The following is a sacrament meeting talk I gave today at my ward in Maryland. Some people said they wanted to read it, so I thought I would put it on the blog, both for them and for my friends in other parts of the country. If some of these Old Testament quotations don't seem familiar, it is because I translated most of them myself (the Amos quotation is part from Hebrew and part from the Greek translation of the Old Testament, since this is probably the older version of the verse.)
In 1952, a man named Malcolm X burst forth onto an unsuspecting United States. He quickly rose through the ranks of a vitriolically racist organization called the Nation of Islam, and became a leading figure in the civil rights movement in the United States. He believed that racial differences were completely irreconcilable, and that people of different races could never get along. He preached this gospel of hatred for many years, until something changed his mind.
In April of 1964, Malcolm decided to take the “Islam” part of the name of his organization seriously and perform a pilgrimage to Mecca, called the Hajj. Every Muslim (who is able to do so) goes on the hajj at least once in their lives, and Malcom flew to Saudi Arabia to make the trip. But while he was there, he had an experience that he did not expect. As he approached Mecca he began to see huge throngs of people performing the rituals of the hajj. But as he got nearer and saw their faces, he realized something that changed his life. Rather than seeing mostly Africans in Mecca, which is apparently what he expected, he saw south-east Asians from Indonesia, light-skinned Europeans from the Balkans, Central Asians from Kazakstan and Uzbekistan, Indians, Anglo-Saxons, Arabs, and people from places he couldn’t even identify, all dressed in white, performing the same rituals to worship the God they all held in common.
He later said, "During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug)-while praying to the same God-with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions and in the deeds of the 'white' Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan, and Ghana."
Through his experience on the Hajj, Malcolm had come to learn a great truth: everyone is equal in the sight of God, and no one who comes to worship Him should feel like they are not welcome.
I have often had, in our own temples, an experience similar to Malcolm’s experience on the Hajj. I have walked into the temple dressed in white, and have looked around and seen people of all races, cultures, classes, political parties, and backgrounds. I have sat between a multi-millionaire businessman, and an agricultural day-laborer, and have realized that God loves us all as His children. There is no fast-lane through the temple for those that can pay, or a slow-lane for those in poverty. All saints come to the temple, dressed in the same white clothes to perform the same ordinances to the same God in the same way.
To me, this teaches us all an important truth that I want to address today. That truth is a simple one: you are welcome here.
Don’t speak English very well? That’s ok. You’re welcome here.
Don’t know the gospel very well? That’s ok. You’re welcome here.
Not sure whether you believe or not? That’s ok. You’re welcome here.
Your ancestors aren’t anglo-saxons or Scandinavians who crossed the plains with Brigham Young? That’s ok. You’re welcome here.
You’re more liberal than everyone else? That’s just fine. You’re welcome here.
More conservative than everyone else? No problem. You’re welcome here, too.
God doesn’t love you any more or less than anyone else because of your dress size, your bank account balance or how many books you’ve read this year. He just loves you and wants you to gather with His saints.
“But,” I can hear some of you saying in your heads, “How can that be true? Doesn’t God have a chosen people? Didn’t He choose the Israelites? So doesn’t God play favorites after all?”
The answer to this question, surprising as it may seem, is actually, “No.” Is it true that God has a chosen people? Absolutely. But we have to remember why he picked a chosen people in the first place. In the beginning, Adam and Eve made covenants with God, and all humanity was meant to be the chosen people. But mankind messed up, so God wiped them out and started over again with the seed of Noah, which includes everyone currently living on the earth. So, once again, it is clear that God wanted all mankind to be the chosen people.
But then people messed up again, and built the tower of Babel, so God finally scattered the people and changed their languages. But then what was He supposed to do? He wanted all mankind to be his covenant people, but now they were scattered. So He chose one man, Abraham, and covenanted with him, as recorded in Abraham 2:9-11: “as many as receive this Gospel shall be called after thy name, and shall be accounted thy seed, ... and in thee ... shall all the families of the earth be blessed, even with the blessings of the Gospel.”
So did God select Abraham and his seed as the chosen people? Yes, but He did this so that literally everyone in the world could become the seed of Abraham and become part of the chosen people if they wanted to. Nephi, when talking to his brothers, brought up the conquest of Canaan by Joshua and then said,
“And now, do ye suppose that the children of this land, who were in the land of promise, who were driven out by our fathers, do ye suppose that they were righteous? Behold, I say unto you, Nay.
Do ye suppose that our fathers would have been more choice than they if they had been righteous? I say unto you, Nay.
