The caption to the picture read, “Jesus was too busy wearing Airpods to notice the burning bush.”
When the person who posted the image was called out on mistaking Moses for Jesus, he said, “I’m Jewish, so I didn’t know.” When reminded that Moses is a key character, and his vision of the burning bush a key event, in the history and formation of the Jewish faith, he said, “Well, I never really listened in Hebrew School anyway.”
Ironically, it probably wouldn’t be far off to guess that he was the one too busy wearing Airpods to notice practically anything he might have been taught about his faith while growing up.
In the song, “London’s Burning,” by my favourite punk rock band, The Clash, they sing, “Black or white, you turn it on, you face the new religion; everybody's sitting 'round watching television.”
Whether it’s due to the number of people who commute back and forth with Airpods or other kinds of head-phone on, immersed in popular music or podcasts, or the number of us that sit around watching television at least a little every day, or are absorbed for hours in the latest YouTube videos and social media feeds – if aliens were to observe our society today, it wouldn’t be surprising if they concluded that these kinds of entertainment and devices are the religion of our day; and their conclusion wouldn’t necessarily be wrong.
We often determine what a person’s religion is not by the tradition they come from, their culture or family background, or even the church they belong to or where they spend their Sabbath days. We can determine a person’s religion by what they treat as precious and worthy of occupying their thoughts, time, activity, and energy – in essence, what they will sacrifice other things for; and those things that they do in the service of that devotion, qualify as their forms of worship.
Some people might reject this idea. Brother Obert C. Tanner, author of our old Sunday School manual titled, Christ’s Ideals for Living, wrote that through worship “man finds fellowship with God, and feels a responsibility to Him; … is seeking to know better, not his own self-interests, but the will of the Highest, and …for willpower to carry out that will.” But what Brother Tanner is talking about here is the ideal of our worship, not the nature of worship itself.
The fact is that not all worship is uplifting.
We can and sometimes do worship the wrong things, in the wrong ways,
and for the wrong reasons.
The Book of Mormon also describes a group of people whose worship consists of standing on a platform, called a Rameumptom, and praising God for making them better than others around them. And the Apostle John records in the thirteenth chapter of the Revelation, that the people even “worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, ‘Who is like unto the beast? Who is able to make war with him?’”
Jesus warned us that “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
Where our heart is, is what we worship.
A further dangerous fact is that not only can we worship the wrong things, but we can worship them even while it appears, and we might think, that we are worshipping the right ones.
The worshippers who ascended the Rameumptom, for example, were part of the Hebrew tradition and adopted most of its language and ideas; and in the First Vision, the Lord warned Joseph Smith about those who “draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, [who] teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof.”
My journey toward joining The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints started, in part, with a dream.
Three things then happened all at virtually the same time.
First, in my dream, I turned and saw the Lord Jesus Christ. He was standing behind me in the entrance to the room.
Second, I awoke, because the voice sounded so audible, so clear, that I thought it was real. I had instantly sat up at the edge of my bed. No one, of course, was there.
Then, third, I knew immediately the meaning of the dream. It was that I was not to centre my faith or my worship of God in images and representations of Him, but that I should focus on having a real relationship with the actual, living and loving person of God, who I knew through His Son, and our Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Of course, the dream was not saying that all people are wrong who pray before a crucifix, or use a rosary or any other of the multitude of symbols and devices that exist to help people focus and refine the experience of faithfully seeking a connection to God. Rather, the dream was warning me about the error of focusing on those things in the absence of seeking a real connection with God.
The Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans that, “Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness… [b]ecause they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law.”
Doing the right things, can become, in essence, the wrong thing,
if we are not doing it with the right heart.
Worship is one of those things that, to be right, requires the right heart.
But I don’t want that thought to be the only one that I leave with you today. It would be misleading.
There is a human tendency to want to think in simplistic, black-and-white terms, where things are well defined and easy to perceive and understand. Some years ago in the Church, there was a division amongst members who said that some members were “letter of the law” Latter-day Saints, while others were “Liahona” Latter-day Saints – people who followed the direction of the Spirit. The truth is, the correct group were those who fit into both categories.
Likewise, with worship, while symbolic ritual activity could lack meaning without the right heart being in the right place, having the right heart all on its own and doing nothing with it isn’t true worship either. In fact, that probably could never happen, since the right heart will always be inclined to want to do the right things, but the principle is that both elements are needed to make our worship its most perfect and effective.
I recall being impressed with Father Wayne Lobsinger, a former pastor at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church, just down the road from our stake centre. Some of you might remember that he spoke at our first interchurch dialogue just over 10 years ago.
