Beggars, Sheep/Lambs and Atonement

Rather than write this as a comment in the post about church updates, I want to describe church today in a separate post – to make the point my Sunday School and Priesthood classes discussed today. It was one of the best two hours I’ve ever had in church during those two meetings (back-to-back), and the fact that the two lessons weren’t coordinated made it that much more meaningful for me.

In Sunday School, the Gospel Doctrine lesson focused on Mosiah 4 & 5. Our teacher is a wonderful man – a former Bishop who is the antithesis to the kind of Bishop about whom people complain. He is short, bearded, intellectually inclined, a bit idiosyncratic in his mannerisms, etc. He brings a level of scholarly understanding and insight into each lesson that is refreshing, but he always focuses on the spiritual message first and foremost.

I want to highlight just a few things from the way he presented the lesson and what the class members said:

1) He talked about the difference between receiving a remission of sins and retaining a remission of sins. The analogy that I liked the best was two-fold: a) that it’s not enough to wash a shirt once and then wear it every day for years without washing it again; b) that at some point we need to move from being disciples to being children – from receiving to sharing – from following to becoming.

2) The pattern outlined in King Benjamin’s sermon is that we have to change our thoughts before we can change our actions – and this is true especially about how we interact with the poor and needy. Until we think about them differently, we won’t treat them differently. Until we see them as our equals in every way that matters to God, we won’t treat their concerns as if they were ours. Until we quit placing them into a different caste than the one in which we place ourselves (not his word, but his meaning), we will continue to ignore them and perpetuate the condemnation that King Benjamin describes.

3) This is one of the hardest things to change about our nature, since we justify not caring for the poor and needy like we should based on making the argument much more complex than it is. We live lives of relative luxury, and we tend to avoid looking critically at how much we spend on frivolous and/or non-essential things that could go to help the poor. Probably every one of us could live more frugally and help the poor and needy more than we do – but we create elaborate justifications for why we don’t do that. (desire for security, the “need” to get out once in a while and just enjoy the finer things in life, our giving to organized charities, the payment of fast offerings, etc.) One woman said that she was told it’s OK not to give money to beggars as long as she is helping the poor by paying fast offerings, and man mentioned immediately that fast offerings help the LDS poor (and a few non-LDS poor) but don’t do a thing for the common beggar who is the focus of King Benjamin’s sermon.

4) It is up to us as individuals to determine what helping the poor and needy “in wisdom and order” means in our own lives – but that we must tackle this issue head-on and honestly, without simple, generalized justifications, to follow what King Benjamin taught in that sermon.

5) Finally, we talked about “atonement” as being more than just individuals being / becoming like God. We talked about how this sermon focuses on how the only way to “apply the atonement” in our lives is to act in the place of Jesus and work to have our community (our entire sphere of influence) become more united as the family of God. We talked about how we don’t understand and participate in the atonement of Jesus Christ unless we quit judging others and serve them as if they were ourselves and our loved ones.

Our High Priests Group lesson was focused on Jesus’ instruction to “Feed my lambs/sheep” – and I loved how the focus ended up being on those outside the traditional flock. I made the point that the “sheep and lambs” Jesus meant almost had to be the people who ended up following him – the people among whom he spent most of his time and effort during his ministry – the people for whom nobody else was caring – the lost, forgotten, rejected and marginalized. He wasn’t talking originally about a generic flock of generic sheep; rather, I believe he was talking about “my lambs” and “my sheep” who literally were following him around as he preached – who literally looked to him as their shepherd. Without him there to continue to lead them, they faced the very real possibility that they would fade back into their former lives of poverty, societal insignificance, marginalization and despair.

Our HPGL and I talked briefly after the meeting about how we as a group and ward can focus more purposefully and intentionally on identifying that group of people in our own area – the people whom Jesus would be serving if he were here to repeat his mortal ministry. I mentioned that the early Mormon saints would have been (and were) among those people in the early decades of our church’s existence, but that we (as American Mormons) aren’t anymore. I mentioned that I believe the people Jesus would be serving in our day and area would be the homeless, the abused, the addicted, the homosexual (just because of how they are treated by so many in society), etc. It was wonderful to see him nod his head and say that the new group leadership has been talking about the same general theme for their presidency – reaching out to the rejected and serving with no thought or concern about conversion – simply to love and serve the unloved and ignored.

I have great hope right now that our group and ward can make a real difference in this area, and I just wanted to share a wonderful experience today with everyone here. I want to add that, while I am not responsible for either lesson or the focus of our new HPGL, I know he has listened to my comments over the past two months and talked with me afterward a number of times about what I meant. We might not be able to change much, but we can influence as much as is possible – and sometimes a quiet comment can spark things that we can’t anticipate.