Sacrifice

This talk was delivered on June 9, 2013 in the Wollochet Ward.

It was a cold blustery morning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin when Frank Daly, a local teenager was taking the bus home. The bus driver, John Williams, shivered each time he opened the door to let new passengers on. Inside the bus was warm, outside it was 10 degrees. Not far from his stop, Frank noticed a pregnant woman board the bus.

Her clothes were tattered, her socks were ripped and she had no shoes. The woman was heading in the opposite direction of her destination, but she boarded the bus to escape the cold. She was a mother of eight children and had enough money for the children’s’ shoes but not for her own.

When the bus arrived at Frank’s stop he walked up to the pregnant woman and handed his shoes to her saying: “Here lady, you need these more than me.” Both the bus driver John and the woman started crying. Frank jumped off the bus barefooted and ran home.

James E. Talmage, one of the great scholars of the early 1900s and an apostle of the church tells the following story. A noted naturalist, who, in the course of his customary morning walks, came upon two boys at a millpond. In a basket near the boys were three whining kittens; two others in the pond were struggling to keep from sinking to their doom; and the mother cat was frantically running back and forth on the bank. The naturalist asked the boys what they were doing.

They replied that, as servants, they had been told by their employer to drown the kittens. Their employer loved the mother cat, but she did not want any more cats around the house.

The naturalist assured the boys that he was a personal friend of their employer and would see to it that they would not get into any trouble if he could have the remaining three kittens, for the other two kittens had already disappeared into the depths of the pond. To his surprise, the mother cat recognized the man as the deliverer of her three children.

The naturalist took the kittens home. The next day, when many notable visitors had gathered at the naturalist’s home to pay him honor for his work, the mother cat also came to pay him honor bearing a gift. In her mouth was a large, fat mouse, still fighting for life and weakening under the pains of the mother’s razor sharp teeth.

She softly rubbed against his leg and laid the mouse at his feet. Many in the room were repulsed, but the naturalist cried. For within the cat’s power of discernment, this was the greatest gift she could bestow.

Somewhere during the 60s or 70s we, as a society started expecting happiness as if it were an entitlement. We changed our lives, left town, left families, switched jobs, switched partners or spouses simply because we were not happy. Our society continues to be strained on the verge of cracking in the perilous winds of these narcissistic societal values.

As a society and perhaps individually, it seems we have lost the rudder to the ship of intelligence and wisdom that brings about satiable happiness. We continually search for our purpose and for meaning in life. We wander throughout mortality without the hope for something better and we are participants in the great play of life without an understanding of our specific roles.

We are all casted in the Lord’s 3-Act play. Act 1 was our premortal existence. Act 3 is post mortality, our life after death. However, during Act 2, or mortality, we wander around as if there is no one to block our positions or to teach us on how to interface with the other actors on stage. Therefore, we have no lines that bring fulfillment because we want the play to be about us and what we want; instead of what the Author originally scripted.

When Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden, they were commanded to build an altar and offer sacrifices. Bringing this story to a visual experience, picture this story from the perspective of a map.

When Adam and Eve were initially conversing with the Father, they were in a Celestial state of being. Here they received two commandments that to some seem conflicting or contradictory. One was to multiply and replenish the earth while the other was to eat of every tree in the garden except one. I find it interesting that the commandment was actually to eat everything first.

At this time, the Father instructed the Son to escort the couple eastward into the Garden of Eden or into a Terrestrial state. After a season in the Garden, the couple made a cognitive choice to exit the Garden and enter mortality. Jeffrey R. Holland said: “They (Adam and Eve) had full knowledge of the plan of salvation during their stay in Eden.”

In the Lectures on Faith we read: Adam was “lord or governor of all things on the earth, and at the same time enjoying communion and intercourse with his Maker, without a veil to separate between.”

Dallin H. Oaks contributed his thoughts to the Fall by explaining that “this would be a planned offense, a formality to serve an eternal purpose.”

In Moses 1:39 we read “For behold this is my work and my glory to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.”

In order for us to achieve immortality with a body and eternal life with God, we agreed to a short season of earth life. When Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, they walked and talked with Deity. The choice to partake of the forbidden fruit was a sacrifice of position, from lord and governor to laborer. Adam would now sweat for his food, he would get rained on during the night and be cold during the day. He would have to fight blackberries, mosquitoes, and his wife would no longer be perfect and have makeup on 24/7.

Eve was now going to experience childbirth, a pain that scripture indicate is sufficiently extreme that in order for a mother to willingly experience child birth a second time, God would need to erase her memory. I often wonder why He couldn’t remove her memory of the pain her husband’s mistakes have caused her at the same time.

Adam and Eve were also going to experience the greatest enduring pain of all, teenagers and the potential of losing their children to the consequences of agency. Why would two rational, highly intelligent, and godlike souls willingly sacrifice a place like Eden to enter mortality?

