Brett never types up his talks when he speaks in church, but he felt that this was such an important topic that he wanted to be sure he didn't miss anything, so he typed it up. It's nice to have a record of it. He gave this talk at our Easter Sunday program last week.:
Of all the miracles the Savior wrought, the single most import event was His own triumphant victory over death through the power of the resurrection. The suffering and agony of Gethsemane, the lonely crushing walk to Calvary and the excruciating pain both physical and spiritual on Golgotha’s hill would have been of no worth to you or me if there was no veracity to the angelic declaration to Mary: “He is not here, for he is risen” (Matt 28:6, Luke 24:6). That event is how the Master gained the title “author and finisher of our faith”. That title, like so many attributed to Him, teaches and testifies to us of His resurrection. I pray for the faith of Elisha - who when surrounded by the Syrian army - prayed for his wavering servant “Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see” (2 Kings 6:17) that for a few moments this morning the sleepy eyes of our understanding will crack open just long enough to help us see the faith we already have in Jesus the Christ, our Author and Finisher.
He is the Author of our faith
An author is an originator or creator. In one sense, Christ authors our faith by inspiring us to do as He did and love one another. It is easy to see how millions of people through multiple millennia have used the Savior’s teachings to inspire service, charity and love to those around them. We don’t even have to go that far back, as I look at you I see disciples of Christ who write messages, make phone calls, cook meals and spend hours in secret service. All that is inspired by Him, and though you may go to great lengths to keep your efforts hidden from one another with secret Santa’s and late night gift drop ding and ditches, I bare witness by the Holy Ghost that all these acts are known to Him, and Heaven is grateful for your tireless service. And yet in a much more basic sense than all this, Jesus literally is the author, originator or creator of our first seeds of faith long before He or we came to earth.
We lived with our loving Heavenly Parents before our mortal birth. In my mind’s eye I imagine it was before their throne that we met to be taught the path each of us must walk to become like our Heavenly Father. I read Facebook, I see how hard it is for you (and myself) to let our kids just leave on the bus for kindergarten or wave goodbye to our parents when we start our first day of college or embark on a few very short years of mission service and say goodbye to loved ones. Oh how that must have felt like such an impossible task our Father in heaven was asking us to do. To leave That home, to leave Their presence, to take on ourselves a mortal body and all it’s susceptibilities and potential for corruption; Someone had to have given us the strength to do that. I can imagine my own very black and white engineering mind racing through maths and statistics desperately trying to calculate some hopeful chance that I alongside you might make it back to our Father. And I can almost taste the defeat when we realized that this mortal experience would come to an end through death, how could that ever be overcome? And then, I imagine the quiet reverence and swelling hope we all must have felt as our Elder Brother Jehovah - perhaps catching the flash of despair in our eyes - answered the Father’s call and said “Here am I, send me.” (Isaiah 6:8, Abraham 3:27) And our faith grew!
The Lord authored our faith in that pre-mortal realm, there could be mercy bestowed and there was sure victory to be had over death. While the veil blocks out much of our memory of our pre-mortal courses and day to day life, the scriptures teach us that we joyfully accepted the Savior’s role in our Father’s plan and we exhibited great faith in the Lord’s ability to overcome death through resurrection. We know this from Abraham that “they who keep their first estate shall be added upon” (Abraham 3: 26). To keep our first estate means that we chose to put our faith in Christ and His resurrection. The Prophet Joseph Smith declared: “The fundamental principles of our religion are the testimony of the Apostles and Prophets, concerning Jesus Christ, that He died, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven; and all other things which pertain to our religion are only appendages to it” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, sel. Joseph Fielding Smith [1938], 121). To have our first estate added upon means at least these two things:
- We were allowed to continue progressing to become like our Father by being born and living a mortal life to be tested “to see if [we] will do all things whatsoever the Lord [our] God shall command [us].” (Abraham 3:25)
- The Savior’s resurrection would open a universal and literal resurrection for us all.
My friends, this is the reality, and it is a far cry from the scenes depicted in soap operas, sit-coms and so-called reality shows. We must remember that it is in Christ that we once placed our faith, that is the great secret the adversary does not want us to remember. Like an airport terminal there are many options we encounter along the straight and narrow path which appear to offer faster travel arrangements. When we aren’t careful, we can quickly be led on the moving sidewalk of pride or the chauffered cart of skepticism to fictitious flights which inevitably deviate from our intended destination - landing us in great and spacious time-shares with our luggage erroneously shipped to someplace lone and dreary. True reality is and always will be that we are here because we once sustained Him and recognized that the “He only could unlock the gate of heaven and let us in” (Hymn 194, There is a Green Hill Far Away). When we begin to doubt our faith in this life, let us think back to those pre-mortal times and ask God for remembrance of the faith in Christ and His resurrection that is already within us, thus giving ourselves the most important and true “reality-check” available.
He is the Finisher of our faith
The term finisher has many interesting uses. In manufacturing it refers to the final machine or person who completes the manufacturing process. In sports it refers to one who has completed the event or race. In software development a finisher is a type of engineer who not only writes the program to complete a task but does so with such precision that he’s taken care to handle potential errors and loose ends. In agriculture a finisher is an animal that has been fattened, ready for slaughter. Each of these teach us various aspects of the Savior’s role as finisher during his final week in mortality. He is not the finisher of our faith because our faith somehow ends with Him. Instead I believe it’s because through His infinite atonement and resurrection He alone performed the final tasks at the end of a long assembly line of prophets and preparers. He completed His mission perfectly and obediently. He fulfilled with precision exactly what His Father send Him to do, leaving no errors un-handled and no loose ends relative to yours and my salvation. And most poignantly he submitted Himself to his accusers and humbly allowed Himself to be led to the slaughter.
