounded in the recognition that the crucified one acknowledges the truth — the verdict, the judgment, the true word that we understand and go through.
There’s a certain joy in knowing that someone recognizes the reality that you know. It’s not a lighthearted happiness that comes from ignoring the plight of people’s suffering nor the ephemeral giddiness from buying the latest gadget. However, it’s joy nonetheless. The joy of solidarity, acknowledgement, and dignity.
No one wants to suffer the pain, grief, and anxieties that come from war, loss, famine, imprisonment, illness, and every other form of travail we undergo. Laetare Sunday is the assurance that Jesus more than understands — he is in the midst of it. Any anodyne version of the faith that fails to put Christ’s Passion and crucifixion between two brigands in solidarity with all humanity at its heart misses the entire point.
Still, it’s no less true that resurrection follows crucifixion, and the resurrection of Christ is fundamental to Christian belief. Indicating that resurrection follows crucifixion might be little comfort to some, and to others it may seem like an anesthetic that dulls us to the suffering of the world. There’s no doubt it has been used that way. Nevertheless, to countless others, the resurrection is the hope that brings consolation in the midst of horrors and the motivation to stand with people in unbearable conditions.
Maybe that’s not what most people think of when joy comes to mind, and it’s not akin to pleasure. Laetare Sunday offers a harsh joy but one that’s both realistic and hopeful.
To those who believe, the joy of Christ’s union with us in our suffering and our union with him in his resurrection is the sustaining power of our very existence. It is the essence of the introit of Isaiah — to turn our mourning into joy, grief into exultation, and emptiness into fulfillment.
