Holland - I Stand All Amazed

“I Stand All Amazed”

By Jeffrey R. Holland
President of Brigham Young University

From an address given to Salt Lake Temple workers, 24 November 1985.

(Adapted in: Jeffrey R. Holland, “I Stand All Amazed,” Ensign, Aug. 1986, 68)

As a professional educator and one who has had generous opportunities in the church, I am rather used to speaking assignments.  Yet I believe never in my life have I felt so overwhelmed with an invitation as I have with this one this morning.  Among many reasons for that—perhaps chief of which is my own personal sense of inadequacy and unworthiness—are three other very humbling realizations.

First of all, I have been invited by President Brown and his counselors to address the subject of the Savior of the world.  Perhaps no one can feel equal to that task but I know that I do not and cannot.  What he is and what he has done for us and what we may become because of him is greater than the human tongue can tell.  Certainly it is greater than my tongue can tell.

Over the years as a teacher of a great many classes of one kind or another I have always struggled when I’ve come to the subject of the Atonement and majesty of Christ’s mission.  It is a heavy burden to try to describe the highest and holiest life ever lived, a life so pure and a soul so clean that even to approach the subject seems treading on holy ground unworthily.  I assure you that whatever inadequacy I have felt regarding this subject in the past, I feel one hundredfold today.  I ask for your faith and your prayers and your sustaining influence this morning.

Secondly, it is an added challenge to be invited to discuss such a holy subject in such a holy place.  We are taught in the scriptures that Zion is wherever “the pure in heart” are (D&C 97:21).  That allows many people in many lands to have Zions, to enjoy pure and sacred locations.  But I suppose if we were pressed to cast a vote for the holiest place on the face of the earth, the building in which we have gathered may well be considered the most special of all this earth’s structures—a temple, dedicated and consecrated and sanctified to the loftiest of all our early purposes, a temple which both symbolizes and serves as the headquarters of the Church, a temple visited and edified weekly by the Lord’s anointed in their prayerful discussions of their duty to direct the work of the kingdom in this last and complete dispensation, a temple which I recently described to the students of Brigham Young University as the strongest and most permanent symbol of our pioneer heritage and their perseverance, including forty years of labor and near-incomprehensible challenges that were faced in completing this magnificent testimony to the vision of those early saints.  Its granite face, its magnificent lines, and its ascending spires here in the heart of the church have provided hope and strength to all who see it at a distance and even more hope and more strength to those who have been worthy to come inside it.  I am deeply humbled by your invitation to stand in this holy, sacred place, reaping where I have not sown and gathering where I have not planted.

Lastly, perhaps the greatest challenge of all is to address you—arrayed in white outwardly and inwardly, kings and queens of heaven, not arrayed in royal purple nor dazzling with courtly jewels, but dressed in the regal garments of celestial principalities where service is the distinguishing mark of royalty, dressed as the very glorified angels you are who day in and day out, hour in and hour out, from early in the morning until late at night extend the gifts of salvation to the living and to the dead.  I pray to be worthy of your time in this devotional setting, for I consider your callings and your service to be of the highest and purest one human being can render another in this world.  I am deeply humbled not only to be in this place but also to be in your presence.  I pray to be worthy of the honor you and the temple presidency have paid me by this invitation.

One of our favorite hymns begins, “I stand all amazed.” (Hymns, 1985, no. 193.)  In any consideration of Christ’s life, surely there is reason to be amazed in every way. We are amazed at his premortal role as the great Jehovah, agent of his Father, creator of the earth, guardian of the entire family of man.  Following revelatory leadership to Adam and Seth and Noah and Abraham and Melchizedek and the Brother of Jared and Moses and Lehi and all the prophets of old, we are amazed at his own coming to earth and the circumstances surrounding his birth.  We are amazed by his good and humble stepfather and by the virgin—a veritable child herself--who was his earthly mother. We are amazed at the miracle of his conception.  At this season of the year when we have so much and will spend so much more to celebrate it, we are amazed at the poverty of his birth and the loneliness of it, which would only be a prefiguration of all the loneliness to come.

