What I wish I had said in my GAS lesson yesterday

I taught priesthood yesterday. That’s not such a big deal, except that I completely forgot I was teaching. I also spoke in sacrament meeting, and had concentrated on my talk this past week. On Friday, I wondered if I was teaching or not, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t. Well, Sunday just before class, the group secretary handed out new lesson schedules, and there was my name next to this week’s lesson.

The good news: I had gotten my wires crossed and carefuly read the lesson a couple of weeks earlier, forgetting that it was “teaching for our times” lesson, so I had some ideas. And on Friday, I read through the lesson again, just in case.

I said a silent prayer as our group leader conducted a bit of business, and I quickly looked over my highlighted passages in my Kindle Fire (I didn’t have my paper book, which I prefer on days I teach). The lesson was #5 about the blessings of the restored priesthood, a subject near and dear to my heart. Looking at the questions at the end of the lesson, I found where I wanted to begin and where I wanted to end, so with a little faith and some bravado, I stood to teach.

We started with D&C 84:21, which makes clear that the blessing of the priesthood is in priesthood ordinances. We spoke a bit about those ordinances required for exaltation (baptism, confirmation, priesthood ordination, temple endowment, temple sealing). And we read several passages from the manual about President Smith’s love of the priesthood, the blessings of ordinances, and his sensitivity not to offend others, but to be clear that the proper authority to perform priesthood ordinances rests in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

We turned to blessings of the priesthood, and read D&C 84:33-38, what has often been referred to as The Oath and Covenant of the Priesthood. We pointed out specific blessings to faithful priesthood holders (sanctification, renewing of their bodies, membership among the seed of Abraham and the elect of God – see verses 33-34).

In the next few verses come the Great Blessing, namely All That The Father Hath (v. 38). I asked the group who can receive that particular blessing. A visitor said (without my calling on him) “men only.” I ignored his comment and walked through the logic of verses 36-38:

For he that receiveth my servants receiveth me; And he that receiveth me receiveth my Father; And he that receiveth my Father receiveth my Father’s kingdom; therefore all that my Father hath shall be given unto him.

Who receives the Lord’s servants? Anyone who receives priesthood ordinances.

What is the path to exaltation? The saving ordinances of the gospel.

Who receives the Great Blessing from verse 38? Anyone who receives all of the saving ordinances.

Our visitor then said, “Well, I see where you’re going with this, but….”

I don’t know what his real concern was. I sensed a resistance in him (my impression was driven by his first “men only” comment, I suppose) to think that these verses applied to anyone outside the priesthood club.

I didn’t have time to pursue it. I wish I had the time. It would have been interesting to unpack his concern and examine it more closely, and to see if we could reason together to understand it. But we were at the end of our class time.

What I really wish I had done (and had I been better prepared, maybe I would have) is followed my discussion with this quotation from President Smith from near the end of the lesson:

The authority of our Heavenly Father is upon the earth for the blessing of mankind, not to make those who receive that authority arrogant, but to make them humble; not to make those who have received special privileges feel that they are greater than others, but to make us humble in our souls, prayerful in our hearts, and considerate of all men in all that we do, and thus exemplify by upright lives that which our Heavenly Father desires us to teach.

By citing that quotation, I don’t mean to suggest that our visitor was arrogant. I don’t think he was. But This quotation, taken with the rest of President Smith’s words from the lesson, make clear that President Smith saw the blessing of the restored priesthood in the service that the priesthood requires, not in the mere holding of it.

Ordinances

The Lord taught that the power of the priesthood is evident in the ordinances thereof (see D&C 84:21).

Priesthood is the power to perform ordinances, physical expressions of inner commitments that signal a covenant with the Lord. For latter-day saints, there are a number of crucial ordinances, including baptism and confirmation.

The age of baptism in the Mormon Church is eight. Children younger than eight, we're taught, are not accountable for their sins and therefore have no need of baptism. For those eight and over, and for converts to the church, baptism (by immersion) is the ordinance that signifies the entering in at the gate and embarking on the path back to God. I'll speak more about the significance of baptism in another post

Confirmation follows, in which hands are laid on the person's head and that person is confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and given the gift of the Holy Ghost.

These ordinances, performed by those who are ordained to do so, are the beginning of one's membership in the church. There are other ordinances that may be performed: ordination to the priesthood, blessing of the sick, blessings give for comfort, the naming and blessing of children, and perhaps the most regularly performed ordinance: the sacrament.

Sacrament in the LDS Church is the ordinance in which bread and water are taken as tokens of the body and blood of Christ, reminiscent of his action at the Last Supper. The sacrament prayers teach us that these emblems should remind us of the covenants we made at baptism, and the taking of the sacrament allows members to renew those covenants. As a result, with proper repentance, we can start fresh each week in our desire to do the Lord's will in our lives.

The ordinances of the gospel are a chance for us to connect ourselves by covenant to the Lord, to become His and to signal our willingness to walk in His path.

For me, some of my most spiritual moments of my life have been while I’ve been involved in ordinances of the gospel, either receiving them or performing them. Standing in the water with my children at their baptism has been a remarkable experience each time (my seventh was baptized last year). I have felt close to them and close to the Lord, and have wondered if I have caught a glimpse in those times about how He loves me.

- Paul