Of Life and the Church of Christ

This past Sunday I was reminded, as I am often reminded, of one of the distinguishing features of the church of Jesus Christ:  it is alive.  That characteristic powerfully impressed me from my first attendance at a meeting of the church, when I was thirteen.  No more than 100 members, gathered in the rented second floor of a Grange Hall in a western New York village, hymns sung accompanied by a volunteer pianist on a beat up honky-tonk piano, sermons provided from the rank and file of the membership, Sunday School taught in a kitchen and class members sitting on a few folding chairs arranged around the cooking stove—all was alive and vibrant.  That same spiritual life was present when as a missionary in Spain we met with fewer than a dozen people in a swept-out garage.  And it was present when I joined thousands in a meeting at the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City for the church’s annual June youth conference.  I have found it wherever I have gathered with the members of Christ’s church. 

In each and every case, the building contributed more or less to comfort but had little to do with the sense of the church being alive.  In my childhood I had been a frequent attendee at the meetings of Protestant churches in pleasant and neat but not ostentatious surroundings, and I have since visited some of the most magnificent cathedrals of the world.  But I sensed something palpably different and alive, noticeable even to a young teenager, when I first set foot in Christ’s church, and each time since. 

I conclude that the life comes from Jesus Christ, through the presence of the Holy Spirit, flowing through those gathered in His name at His call.  It is as the Savior promised to His saints, “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Matthew 18:20)  The Savior explained to the Sadducees anciently, who had the form of worship without its life, “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” (Matthew 22:32)  The things I had been taught from the scriptures, revered as dead relics in an old museum in the other churches I had known, came to life in the church of Christ.

Unable to articulate precisely what he was seeking—other than the truth—the fourteen-year old Joseph Smith learned from God Himself in 1820 what was missing in the churches of his day, what held Joseph back from joining with any of them even after persistent earnest inquiries.  Said the Lord to Joseph, in answer to his simple prayer, “they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.” (Joseph Smith History, verse 19)

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, just as the church of Christ of the saints in ancient days, is full of life, it is all about life and the overcoming of death.  Its victory over death is not just a promise for the future, beyond this world of mortality.  It brings life from the eternal worlds and extends it among men and women today, in this world where temporary things would otherwise seem to prevail. 

The Church reveres the prophets and apostles of antiquity and treasures their testimony, but it is led—as Christ’s living church always has been—by living apostles and prophets who receive direct revelation pertinent to conditions and needs in our day.  Along with the prophets come scriptures, as we write down the inspired words of the apostles and prophets.  With roots firmly planted in the ancient scriptures of the Holy Bible and The Book of Mormon, the tree of revelation has not withered or died but continues growing in Christ’s modern church, providing divine guidance to a world that never needed it more.

There are no crucifixes to be found in the modern church of Christ, not because the Church does not recognize the infinite atonement of the Savior, but because that atonement was fulfilled by the resurrection, the rising of the living Christ from the tomb, conquering mortality.  It is toward the living Christ that the saints of God focus their attention, not to the instrument of His torture and very real but very temporary death.

All of the ordinances and sacraments of Christ’s church are founded on Christ’s promise, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” (Matthew 10:10)  In baptism, the new Christian rises up out of the water to newness of life, and the gift of the Holy Ghost is bestowed by the laying on of hands to bring about a spiritual rebirth, in both cases death overcome.   The sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, celebrated each Sunday in the church, points to Christ’s defeat of sin and death, and His victory over mortality.  Christ emphasized this when as the risen Messiah He presented the sacramental bread to the ancient Americans with the commandment to partake of the bread, “in remembrance of my body, which I have shown unto you” (3 Nephi 18:7), his very real and immortal, resurrected body as much as His body that was torn and killed on the cross. 

The highest ordinance that God offers to His children is marriage for time and eternity, whereby man and woman are united in a family to last forever, without end.  In those families, children are welcome and encouraged and seen as the glory of their parents. Genealogical records are sought out and preserved, as the promise of life and family connections extends forever back and continues forever onward.  No one is to be forgotten, because the promise of eternal life extends to all. 

Death is very real, but in the church of Jesus Christ death is no mystery, through Christ it has lost its sting.   After all, mortality is the exception in a universe where the eternity of life prevails.