There was no mandate for their behavior, there couldn’t be, for if there were, God would cease to be God and the Atonement would not be efficacious and honored. “Adam fell that men might be and men are that they might have joy” (2 Nephi 2:25).

Upon expulsion from the Garden, Adam and Eve were symbolically directed eastward into the Telestial Kingdom, known as earth life, and commanded to build an altar and offer sacrifices. They obeyed with exactness. They did not fully understand why they were offering sacrifices, but they were promised that everything they need in order to return to God would be provided.

This knowledge increased their faith. Their faith grew to hope, which is a confident expectation, and their hope guided their behavior. Adam and Eve continued in faith, but their children did not and many fell away. And then after many days an Angel of the Lord appeared to Adam and Eve and questioned them regarding the altar.

At this point in the story, Adam and Eve were grandparents and waxing mature. I refrained from using the word old because theoretically Adam and Eve, who were physically born on the same day into mortality, may have only been 60 – 70 years old when they first became grandparents and they had about 850 years to go.

Given today’s life expectancy, that’s the equivalent of becoming a grandparent when you are in Kindergarten. How exciting!

So the Angel queried saying: “Why dost thou offer sacrifices unto the Lord? And Adam said unto him: I know not, save the Lord commanded me” (Moses 5:6). At this point Adam and Eve were obeying strictly on faith and so the Lord taught them the meaning of the altar.

He explained that the altar is a symbolic reminder of the atonement of Jesus Christ Who will come in the meridian of time and be sacrificed on a cross. Therefore Adam, was to symbolically place himself on the altar as he went around it and traveled back or westward into the presence of God. In Moses 6:63 we learn that all things type of the Savior. Every morning since the Fall of Adam we can witness the Atoning blessings of this story as the sun (Son) rises in the east and sets in the west (Matt. 24:27). Everyday the sun metaphorically symbolizes going to the Temple and entering into the presence of God.

Take a look at your bible maps when you have a moment and notice how the layout of Herod’s Temple is positioned like the Garden story, with the Holy of Holies or the Celestial Kingdom on the west side. Moving eastward, one would pass through a veil into the terrestrial kingdom and into the Holy Room. Another movement eastward and one would enter the Temple courtyard and find an altar for sacrifices.

Here Adam was commanded to lay down his will and take upon himself a new name or the name of Christ. The only thing we own in this life that does not come from God is our will.

Imagine as a teenager, upon passing your driving test and receiving your license, your father hands you the keys to a new car with this condition; you may drive the car indefinitely with an unlimited gas supply. All the insurance costs will be paid, and if by chance you wreck it, he will cover the cost of repair regardless of cause.

The only caveat is that he will need to use the car about 10 percent of the time for someone else. So about every 10^th day, you are to leave the car outside with the keys in it and it will be promptly returned the next day, filled with gas and detailed. Does that work for you?

This understanding places a different perspective on my mission. Using this time reckoning, after 20 years on earth, I give back 2 years, and for my time, I receive an education in joy and happiness, studying, interpersonal relationships, listening, teaching, and perseverance that 20 years of university studies could never accomplish.

I recall one early Saturday morning as my sons and I drove to yet another moving service project, Andrew asked me yet again, “Dad, why do we always have to help everyone move?” I laughed, “we don’t, there are others who help.” “Right, except for Clark Jackson, who else?” He had me there, so I was quiet wondering when the next question would surface.

“Dad,” came Andrew’s question, “why do we always have to perform service, and don’t tell me it puts hair on my chest, that doesn’t work anymore?” Could you script a better teaching moment than that? Andrew is not only an inquisitive child, he also listens and learns. So I asked: “What’s my role as a father?”

“To teach us correct principles.”

“What does it mean to teach?”

To delegate learning to the student.

Do you remember what I told Charles that night his friend Ryan Fisher became real upset with me for having a curfew?

Andrew laughed, “yea, that was funny. You said that you weren’t raising us to be teenagers. You were raising us to become adults.”

“So why do you think we are always helping others?”

Andrew started laughing as he said, “To put hair on our chests.”

Serving our fellow man is not sacrifice, at least not using the perspective of the atonement of Jesus Christ and considering our purpose here on earth. For each one of us here, our sole purpose is to overcome specific challenges and do all that we can to live a Celestial law.

Is it really a sacrifice to work an 8-hour shift and get paid a fair wage? Is it a sacrifice to spend a Saturday morning learning eternal truths, spending time with family, while do something for someone that they cannot do for themselves? And even if they were capable, would it really matter?

In my finite mind I cannot find where I have sacrificed much when looking at it through the story of the Gardens, Eden and Gethsemane. I’ve had physical and emotional pain; I’ve been hungry, weak, sick, and stressed. I’ve raised five boys through their terrible twos and parented four boys through the teenage years without losing my sanity. But mostly I perceive that I’ve been selfish, offering very little by way of personal sacrifice.

