“Be One with Christ” by Elder Cook, Sacrament talk

“Be One with Christ” by Elder Cook Sacrament talk

10-15 mins

Introduction

I have been assigned to discuss principles and ideas in Elder Cook’s most recent General Conference address, “Be One with Christ”.

Recently, my family attended a different ward as we were visiting for a baby blessing. One of the talks this Sunday ended epically with a poetic quoting of the song “With Arms Wide Open” by the rock band Creed. A part of me thought it was epic and another part of me didn’t know what to think. I have been tempted to start this talk with another Creed song called “One” that deals with the same themes discussed in Elder Cook’s talk, but I will refrain.

The last time I did something like that I was a missionary who really liked to quote Batman Begins when teaching repentance (“Bruce, why do we fall… To learn to pick ourselves up”). My Mission President gave me the counsel to not overdo it as the scriptures and the words of prophets tended to be a more powerful influence for such things… but I do love me some Creed and Batman.

In Elder Cook’s talk, he reflects on advice his Grandpa gave him on his deathbed about appreciating the Savior’s atoning sacrifice. Elder Cook further recalls a visit to Jerusalem where he toured the sites where the Savior washed the apostles’ feet, performed the intercessory prayer, and suffered in Gethsemane and on the Cross. Elder Cook spends a large portion of his message on the intercessory prayer as found in John chapter 17. To sum up his message, Elder Cook says:

“This prayer was directed to followers of Christ, including all of us. In the Savior’s petition to His Father, He pleaded “that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.” The Savior then continues, “And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one.” Oneness is what Christ prayed for prior to His betrayal and Crucifixion. Oneness with Christ and our Heavenly Father can be obtained through the Savior’s Atonement.

The Lord’s saving mercy is not dependent on lineage, education, economic status, or race... The essence of truly belonging is to be one with Christ. The ordinances of baptism and the sacrament, together with our temple covenants, unite us in special ways and allow us to be one in every eternally significant way and to live in peace and harmony.”

What does it mean to be one with Christ?

Paul gets closer than most by telling us there is a great mystery within the marriage relationship between husband and wife who are to be one flesh (see Eph 5:21-33) and that to understand that relationship is to understand the at-one-ment being suggested by the scriptures.

To help ancient people understand this act of atonement, ancient prophets would use language that was also used in financial, debt, or legal circles in their time. We do the same in our day. It can be very helpful, but at the same time, a maturing in understanding has to take place over time. President Nelson some years ago gave an observation that we might let once helpful understandings of atonement distract us from the relationship-centric idea actually trying to be conveyed. Back to Paul comparing the act of atonement to marriage, imagine describing our relationships with our loved ones in financial or legal terms… it doesn’t work out well does it? One of the weaknesses in understanding the act of at-one-ment this way is it paints God and the Savior as a cold and indifferent or incapable judge. It causes many to conclude that the intent of the Plan of Salvation is to keep many out, contrary to Elder Kearon’s recent point in General Conference that it is the Lord’s intent to bring us home and that He is in relentless pursuit of us. Or as Nephi put it, “many of us, if not all, may be saved in his kingdom at the great and last day” (see 2 Nephi 33:12). Those who desire to eat, drink, and be merry (see 2 Nephi 28:7-9) will need redemptive correction first.

Atonement, when seen with purer eyes, is not trying to make us at one with the law. Elder Renlund has pointed out that makes us no better than “becoming trained and obedient pets who will not chew on [God's] slippers in the celestial living room.” At-one-ment is trying to make us at one with a living and breathing human being; the only perfect human being, Jesus Christ. Even further, D&C 88:13 teaches us that the law that governs all things centers in and through Christ. In other words, the law is Jesus Christ. Therefore, we can understand acts of justice or judgment as an act of redemptive correction that nudge is in the direction of at-one-ment. President Boyd K. Packer once put it this way:

“Justice can seem to be so very demanding. But we must learn that when we put everything as right as we can put it right, it is Justice WHO invokes the atonement, orders the adversary off our property, and posts the notice that his agents will make no more collections from us. Our debt will have been paid in full by the only perfect pure person who ever lived… [We must learn] that Justice is another name for Mercy, and Mercy is another name for Justice.” (Things of My Soul, P. 59)

Understanding the relationship nature of these terms, all the sudden questions about justice and judgment, according to Adam Miller, become as simple as "What is needed?" instead of "What is deserved?". Christ's act of Atonement literally hinges, therefore, on desires as Alma explains (see Alma 29:4-6). This is because our true desires tell the real story of what we actually need in terms of redemption. Therefore, becoming one with Christ might be as simple as, according to Joseph F. Smith, "educating our desires" (Gospel Doctrine, 5th Edition, p. 297). In other words, do we want this person, Christ, or not? Do we realize, yet, that what we need is Him?

