I gave a talk in Sacrament meeting today, so here it is:
My topic is “Of Souls, Symbols and Sacraments” a talk given by Elder Holland in 1988 while he was President of BYU. One of the things that stood out to me the most in preparing my talk was timelessness of his words.
Elder Holland said, “Human intimacy is as sacred a topic as any I know, “ and I echo his words in asking “for your faith, prayers and respect while addressing this sacred topic.”
He said then, and it is just as true now, that although “this may seem like a topic addressed too frequently at this time in [our lives, we] may not be hearing it enough. All of the prophets past and present have spoken on it” and will continue to speak on this sacred topic.
Elder Holland tried to do more than list the do’s and don’t’s as WHY? He used this opportunity to explain why human intimacy is such a “significant matter in God’s eyes.”
He began teaching the doctrinal significance by quoting “the first four lines of [Robert] Frost’s “Fire and Ice”
“Some say the world will end in fire,/Some say in ice./From what I’ve tasted of desire/I hold with those who favor fire.”
“Why is [the] matter of sexual relationships so severe that fire is almost always the metaphor, with passion pictured vividly in flames? [Why is] sexual transgression ‘an abomination in the sight of the Lord; yea, most abominable above all sins save it be the shedding of innocent blood or denying the Holy Ghost’"
“Setting aside sins against the Holy Ghost for a moment as a special category unto themselves, it is LDS doctrine that sexual transgression is second only to murder in the Lord's list of life's most serious sins. By assigning such rank to a physical appetite so conspicuously evident in all of us, [God is] commenting about the very plan of life itself. Clearly His greatest concerns regarding mortality are how one gets into this world and how one gets out of it. These two most important issues are the two issues that he as our Creator and Father and Guide wishes most to reserve to himself.”
“As for the taking of life, we are generally quite responsible.” Most people don’t play Russian roulette, and those who do “would be stupid to sigh, ‘oh good, we didn’t go all the way…The seriousness of that does not often have to be spelled out, and not many sermons need to be devoted to it.”
“But in the significance of giving life, some of us are not so responsible.”
“No murder here, well, maybe not, But sexual transgression? ‘He that doeth it destroyeth his own soul.’ Sounds near fatal to me.”
Elder Holland continues “with a desire to prevent such painful moments, [and] to avoid the ‘inexpressible horror’ of standing in the presence of God unworthily” by giving 3 reasons why sexual transgression is such a big deal.
First we must simply understand “one of the ‘plain and precious’ truths restored to this dispensation is that ‘the spirit and body are the soul of man” as taught by D&C 88:15. “A body is the great prize of mortal life.”
Elder Holland explains, “the purchase price for our fullness of joy…is the pure and innocent blood of the Savior of this world. We cannot then say in ignorance or defiance, ‘well, it is my life,’ or worse yet, ‘it is my body,’ IT IS NOT. ‘Ye are not your own,’ Paul said, ‘ye are bought with a price.’ So, partly in answer to the question, ‘why does God care so much about sexual transgression?’ is because the precious gift offered by and through his Only Begotten Son to redeem the souls—spirits and bodies—and restore the very seeds of our eternal lives.”
Second, he said that, “human intimacy is a sacred physical union ordained of God for a married couple… [And] is—or certainly was ordained to be—a symbol of total union: union of their hearts, their hopes, their lives, their love, their family, their future, their everything…such a total, virtually unbreakable union, such an unyielding commitment between a man and a woman, can only come with the proximity and permanence afforded in a marriage covenant, with the union of all that they possess--their very hearts and minds, all their days and all their dreams.”
It is in the act of ultimate physical sacrifice that we most nearly fulfill the commandment of the Lord given to Adam and Eve, living symbols for all married couples, when he invited them to cleave unto one another only, and thus become ‘one flesh’…That commandment cannot be fulfilled, and that symbolism of ‘one flesh’ cannot be preserved, until we are truly one--united, bound, linked, tied, welded, sealed, married.”
We must wait, we must wait until we can give everything, and we cannot give everything until we are at least legally, and, for Latter-day Saint purposes, eternally pronounced as one. Elder Holland said, “to give only part of that which cannot be followed with the gift of your whole heart and your whole life and your whole self is its own form of emotional Russian roulette,”
On that note, he also said, quote, “Don't be deceived and don't be destroyed. Unless such fire is controlled, your clothes and your future will be burned. And your world, short of painful and perfect repentance, will go up in flames. I give that to you on good word--I give it to you on God's word.” End quote.