At the evening of what must have been longest day in Christ’s life, He began His descent below all things with hours of suffering and anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane. The Savior Himself testified, “Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit”, “how sore you know not, how exquisite you know not, yea, how hard to bear you know not” (D&C 19: 18, D&C 19:15). Then, in one of the most mocking expressions any man has ever committed, one of Christ’s own friends and ordained apostles betrayed Him into murderous hands with a kiss. But His descent down the staircase of despair had only begun, through an exhausting and sleepless night, the Eternal Judge of us all was dragged from one mocking trial to another. The Prince of Peace was violently spit upon, slapped, and had hairs plucked from his head and beard. Then being brought from prison to the courtyard, Jesus was presented to the people next to Barabbas and the people were asked which of the two should be set free as was custom at the time, The Only Begotten of the Father or Barabbas, a murderer who’s name ironically means son of the father (lowercase son and lowercase father). The crowd clamored for Barabbas’s release and without a hint of disdain the Savior took one more step down this lonely road He had promised you and I He would fully walk. Moments later with Pilate foolishly thinking that he could rid himself of the innocent blood that was about to be spilt by washing his hands in public view, the crowd convicted themselves further with this chilling statement, “His blood be on us, and our children” (Matt 27:25). They were willing to accept the consequences of shedding the innocent blood of the Lamb which blood He was already willing to shed for us all so we could be washed clean.
The King of Kings decended further by having a crown of thorns placed unceremoniously on His head. Despite all this, His greatest pain and trial was yet to come. While hanging on the cross, with all of the spiritual and emotional anguish of the preceding events returning our Savior exclaims, “My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?” (Matt 27:46). I share Elder Jeffery R. Holland's and Elder Richard G. Scott’s view that "a perfect Father did not forsake His Son in that hour. Indeed… the Father may never have been closer to His Son than in these agonizing final moments of suffering.” “His Father recognized that the Savior needed to accomplish the Atonement totally and completely on His own… The Father did not abandon His Son. He made it possible for His perfect Son to win the eternal fruits of the Atonement.” (Jeffery R. Holland, None Were With Him,Richard G. Scott, He Lives All Glory to His Name). He had committed to “[trod] the winepress alone” (Isaiah 63:3) and I testify with absolute surety that He alone “finished [His] preparations unto the children of men” (D&C 19:19) and triumphantly pronounced to His Father and to you and I that “It is finished” (John 19:30).
And so, on the third day, the very first Easter Sunday, Jesus Christ fulfilled all He promised to us and broke the chains of death through the power of the resurrection. “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory” (1 Cor 15:55) “… there is a resurrection, therefore the grave hath no victory, and the sting of death is swallowed up in Christ.” (Most 16:8). With that holy resurrection, Christ became The Everlasting Father of us all and the finisher of our faith. He makes our faith complete, there is no margin of error in His words and His promises. We believed Him and had faith in Him before we came to this earth, and all the Father asks is that we do so again. There is a subtle, beautiful symbolism in the inspired words of the hymn “Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel”. That immovable wheel - death, represented by the stone which covered the Savior’s tomb indeed had angelic shoulders put to it. When I was younger I marveled at the detail and planning put into every moment of the Savior’s mission. The Father even planned out in advance the assignment to send angels to roll back the stone to, as I supposed, let the Savior walk free from the tomb and declare His victory. Only in recent years have I learned and realized that the shoulders put to that wheel were not for Savior’s benefit, but for Mary’s and Peter’s and all who came to see the empty tomb. And we too are invited collectively to join in that work and put our shoulders to the wheel of faith, for the benefit and salvation of our family, our friends, all who will “Come, [and] see the place where the Lord lay” (Matt 28:6).
He lives, all glory to His name
My invitation to us all is to take our seed of faith whatever it’s state may be and nourish it. If there are questions in your mind, wonderful! Go to our Father in prayer and ask him to answer them AND to soften your heart and grant you patience until the answers come. If you struggle to keep any of the commandments, great! You are in the company Paul and Nephi and myself who also struggle. Ask the Lord for a renewal of your faith and press forward. If there are sins or misdeeds that despite your efforts or desires you have been unable to shake free, take heart! It is for that exact purpose that the Lord did all I have testified he did this day.
Brothers and Sisters, there are too many of us who are not being blessed by the temple. I have offered this plea before and I offer it again, whatever your reason, come and let us work together. Everything we do in the temple is a reflection and testimony of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Those two are inseparably connected. I do not know how to say it any plainer than this, there is nothing in life, no amount of money, no habit, no doubt that is worth holding on to so tightly that it keeps us from participating in the temple. The Savior gave His all for us and if we will sincerely and humbly do His will, we can know these things for ourselves. “Oh, dearly, dearly has he loved! And we must love him too, and trust in his redeeming blood, and try his works to do.” (Hymn 194, There is a Green Hill Far Away) In the sacred name of our Savior, Jesus Christ, amen.