Behold, the Lord esteemeth all flesh in one; he that is righteous is favored of God.”
Let me read that one more time: He that is righteous is favored of God. Period. If you are trying to keep the commandments, you are righteous and therefore favored of God.
Then, just to drive home the point, Nephi quotes from the hymnal of a religion called Zoroastrianism from what is today Iran:
“Behold, the Lord hath created the earth that it should be inhabited; and he hath created his children that they should possess it.”
In other words, he seems to be implying, even someone from far-off Iran could be favored of God if he kept the commandments. He then clarified, “And he loveth those who will have him to be their God. Behold, he loved our fathers, and he covenanted with them, yea, even Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (1 Nephi 17:32–40).
The prophet Amos in the Old Testament is quite clear about God’s relationship with the so-called “chosen people”: “‘Aren’t you like the Sudanese to me, Children of Israel?’ God says. ‘Didn’t I bring Israel up out of Egypt, like I brought the Philistines from Crete and the Syrians from Persia? ... All the sinners of my people will die by the sword. ... In that day will I raise up the fallen tent of David... so that the rest of mankind might seek the Lord, and all the heathen will be called by my name” (Amos 9:7-15).
What God is saying through Amos is: “OK. I brought Israel up out of Egypt, and you think this makes Israel special somehow? I brought lots of peoples into the land they currently occupy. I will save those that listen to me, and allow those that don’t to be destroyed, and I will bring all mankind together to seek the Lord, and call them all by my name.”
“He that is righteous is favored of God.”
To quote Isaiah 2:2: “And it will happen someday, when the mountain of the Lord’s house will be established in the top of the mountains and made higher than the hills, that all the gentiles will flow unto it.”
If these scriptures are any indication, God doesn’t play favorites after all does He? He wants everyone in the world to come together and worship with the saints. We are bound to Him through covenants, not through ethnicity, not through culture, not through language, and not through any other worldly designation that people can concoct.
God’s new “chosen people” are the people that choose Him.
“And He loveth those who will have Him to be their God.”
So please, brothers and sisters, never think that you don’t belong here. If you have made covenants with God through baptism, or even have a vague inkling that you might want to make covenants with God someday, you belong here with the saints.
Isaiah 56 says, don’t “let the son of the stranger, that hath joined himself to the Lord, speak, saying, The Lord hath utterly separated me from his people ... For thus saith the Lord unto those that ... take hold of my covenant; Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a hand and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off. Also the sons of the stranger, that join themselves to the Lord, to serve him, ... every one that ... taketh hold of my covenant; Even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer ... for mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all people.”
Now, brothers and sisters, I understand that this doesn’t make everything all better. I understand that knowing this may not make you feel any less ostracized or afraid or alone. Sometimes it is easy to feel like a stranger even when you are surrounded by people. Just know that God knows that, and gave us all a commandment just for people who are feeling the way you are feeling right now: Exodus 23:9 commands: “You shall not oppress a stranger because you know the heart of a stranger, because you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Leviticus 19:34 emphasizes: “The stranger that lives among you shall be to you like one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”
Although we rarely think about it in these terms, this is one reason why the sacrament is so important. The sacrament narrows the distance between each other and between us and God. This was driven home to me a few years ago by an experience I had in church. I was sitting there, taking the sacrament, when a very small child sitting next to me grabbed the largest piece of bread on the entire tray. She then proceeded to slowly break pieces off of this big piece with her other hand, slowly savoring the sacrament bread, bite by bite. And as I watched her, it occurred to me that I had been missing something about the sacrament all these years. It was a meal. It was a sacred meal, not unlike the sacred meals that we find throughout the Old Testament, in which people were supposed to sit down and symbolically share a meal with God. In the ancient world, it was during these sacred meals that the distance between God and humanity was thought to shrink to insignificance, and it was in these moments that people could have an intimate, one-on-one experience with the divine. That is what the sacrament is supposed to be.
In 1 Corinthians 11, people have lost sight of this, and Paul has to remind the Corinthian saints of what the sacrament is really about: sharing a meal with God. Christ was the one who instituted the sacrament, and in that first sacrament, people were sharing a meal with Jesus Christ, God the Son. Christ was accused of eating with sinners throughout his life, and in instituting the sacrament, Christ made sure He would share a meal with sinners, you and me, every week until the end of time. Christ is encouraging us all to sit at the table with Him, to eliminate the distance the separates us from the Divine, and feel of His love for all of us.
Brothers and sisters, God loves you all. You are all His children, and you belong here.
