My youngest is entering Middle School (Junior HIgh) this year. As we were discussing it with his older brothers, the subject of P.E. came up. Physical Education, also known as “Gym.”
Times have changed somewhat. We still need to get a lock and some gym clothes, but the days of mandatory community showers and athletic supporters are long gone in most places. But this discussion certainly brought back memories.
I still remember my Junior High Coaches. Especially my 7th grade coach. I will call him “Coach Payne.” Because “Payne” is how we perceived his coaching methods. I’m not saying he was abusive, or even out of line, but it was a different generation. Coach Payne was a cross between a sport coach and a Drill Sargent. (Men, some of you might need to explain some of the following points.)
Everything was by the clock. If you weren’t dressed out and in line in the allotted time, you could “drop and give him 20.” Talking when you were not supposed to? Run ladders or laps. No ‘snap’ check? 50 sit-ups and heaps of embarrassment.
There was one sacrosanct rule in the locker room. Every Friday, you take your clothes and towel out of your locker and take them home to be washed. This made total sense.
Anyone who has been a boy, or raised boys, knows that they can be smelly creatures – as can their clothing. A set of gym clothes could get quite ‘ripe’ after 5 days of sweat. Add in a damp towel, and by the end of the week, a boys locker could be toxic. We understood, and faithfully took our clothes home every Friday.
Usually.
Every now and then, someone would forget. There was one boy in our class who always seemed to forget. It was as if he was conducting a lab experiment in a cotton/poly petri-dish.
You could tell who forgot to take their clothes home, because we would line up on Monday, surrounded by a green toxic cloud. Their damp clothes reeked, and were wrinkled. The boys standing next to the offender were not happy, and neither was Coach Payne. Laps, ladders, sit-ups or push-up were automatic.
Which leads me to a question: Did you take the sacrament today?
Now, that might be enough for some of you, but if you want to dig deeper, read on…
Back when I was eight years old, I made a covenant with my Heavenly Father that I would keep His commandments and always remember the Savior. I did this when I was baptized.
In return, He gave me the gift of the Holy Ghost, and a way to resolve things when I did not do my part. Repentance.
One of the key, and often mis-understood parts of repentance is the importance of the Sacrament. It is not enough to feel bad for what we have done, and to apologize to God and whomever we offended. We need to become clean again. Regular baptism is not practical, or necessary. The Lord has provided a way to meet the requirement to start fresh: Partaking of the sacrament.
Elder Dallin H Oaks explained it this way: (I added the italics and bold)
“Not one of you…has lived without sin since his baptism. Without some provision for further cleansing after our baptism, each of us is lost to things spiritual. We cannot have the companionship of the Holy Ghost, and at the final judgment we would be bound to be “cast off forever”. How grateful we are that the Lord has provided a process for each baptized member of His Church to be periodically cleansed from the soil of sin. The sacrament is an essential part of that process.
We are commanded to repent of our sins and to come to the Lord with a broken heart and a contrite spirit and partake of the sacrament in compliance with its covenants. When we renew our baptismal covenants in this way, the Lord renews the cleansing effect of our baptism. In this way we are made clean and can always have His Spirit to be with us. The importance of this is evident in the Lord’s commandment that we partake of the sacrament each week.” (link)
Elder Oaks talks about the need for post-baptism cleansing. Why? Because we get dirty. In D&C 59:9 the Lord refers to the dirt as “spots,” and expresses the need to attend Church and partake of the sacrament to become “unspotted.”
Thankfully, most sins do not smell. If they did, life would be pretty unbearable for all of us. Even though they don’t stink, you will never read the phrase “ripe in iniquity” the same way again. (1 Nephi 17:35)
Like the gym clothes, we need a good weekly cleaning. As do our souls.
Elder Oaks said “each week.” Elder L. Tom Perry gave a tiny bit of wiggle room when he said “ordinarily weekly.” (link) Why would he do that? For starters, there are General and Stake Conferences where the sacrament is not administered. People get sick or injured. Some people have to work on the Sabbath.
But how often do we reeeaaaallllly need to miss partaking of the sacrament?
Is spending a day at Disneyland, at the beach, or a nice hike in the mountains a worthy excuse? Or is it something that should be scheduled around? (Hint: It is easy and possible to schedule church attendance while traveling with the brand new LDS Tools app for your smartphone.)