I wish to conclude with my perspective of sacrifice as it occurred in a Garden some 2,000 years ago. After the Last Supper was concluded, Jesus went to pray and await His arrest. During the next 3 hours, He uttered 3 identical prayers, each one growing in intensity.

At one point during this process, the pain was so intense, that Jesus, for Whom mortality was an unblemished season, asked if He could alter His Father’s plan. He wanted to know if He could stop the Atonement process and end the suffering. Doctrine and Covenants 18 explains our inability to comprehend the pain He endured, and John 16 and 17 make the atonement a metaphor for childbirth.

Imagine you are going through 3 stages of childbirth. Stage 1, you experience contractions that endure for 3 hours, no breaks. The pain is so intense that you bleed from every pore. No anesthesiologist swings by and administers an epidural.

It was during this stage that Jesus begged to pass on the Bitter Cup. His Father had left Him and after Satan buffeted the weakened Son of God, a ministering angel descended and said similar words to these, as I envision it.

Lord, You don’t have to go through with it. You are the only perfect soul to ever walk on earth and no matter what You do, You will be exalted. But if You stop now, there is not one person in God’s creations who will return to Him. All will be lost.

I submit that this is the meaning of sacrifice. Jesus decided to finish the first stage. We pick up the story in John 18:

His inner garments are soaked with blood as He is arrested by a band of men (John 18: 3), which translates into 600 plus armed Jewish soldiers.

v. 4 Jesus, therefore, knowing all things that should come upon him, went forth, and said unto them, Whom seek ye?

v. 5 They answered him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith unto them, I am he. (Upon conclusion of this meeting grab your King James Version and look closely at these passages. You will discern that a few words are italicized, which means the KJV scholars inserted a word or two not originally in the text. I will read the remaining part of this story without the KJV scholars’ interpretations, repeating verse 5)

v. 5 They answered him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith unto them, I am that I am.

Ten chapters earlier in John 8: when Jesus claimed that He was the great I Am, they took charge to kill Him. Now at His arrest, He was assuring the crowd in the gathering storm that He was the Son of God. He was going to perform the ultimate sacrifice and it meant His life.

v. 6 As soon then as he had said unto them, I am that I am, they went backward and fell to the ground.

Can you picture what just happened? In blood soaked robing, standing at the Garden’s gate, the greatest Man who ever lived, stood on a cold April evening, with a full moon as a witness, in the shadows of the Temple, and bore testimony of His divinity for the purpose of bringing about a sacrifice that was spoken of when Adam and Eve were cast out of their Garden.

More than 600-armed men have fallen to the ground at His divine testimony. Stage 2 was about to commence where He is subjected to insult designed to removed all dignity and make Him lower than dirt. During the trial, Jesus orchestrated His crucifixion. He would soon be flogged and then have a plated crown of thorns hammered on His brow prior to being led to Golgotha.

Bleeding at every pore would kill any human. Flogging, as conducted in those days, was usually fatal. Still He continued to Stage 3, Golgotha.

After being nailed to the cross, the Savior endured six hours of continual pain. The final three hours are referred to as Little Gethsemane because the physical pain was almost the equivalent of the emotional pain of Gethsemane.

As the day drew to a close, the Sanhedrin, needing the bodies removed before sundown or the Sabbath, ordered the soldiers to break the legs of the victims to speed up their deaths, but also to void the prophecy that no bone would be broken.

Unbeknownst to the Sons of Perdition masking as Jewish leaders, as the 6^th hour drew to a close, in anguish, Jesus of Nazareth looked toward the heavens and uttered a profound phrase, It is finished. Tetelestai in Greek, which means, all things have been accounted and paid for. Every sin, every pain, every heart break, every sorrow, and everybody who accepts Jesus as the Christ, will one day return to their Father in Heaven because He sacrificed His perfect life for them.

Seeing that Jesus was already dead, the Roman soldiers thrust a spear into His side and out flowed blood and water, symbolic of childbirth, or in this case, new birth. He is now the Father of our salvation.

The ultimate sacrifice was now complete. In three short days, He would become Jesus the Christ with a fully resurrected body of flesh and bone, completely separate from His Father and now perfect in every way.

In my first story, Frank Daly, a local Milwaukee teenager sacrificed his shoes, not to be seen of men as noble, but because he was good and acted in a manner commensurate with God’s will.

The mother kitten expressed her gratitude for her savior by giving a gift of great value, nothing held back.

Whether we are in a position to sacrifice our will to the Lord or extend to Him our gratitude, it is my prayer that we conduct ourselves in harmony with our premortal covenants, that we may return to our Father in Heaven, whose Son made the ultimate sacrifice.

To this end I bear my witness, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.