Sacrament

I noticed today something about the way the sacrament is prepared and administered. 

It has always seemed very pragmatic that the bread is passed first, since the priests have time to break the bread while the congregation sings. 

But thinking about it today I remembered helping set up the sacrament, and the water actually takes a lot more effort to prepare but it is all done in advance. 

In my mind, I tend to think about the bread as the physical and the water as the spiritual. So playing on that metaphor, it seems that spiritual preparation takes more time and work than physical preparation. The physical demands we have, with a minimum of advance planning, can largely be dealt with in the moment. (Singing a hymn might help) However, once those efforts are exhausted, you can 'uncover' what appears to be a backup supply of spiritual strength. But only if you have put in sufficient effort in beforehand. 

-Update April 2022-

I forgot I had written that (not surprising, it was 2014).  My recent 'epiphany' about the sacrament was different.

I was thinking about it in a more Jordan Peterson-esque way.  We don't believe that the bread and water are literally the body of Christ, so what is it that we are doing?    

Maybe we are ritualistically trying to take a piece of God into us.  That seems to make sense.  

So what about the bread and water.  The bread.. we have to chew on it a little.  We need to do some work to digest it and to extract the nutrients or value from it.  That's the body.  His body. That's the things he did as recorded in the scriptures and the things we should do to try to be like Him.

The water, on the other hand, flows into us.  Nature itself (via osmosis) will help to fill and rejuvenate us and to quench our thirst.  That's the spirit.  There isn't specific work, we just have to be open to it and allow it to flow into us.

What kind of a prophet

  I think the details of the restoration would have been significantly different if Joseph Smith had been born in a different place (and/or time).  Joseph Smith was primed to believe in seer stones, divining rods, ancient buried treasure, and dramatic manifestations of the spirit.  That was how he recognized the supernatural and the divine, and that’s (largely) the way the restoration unfolded.  

But I don’t think that’s how the restoration had to unfold.  I think God met him where he was, instead of bringing him to some universal, proper way to find God.  

Moses found God in … unnatural nature?  Burning bushes, pillars of clouds and fire, plagues and manna and parting the Red Sea.  Lamoni and his people found God in communal fainting.  Lehi and Nephi had elaborate visions, but Samuel heard an audible voice that woke him from sleep.  If Joseph Smith was born somewhere else, could the restoration have involved sweat huts and psychedelics?  

That takes my mind to two different places.  First of all, I wonder if we aren’t too homogenous in what the culture of the church recognizes (expects?) as manifestations of the Spirit or ways to find God.  Even things like speaking in tongues, which was a big part of early church history, isn’t really a part of the currently culturally accepted forms of spirituality.  And in a way, that makes sense to me.  I’ve lived essentially my whole life in the cultural headquarters of the church, so I tend to naturally agree with the more subdued, introspective, personal manifestations of the spirit.  Even if I find more dramatic things–like stories of healings– compelling, if I saw someone speaking in tongues, casting out devils, or describing their visions, it would at least give me pause.  

I think that’s probably wrong.  

Especially with the diversity of the current church, I think it is likely that God speaks to his children, and specifically members of the church, in lots of ways that look unfamiliar to me, but very familiar to them.  

The second thing I think about, is the kinds of prophets God puts in charge of his church.  I’ve always sort of thought that prophets are prophets, but now I wonder if there isn’t significantly more to their specific differences.  Elijah seems to have been something like a warrior-prophet.  After calling down fire to prove the superiority of Jehovah versus Ba’al, he killed 450 priests of Ba’al.  That’s not something we’d expect from modern prophets, but maybe that was necessary there and then.  Joseph (of Egypt) and Moses could maybe be described as administrator-prophets, and that was important for God’s people they were called to lead.  Brigham Young was sort of an industrialist-prophet.  We have several examples of king-prophets, and maybe Lehi could be described as a navigator-prophet (which makes the Liahona very apropos).  I’m going to have to think about how to hyphenate all the other prophets as I study about them.  

Which brings me to current church leadership.  Recently we’ve had some diplomat-prophets, and publisher-prophets.  That seems right for growing a global church.  Our current prophet was trained as a doctor, and given the current state of pandemics and opioids and mental health issues we have, a physician-prophet seems…  inspired.  

So then, in the future… Of the longest serving members in the Quorum of the Twelve, we have several doctors and educators, but of course, next up… is the judge.