Gospel-Homily for Trinity Sunday (2024)

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Sadness Prepares Us for Change for the Better.

Anger. The purpose of anger is to allure you that something is wrong, and it amazingly gives you the energy to fix it. Let’s say you walk into the room chewing on your new hat. Energy. You jump out of the La-Z-Boy recliner, rescue the hat, and put it in a draw. Sadness is very different. It wants to sit in a recliner and eat ice cream. Let’s say your bike was stolen. There you are, very sad, sitting in the La-Z-Boy eating ice cream, wondering what you will do. There are options. You could buy a new bike and a few nice upgrades. You could rent the city bikes and not worry about another robbery. You could replace biking with running. The purpose of sadness is to prepare you for change. The reason why I mention this is because the saddest experience by any human being in the course of history was the disciples’ loss of Jesus. Furthermore, they lost Him twice. Once, because of the crucifixion. Their grief for three days in the upper room prepared them for change. They were reunited with a risen and victorious Jesus. Then, they lost the Lord again when He ascended into heaven. They were saying that it prepared them for change. What change?

I was shoveling snow in front of the church. Apparently, my snow blower was not powerful enough to handle wet, heavy snow. After a while, I took a breather, leaned on my shovel, and looked across the street. Berklee School of Music was removing the snow with a Bobcat.  What is a Bobcat?  It works when you open the door and sit on a spring-loaded cushioned seat. You take your hand and reach for the knob that says “heat” and turn it all the way up because it can get a little drafty in the Bobcat. Next, you put your hands on the wheel, drive around, and the snow disappears. So, I looked at the Bobcat, then at my shovel, then at the Bobcat again, and I figured out the difference between the two. Power.

Now, let’s return to the sad disciples. They see the Lord ascend into heaven and feel the loss. That sadness prepared them for change. And this is the change–they went from a shovel to a bobcat. Power. They can do things that they were never able to do before. They can share the same quality features of God. They can forgive like God; they can be kind like God. They can be generous, compassionate, and able to suffer for the benefit of others. We can now look at the three persons of God and say that we are of them because God empowered us to act on the behave of Himself. We have all this power; we just need to use it.