I met Father Lobsinger when he officiated at my business partner’s wedding. I was an usher and privileged to be seated in the front row of the chapel, which gave me an excellent opportunity to observe him as he handled the various objects that were part of the Eucharistic rite. I was impressed by the precision of his movements, even down to the way he handled the cup, gently wiping its edge in a particular motion that seemed both perfectly placed and timed. At each step, his facial expression, body language, and actions, suggested the deepest reverence for what the ritual represented, the grace of God that it was intended to communicate.
Observing him reminded me of an old man I sat beside in the Provo Temple while I was at the Missionary Training Centre in 1985. It was a simple thing, and it is odd that it has stayed with me over the years. He simply commented on how many of we young missionaries didn’t understand the sacredness of temple clothing, and would even place them on the floor while participating in the endowment session.
I didn’t take much stock of his statement at the time. They are, I thought, just clothes after all. The real meaning of the ritual isn’t in the clothing, right?
Well, not exactly right.
Whether we are performing the rituals of the temple,
the Sacrament, a baptism, a priesthood blessing, or a prayer,
we need to pay attention to the rules of the ritual.
They are not all necessarily eternal in nature; some instructions from Church leaders may change from time to time; and getting the rituals right isn’t about mechanical perfection for its own sake; but if we perform the rituals without paying close and careful attention to their proper elements, and reverencing them in the way Father Lobsinger did, or the way that old man in the temple revered even the temple clothing, we are going to miss something sacred and deep about them.
Elder John Widstoe once said that if we do not come to understand the symbolic meanings of the endowment ritual, we cannot receive the full endowment.* We can hardly begin to interpret the ritual and its symbols, if we do not first accurately learn them.
This principle of getting the ritual right applies to our private worship as well. In his book, For Times of Trouble – Spiritual Solace from the Psalms, Elder Holland writes, “having said that [one cannot always be offering a formal, kneeling or vocal prayer, but can and should always have a prayer in one’s heart and have a heaven-oriented attitude], it must be acknowledged that God also expects us to actually… have honest, earnest vocal prayer on a regular basis.” He adds, “To pray ‘evening, and morning, and at noon’ is evidence of… obedience to [the Lord’s] command.” And he further writes, “[Although w]e should not get mechanical in our prayer habits [and t]he number of times we pray is must less important than the earnestness and faith with which those prayers are offered… there is a constant reminder in the scriptures to … let prayer mark the way we start our day, the way we pursue our day, and the way we conclude our day.”
A little ritualistic righteousness in our worship,
goes a long way toward perfecting our discipleship;
but, again, not entirely without our heart being in the right place.
And where, exactly, is that? In the context of our Sabbath Day worship (which is the theme of our meeting today), it is right over there. On the Sacrament table. And broken.
In Doctrine and Covenants, section 59, verse 12, the Lord says,
“But remember that on this, the Lord's day, thou shalt offer thine oblations and thy sacraments unto the Most High.”
The sacraments are the sacred covenants we have each personally made and are personally reaffirming during the sacramental ritual. The oblation is an offering to God, the Hebrew root word for which means, “to come near.” In this context, the offering is that of a broken heart and a contrite spirit. Taken together, this scripture indicates that the why of our worship on the Sabbath Day is to help us become both more committed to God and, through our humility and (as Sister Zehr mentioned in the story she shared today) our brokenness, to draw closer to him.
How humility and brokenness draw us closer to God is implied in the meaning of the word “worship” itself; but not its English meaning. In English, it refers to the worthiness – the worth-ship – of the object of praise. The Hebrew word typically translated as “worship” in the Old Testament means, instead, “to bow down, or to fall down flat.”
While acknowledging God’s greatness is not worthless or uncalled for in principle, it is not God’s objective to be affirmed by us. He already knows who He is. Our worship is more correctly inclined to show us who we are. It is exactly opposite to the form of worship depicted in The Book of Mormon as ascending the Rameumptom to express gratitude and praise because we are a saved and righteous people; instead, as followers of Jesus Christ, we are called to fall before the Lord and declare our brokenness, so that he can then apply the healing balm of the atonement to lift us up again. As he says in 3 Nephi chapter 27,
“my Father sent me that I might be lifted up upon the cross; and after that I
had been lifted up upon the cross, that I might draw all men unto me, that
as I have been lifted up by men even so should men be lifted up by the Father.”
We do not lift ourselves, but as the qualifications for baptism in Doctrine and Covenants section 20 describe, we are to “humble [our]selves before God, … and come forth with broken hearts and contrite spirits, [repenting of our] sins, and [being] willing to take upon [us] the name of Jesus Christ, … to serve him to the end.”
Ultimately, true and complete worship is taking that name upon us.
As Elder Neal A. Maxwell notes in his book, One More Strain of Praise, “our ultimate praise… is to pattern our lives after [the Lord Jesus Christ],” first appreciating, then admiring, and then ultimately emulating him.
These are things I believe and testify to be true, in the sacred name of Jesus Christ. Amen.