Is it worth it to me to carry an extra week’s worth of sin around because I didn’t feel like getting up for church? How about the baggage of two week’s worth of sin. A month? Six months?
At that point it becomes more than just an over-supply of sin – it becomes heavy, toxic baggage that can change my life – for the worse.
The Holy Ghost is very sensitive to the stench of sin. As Elder Oaks mentioned, the Holy Ghost will not stick around if I am carrying around the baggage of unresolved sin. He just won’t. One of the key purposes of the sacrament is “that they may always have his Spirit to be with them.” We can negate that promise through disuse.
Then, without the promptings and guidance of the Holy Ghost, I can really get into trouble . (For more on this, please read “The Whirlpool of Spiritual Stupidity.“
A few questions that I should ask myself:
• In P.E., every Monday I was expected to dress out in clean clothes. How will I spiritually start my Monday?
• Summer is wrapping up. Did I attend church and participate in the sacred ordinance of the sacrament every week, or did I put other things above it.
• Am I carrying around sins that I have repented for, but have not been cleansed away from last week, or the week before because I haven’t finished the process?
• Do I ever look for excuses to miss church, rather than move heaven and earth NOT to miss church?
• Is there anything that could happen this week that is of more significance than taking the sacrament tis week? Anything at all…? Anything? Bueller? (Correct answer is “No.”)
Personally, I do not believe that I could consider myself a disciple of Christ, and a keeper of covenants, if I do not partake of the sacrament almost every Sunday. It just doesn’t work.
Repeatedly missing the sacrament should be an uncomfortable, if not horrible experience. If I am unable to attend my meetings, I need to explain the dilemna to my bishop, and find a solution.
In the last days, or maybe tomorrow, none of us want to be that kid in line who has the dirty clothes.
And THAT, Brothers and Sisters, is why we go tho Church on Sunday.
– Now drop and give me twenty.
Three great talks on the sacrament:
Elder Dallin H. Oaks, “Sacrament Meeting & the Sacrament“
Elder L. Tom Perry, “As Now We Take the Sacrament“
Elder Dallin H. Oaks, “The Aaronic Priesthood & the Sacrament“
Great article, but it bears reminding that the sacrament does not cleanse us, repentance does. 3 Nephi 18:29.
That’s why I carefully pointed out the partaking of the sacrament is part of the repentance process, and quoted Elder Oaks in saying about repentance: The sacrament is an essential part of that process.”
(Actually, it is neither repentance or the sacrament that cleanses us – it is the Holy Ghost.)
I love science. All fields, but I think I have learned more gospel principles though my classes on Physics. Take Newton’s law on inertia. Once an object has come to rest, it takes more effort to get it to move than it takes to keep it moving, after the initial start. You are overcoming that friction of being “at rest”.
See a relationship? Once you miss ONE sacrament meeting, break you scripture reading schedule, postpone one prayer….etc….doing it the next time is harder. You are overcoming spiritual inertia. I think the Adversary knows and uses this fact. If it’s hard to attend meetings for you, missing one will only make it easier to miss the next time.
I know this is true in my case. I am very aware of the effort it takes to break through that spiritual inertia for me. Must be one of Satan’s best tools
I work about 5 hours from where I live. My work schedule is conducive to this, and allows me pretty much the same amount of family time. Just weekly instead of daily. This job is kind of an oxymoron, in that if I have a “good” day/night at work, than somebody else is having a really, really bad day. Friday and Saturday nights are usually pretty good for business because, in part, people in that area have traditionally treated their depression or general dissatisfaction with life with some combination of barley, corn, yeast and sugar, guns, knives, and/or cars.
I start my 4 night shifts on Friday night, so that means that, if I didn’t get too many calls, and got to sleep after midnight on Saturday, I can attend the local ward Sunday morning. (EMS has multiple meanings). I told the local bishop that was my plan. He threatened to give me a calling since I would be there every other week.
Well, this summer, “business” has been good. So I haven’t made it to the local ward there. Nation wide, programs have been understaffed. So I have been working overtime on my weeks off, resulting in my not attending my own ward since before Memorial Day.