We are amazed that at only twelve years of age he was already about his Father’s business, sitting in the midst of the doctors of the law where “they were hearing him, and asking him questions.” (JST, Luke 2:46.) We are amazed at the formal initiation of his ministry, his baptism and spiritual gifts, and the calling of very ordinary men to stand with him in teaching what would be extraordinary and often very unpopular doctrines.

We are amazed that everywhere he went the forces of evil went before him and that they knew him from the beginning, even if mortals did not. In the same day that some were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?” (John 6:42), the devils were calling out, “Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? [We] know thee who thou art; the Holy One of God” (Luke 4:34).

We stand all amazed as these forces of evil were cast out and defeated, even as the lame were made to walk, the blind to see, the deaf to hear, the infirm to stand.  We are also amazed that the initiative for these miraculous moments was not always with Jesus but often from the hearts of those humble, believing people, as with the Israelite woman who simply said in her heart, “If I may but touch [the hem of] his garment, I [know I] shall be [made] whole” (Matthew 9:21).  Or that faith of a ruler in the synagogue whose deceased daughter Jesus took by the hand and called saying, “Maid arise.  And her spirit came again, and she arose straightway: and he commanded to give her meat.  And her parents were astonished” (Luke 8:54-56).

Indeed we are all astonished--amazed at every movement and moment—as every generation from Adam to the end of the world must be.

But for me there is no greater amazement and no more difficult personal challenge than when, after the anguish in Gethsemane, after the charade before Annas and Caiaphas and the Jewish court, and Pilate’s cowardice, Jesus staggers under his load to the crest of Calvary and says, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).

If ever there is a moment when I indeed stand all amazed, it is here, for this is an amazement of a different kind. So much of the mystery of his power and ministry tear at my mind: the circumstances of his birth, the breadth and variety of his ministry and miracles, the self-summoned power of his resurrection—before all of these I stand amazed and say, “How did he do it?” But here with disciples who slept through his hour of greatest need and abandoned him before the cock could crow three times, here fainting under the weight of his cross and the sins of all mankind which were attached to it, here rent with brutal blows on the piercing spikes in his palms and in his wrists and in his feet—here now the amazement tears not at my mind but at my heart, and I ask not “How did he do it?” but “Why did he do it?” It is here that I examine my life, not against the miraculousness of his, but against the mercifulness of it, and it is here I find how truly short I fall in emulation of the Master.

I cannot speak for you but for me, this is a higher order of amazement and a greater order of magnitude.  I am startled enough by his ability to heal the sick and raise the dead, but I have had something of that experience in a limited way, as virtually all of you have as well. We are lesser vessels and undoubtedly unworthy of the privilege, but we have seen the miracles of the Lord repeated in our own lives and in our own homes and with our own portion of the priesthood. But mercy? Forgiveness? Atonement? Reconciliation? Too often, that is a different matter.

How could he say this at that moment? With all that pain, with blood from every pore, with a plea that this most bitter of all cups might pass, surely he doesn’t need to be thinking of others now, does he? Not every minute all the time, and especially not with this pack of jackals who are laughing and spitting, stripping him of his clothing and his rights and his dignity? Or is this yet one more staggering evidence—amazing evidence yet again--that he really was perfect and intends us to be also? Is it only coincidental—or absolutely intentional—that as something of a last requirement before stating that goal in the Sermon on the Mount he reminds us that you must “love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” (Matthew 5:44-48)

I’d rather raise the dead! I’d rather restore sight and steady a palsied hand. I’d rather do anything than to love my enemies and forgive those who hurt me or my children or my children’s children, and especially those who laugh and delight in the brutality of it.

“And when [Pilate] had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.

“Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall, and gathered unto him the whole band of soldiers.