But, how do we as a collective body become one? To become one in Christ brings you within his covenantal fold where we brush up against many different personalities and interests. Paul teaches us the profound truth simply that this diversity within the covenant is evidence that the body of Christ is something real. In other words, our different personalities, skills, and interests are a signpost that we can become like Christ despite the differences between us. Again, as Paul infers, the eyes of the body are indispensable for the stomach and vice versa. They both need each other just like we need each other! In a very real sense, to become like Christ “[others] without us cannot be made perfect and we without others cannot be made perfect”. Our unity is made stronger through our diversity of spiritual gifts.

John 17: The Great Intercessory Prayer

I appreciate Elder Cook singling out the great intercessory prayer from John chapter 17. It is unlike any other scripture we have. New Testament scholar, N.T. Wright explains:

“… When Jesus finally arrives in Jerusalem for the last time, we expect a confrontation. We expect him to go into the Temple once more and do something dramatic. Instead, he takes his disciples to the Upper Room, and there he talks to them and answers their questions… In the physical Temple there is one room into which only one person goes: the Holy of Holies, where the High Priest, once a year, makes atonement for the sins of the people. Now, with John 17, we follow Jesus into the equivalent place. This is the Holy of Holies of Holies, through the secret door into the hidden room. Up to now, Jesus has been talking to his friends about the Father. Now, he talks to the Father about his friends.”

This talking to the Father about His friends is not found anywhere else in scripture. In fact, we get really close to it in 3 Nephi 19 in which Christ prays we may be one with Him, but we don’t get much else. The very next verses after this in 3 Nephi 19 are about Christ going off by himself to pray for his friends and the words are so sacred and intimate that tongue cannot speak it and hand cannot write it (see 3 Nephi 19:27-34). Perhaps, much of what we find in John 17 about becoming one with Christ is about or at least preliminary to some of the most sacred things we can learn about in mortality. Joseph Smith comments on this explicitly in what is known as the King Follett discourse as he describes what John 17:3 means, but I will not quote it here.

What does it all mean? Is there any hard application for us? What can we do? What significance does theology have when all have to do is keep the commandments and follow the Savior?

For those who are married, again, I invite you to ponder on your relationship. What kind of work does it take to truly be “one flesh” with your spouse? It might be easier for some, but to truly love that spouse we have to give ourselves. There are wives out there who keenly understand that if their husbands were to only talk about them in terms of “keeping their commandments” and “following their lead” we might miss the most intimate parts of oneness.

This oneness has eternal significance, but in the here and now it has profound significance in our personal ministries to those we love and care about. The abstractness of oneness is matched by the concrete nature of what it looks like in practice. Again, New Testament theologian N.T. Wright explains unequivocally how oneness connects to our ministry, priesthood, and succoring:

“Jesus is the place of atonement, the place where heaven and earth meet. That is why, straight after this great prayer, he goes out to face the consequence of bringing together the utter holiness of heaven and the utter wickedness of earth, the utter joy of heaven and the utter misery of earth. That is what priesthood is all about: standing at the painful, holy place where the great fracture in creation is healed, the great gulf bridged, where the Word has become flesh and pitched his tent in our midst, revealing God’s glory as the Father’s only Son whose very nature is love… Only when we realize this do we realize how important the ongoing task is, as well as the struggles for deeper unity within our own family. Work for it; pray for it; remind yourself that Jesus prayed for you to be its embodiment. Don’t settle for the cheap unity where nothing really matters as long as we vaguely get on with one another. Go for the hard one, the high one, the costing-not-less-than-everything one, that unity in holiness and truth for which Jesus prayed.”

The call to be one is the task within our own spiritual stewardships to mend the gap between our fallen world and the holiness of heaven; “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). This mostly pertains to our relationships, especially within the Everlasting Covenant. I think there must be a plain connection to a Zion people being “of one heart and one mind” (see Moses 7:18) or “the pure in heart” (see D&C 97:21) and charity being “the pure love of Christ (see Moroni 7:47). These are not pie and in the sky descriptions, but describe something real. This pure love brings us face to face with the truth that we are not living our lives to escape a fallen world. This pure love, this call to oneness, impresses upon us the need to have our hearts knit together; it highlights the importance of the sealing power, the power to bond us together, or the “bond of Charity” (see D&C 88:125), which literally binds us together as the family of Adam. In other words, to make us one.  One by one this is accomplished on the anvil of the temple altar. One by one we minister to each other. One by one we receive the Holy Ghost. These are the building blocks of the Kingdom. Paul puts it most plainly when he says that “if any [person] be in Christ, [they are] a new creation”, but he doesn’t stop there. He says all things are to become new (see 2 Cor. 5:17 & Rev 21:5). We are to be manifestations of the kingdom’s glorious future during what Paul calls creation’s labor pains in the present (see Romans 8:22-27). President Spencer W. Kimball puts it most vividly when he said that when Satan is bound in our home and our life, the Millennium has already begun in that home and in that life (The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, [1982], p. 172). Now imagine what that would mean once we strung together millions of lives and homes where that has happened. The call to be one, therefore, is the call to participate in Christ’s venture to “make all things new”.

Bare testimony and close.