Yesterday, our million dollar, 8 month old grandson was finally blessed in sacrament meeting by his father. My daughter has laughed how her big tough “warrior” dad turned into a blubbering invalid the first time he saw the child. Yesterday…I remember the main speaker made analogies to fishing, but I don’t really know what he said. All I thought about was how long it feels like it has been since I took the sacrament and got teary eyed as I sat and saw all of the FOML sitting in those pews. I saw the spouses of those that are married, I saw their children, even one sitting with his other grandparents. I thought about how this simple act of taking the sacrament binds us all together. Oh my, and as I sit and type, and relive those memories…..that’s all I have to say.
such a insightful post I really e joyed it.
All I can say is that takes talent (?) to take a conversation about gym clothes and use it as an analogy for renewing baptismal covenants. Well said.
Thank you. (?)
I didn’t take the sacrament today…..because it was stake conference. :). I agree with you 100% that we should partake weekly so as to not to become weakly. I think one of the first times I really pondered the power of the sacrament was when I was a teenager and a woman in my ward bore her testimony about how much she needed and was looking forward to taking the sacrament that week. She further explained how difficult her life had been that week and how she had made stupid mistakes that she wanted to be free from. The spirit spoke to me that what she was saying was true and 30 years later, I still remember what she said and how I felt. Many times since I’ve also anxiously awaited the sweet sabbath day. When my children were young a friend of mine and I would joke that sometimes by the time church was over, we needed the sacrament again. Good thoughts MMM…you always say things just right.
Loved this post today.
Today in sacrament meeting our Bishop started the meeting by saying that he felt impressed that our ward members needed to pay more attention to the hymns-particularly the sacrament hymns-that we sing every week in church. He mentioned that they have become so familiar that we have a tendency to go on “autopilot” so to speak and that we are missing out. So, instead of having our “normal” opening hymn, sacrament hymn, and closing hymn today the meeting went as follows:
We had an opening hymn (#302), the sacrament hymn (#182 We’ll Sing All Hail to Jesus’ Name), then the first speaker gave a talk using the sacrament hymn as her topic. She was followed by the second speaker who used hymn #193 (I Stand All Amazed) as her topic, and then the congregation sang that hymn. She was followed by a third speaker who used hymn #169 (As Now We Take the Sacrament) as her topic and then the congregation sang that hymn. The closing speaker spoke about hymn #174 (While of These Emblems We Partake) and then the congregation sang that as our closing hymn. So, in total we heard about, contemplated, and sang four “sacrament” hymns during our meeting today. It was a very spiritual reminder about the power of the hymns and how we should approach the most important thing we do every Sunday.
I never appreciated the sacrament until I was diagnosed with celiac and needed to bring my own “bread” (more often cracker). After one too many Sundays of the young men contaminating it so i couldn’t take it and the embarrassing but well meaning announcement my husband made during 5th Sunday opening exercises about why contamination matters I had my own little melt down. I not only bring our sacrament but at given week have to pray that those responsible will remember how to keep it safe. There is not much more that puts me over the edge than barely managing to get my family to church (just to take the sacrament) than to have it passed to me and seeing that if I take it I will get sick. I’m invested in it now.
A young man in our ward has celiac and diabetes, so the ward as a whole just takes gluten-free bread for the sacrament. It might be worth seeing if an arrangement can be made to meet your health needs.
Thanks for the idea. There would still be contamination issues with the trays being used by other wards and the cost would add up. We are good with our bagged sacrament.
We bring it in a snack sized zip lock and they break and bless it through the bag so no one touches it. Works well.
I would add, be on time to Sacrament Meeting! Consider it an appointment with the Savior. If you actually had that appointment, would you be late?
AuntSue
Thank you for this important reminder. I know that reading the scripthures Saturday night, singing the Sacrament hymn, pondering and re-covenanting during the Sacrament are really important to me and my own spirituality. I always want those clean gym clothes. It doesn’t feel right when I miss taking the Sacrament.
Excellent post MMM. I think sometimes we get so caught up in those things that temporarily seem more important that we forget to make time for the things that truly are, like the Sacrament, or attending the Temple, studying our scriptures, and taking time to pray and to fast when needed.
Thanks for the gentle reminder to keep ourselves “clean and unspotted” and to avoid becoming “ripe in iniquity.”