“And they stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe.

“And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand: and they bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews!

“And they spit upon him, and took the reed, and smote him on the head.

“And after that they had mocked him, they took the robe off from him, and put his own raiment on him, and led him away to crucify him.” (Matthew 27:26-31)

“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do”? Who cares whether or not they know what they are doing! This is cruel and barbaric and insulting injustice to the purest and only perfect life ever lived. Here is the one person in all the world from Adam to this present hour who deserved adoration and respect and admiration and love. He deserved it because “there was no other good enough/To pay the price of sin./He only could unlock the gate/Of heav’n and let us in.” (Hymns, 1985, no. 194.) And this is what he gets for it?

Is there no justice? Shouldn’t he cry out, “Be gone with you!” as he did to those other devils? Shouldn’t he condemn them all and call down the legions of angels that were always waiting at his very command?

Don’t they know that he is doing this for them and if they are not interested or appreciative or grateful, then what reason on earth is there to do it?  Every generation in every dispensation of the world has had its own multitudes crowding around that cross, laughing and jeering, breaking commandments and abusing covenants. It isn’t just a relative handful in the meridian of time who are guilty here.  It is most of the people, most of the places, most of the time, including all of us who should have known better.

What is there that makes him do it, and what lesson is there in it for us? I believe it has something to do with our service in the temple and I must go back in time to make my case.

Following their experience in the Garden of Eden, and their eventual expulsion from it (about which this holy house teaches us so much),

“Adam began to till the earth, and to have dominion over all the beasts of the field, and to eat his bread by the sweat of his brow, as I the Lord had commanded him. And Eve also, his wife, did labor with him. …

“And Adam and Eve, his wife, called upon the name of the Lord, and they heard the voice of the Lord from the way toward the Garden of Eden, speaking unto them, and they saw him not; for they were shut out from his presence.

“And he gave unto them commandments, that they should worship the Lord their God, and should offer the firstlings of their flocks, for an offering unto the Lord. And Adam was obedient unto the commandments of the Lord.

“And after many days an angel of the Lord appeared unto Adam, saying: Why dost thou offer sacrifices unto the Lord? And Adam said unto him: I know not, save the Lord commanded me.

“And then the angel spake, saying: This thing is a similitude of the sacrifice of the Only Begotten of the Father, which is full of grace and truth.

“Wherefore, thou shalt do all that thou doest in the name of the Son, and thou shalt repent and call upon God in the name of the Son forevermore.” (Moses 5:1, 4–8.)

Call upon God for what? What is the nature of this first instruction to the human family? Why are they to call upon God? Is this a social visit? Is it a friendly neighborhood chat with the visiting teachers? No, this is a call for help from the lone and dreary world. This is a call from the brink of despair. “Thou shalt repent and call upon God in the name of the Son forevermore.” This is a call from the personal prison of a sinful heart. It is a call for the forgiveness of sins.

And so the God and Father of us all established with those first parents in the first generation of time certain principles and ordinances fashioned to convey how such forgiveness of sins would come. Along with all else of meaning and substance in our lives, it would come through the sacrifice and example of his Only Begotten Son, who is full of grace and truth.  To serve as a constant reminder of the humiliation and suffering he would pay to ransom us, to serve as a constant reminder that he would open not his mouth and be brought as a lamb to the slaughter (see Mosiah 14:7), to serve as a constant reminder of the meekness and mercy and gentleness—yes, the forgiveness that was to mark every Christian life—for all these reasons and more, those firstborn lambs, clean and unblemished, perfect in every way, were offered on those stone altars year after year and generation after generation, pointing us toward the great Lamb of God, his Only Begotten Son, his Firstborn, perfect and without blemish. And in offering our symbolic but much more modest sacrifice in whatever dispensation we may live, we promise to “always remember him and keep his commandments; … that [we] may always have his Spirit to be with [us].” (D&C 20:77) The symbols of his sacrifice, in Adam’s day or our own, were to help us remember to live peacefully and obediently and mercifully. We were, as a result of these ordinances, to demonstrate the gospel of Jesus Christ in our long-suffering and human kindness one for another, as he demonstrated it for us on that cross.