The 3rd reason Elder Holland gives is that, “Sexual intimacy is not only a symbolic union between a man and a woman…but it is also symbolic of a union between mortals and deity, between otherwise ordinary and fallible humans uniting for a rare and special moment with God himself and all the powers by which he gives life in this wide universe of ours.” It is a sacrament, a very special kind of symbol, and, according to Elder Holland, “a sacrament could be any one of a number of gestures or acts or ordinances that unite us with God and his limitless powers…such moments when we formally take the hand of God and feel his divine power. These are moments when we quite literally unite our will with God's will, our spirit with his spirit, where communion through the veil becomes very real. At such moments we not only acknowledge his divinity, but we quite literally take something of that divinity to ourselves.”
Not only is human intimacy a holy sacrament, but Elder Holland knows, “of virtually no other divine privilege so routinely given to us all--women or men, ordained or unordained, Latter-day Saint or non-Latter-day Saint--than the miraculous and majestic power of transmitting life, the unspeakable, unfathomable, unbroken power of procreation…nothing so earth-shatteringly powerful and yet so universally and unstintingly given to us as the God-given power available in every one of us from our early teen years on to create a human body, that wonder of all wonders, a genetically and spiritually unique being never seen before in the history of the world and never to be duplicated again in all the ages of eternity--a child, your child—with…a future of unspeakable grandeur.”
Starting as a teenager, we each carry “the eternally transmitted seeds of life to grant someone else her second estate, someone else his next level of development in the divine plan of salvation” and we do so virtually every minute of our waking and sleeping lives for decades after. “No power, priesthood or otherwise, is given by God so universally to so many with virtually no control over its use except self-control… and you will never be more like God at any other time in this life than when you are expressing that particular power.
“Of all the titles he has chosen for himself, Father is the one he declares, and Creation is his watchword--especially human creation, creation in his image. His glory isn't a mountain, as stunning as mountains are. It isn't in sea or sky or snow or sunrise, as beautiful as they all are. It isn't in art or technology, be that a concerto or computer. No, his glory--and his grief--is in his children. You and I, we are his prized possessions, and we are the earthly evidence, however inadequate, of what he truly is.”
“God's trust in us to respect this future-forming gift is awesomely staggering…with all our weaknesses and imperfections, we carry this procreative power that makes us very much like God in at least one grand and majestic way.”
Human intimacy is “so right and rewarding and stunningly beautiful when it is within marriage and approved of God (not just "good" but "very good," [as] declared to Adam and Eve), and so blasphemously wrong—like unto murder—when it is outside such a covenant.”
Elder Holland quoted James E. Talmage who said, “It has been declared in the solemn word of revelation, that the spirit and the body constitute the soul of man; and, therefore, we should look upon this body as something that shall endure in the resurrected state, beyond the grave, something to be kept pure and holy. Be not afraid of soiling its hands; be not afraid of scars that may come to it if won in earnest effort, or [won] in honest fight, but beware of scars that disfigure, that have come to you in places where you ought not have gone, that have befallen you in unworthy undertakings [pursued where you ought not have been]; beware of the wounds of battles in which you have been fighting on the wrong side.”
Just as Elder Holland, “I love you for wanting to be on the right side of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and I [as he] express my pride in and appreciation for your faithfulness.”
I would like to add my testimony to his, “If some few of you are feeling the "scars . . . that have come to you in places where you ought not have gone," I wish to extend to you the special peace and promise available through the atoning sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. I testify of his love [of each of us] and of the restored gospel principles and ordinances which make that love available to us with all their cleansing and healing power…including complete and redeeming repentance, which are only fully realized in this the true and living church of the true and living God.”
I know the Church is true and I am grateful for this opportunity to speak and learn for myself these truths. I know that everything said by Elder Holland is true, and I recommend reading his complete talk. I know that he is called as an Apostle of God and he has the authority and responsibility to help us come closer to our Father in Heaven and his Son, Jesus Christ. Elder Holland has keys given to him by the laying on of hands, and is under the direction of President Monson, the living prophet today. I know that President Monson is called to lead the Church at this time, and he is also responsible of preparing us for the Second coming of Christ.
I know the Bible and Book of Mormon testify of Christ, and each can bring great comfort and strength in a time of need. I know that Heavenly Father loves each of us, and he wants us to come unto him and fully repent if we are struggling. I’m grateful for this knowledge and strength, and I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