But it never seemed to have worked that way—at least not often enough. Cain managed to get it wrong instantly.  Quoting the Prophet Joseph Smith,

God … prepared a sacrifice in the gift of His own son who should be sent in due time, to prepare a way, or open a door through which man might enter into the Lord’s presence, whence he had been cast out for disobedience. … By faith in this atonement or plan of redemption, Abel offered to God a sacrifice that was accepted, which was the firstlings of the flock. Cain offered of the fruit of the ground, and was not accepted because he … could not exercise faith contrary to the plan of heaven. It must be shedding the blood of the Only Begotten to atone for man; for this was the plan of redemption; and without the shedding of blood was no remission; and as the sacrifice was instituted for a type, by which man was to discern the great Sacrifice which God had prepared; to offer a sacrifice contrary to that, no faith could be exercised, because redemption was not purchased in that way, nor the power of the atonement instituted after that order. … Certainly, the shedding of the blood of a beast could be beneficial to no man, except it was done in imitation, or as a type, or explanation of what was to be offered through the gift of God Himself; and this performance done with an eye looking forward in faith on the power of that great Sacrifice for a remission of sins.

(Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, sel. Joseph Fielding Smith, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1938, p. 58.)

And so others of us in every age and season, a little Cain-like, would come home fresh from morning oblations to scream at a spouse, devastate a child, kick the dog, or merely to lie a little, cheat a little, and dig a pit for the neighbor. The attention span we’ve shown in relation to our saving ordinances over the dispensations would by comparison make preschoolers look like college graduates. Too often we have forgotten “why” even before the blood was dry on the altar or the trays were returned to the table or the robes of the holy priesthood were folded and put away for yet another session.

Later on Saul, king in Israel, demonstrated the problem yet again.  In explicit contradiction to the Lord’s instructions, he brought back from the Amalekites “the best of the sheep and of the oxen, to sacrifice unto the Lord [his] God.”

Samuel, in utter anguish cries:

“Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.

“For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee from being king.” (1 Samuel 15:15,22-23)

Why is rebellion (or stubbornness or disobedience in our ordinances) like witchcraft? Because they make a statement about our loyalty and our understanding of what God is really like and what he really wants. Saul, who understood the method but not the meaning of his sacrifice, and the Latter-day Saint who faithfully goes to sacrament meeting but is no more merciful or patient or forgiving as a result is precisely the same as the witch and the idolator.  They go through the motions of the ordinances without loyalty to or understanding of the reasons for which these ordinances were established—obedience, gentleness, and loving kindness in the search for forgiveness of their sins.  If Cain or Saul (or the rest of us) can’t remember that, then surely it would be better to offer no sacrifice at all.  Ordinances pursued in error and altered in meaning mark an apostate priesthood and an idolatrous nation. As the Prophet Joseph just taught us, I think we can rest assured that God was not interested in the death of innocent little animals—unless the meaning of those altars truly alters the nature of our lives.

Indeed, at one particularly low point in Israelite history, the Lord cried out to his children:

“I hate, I despise your feast days, and will not smell in your solemn assemblies…

“Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts.

“Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols.

“But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.” (Amos 5:21-24)

And so it was so much of the time until we come to this final parable:

“There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country:

“And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it.

“And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another.

“Again, he sent other servants more than the first: and they did unto them likewise.

“But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son.

“But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance.

“And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him.” (Matt. 21:33–39.)

That is the moment at which we find ourselves on the summit of Golgotha, and it is not a pleasant story. Through patience that seems inordinately generous, the Father and the Son have waited and watched and worked in this vineyard for mercy to run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream. But they have not run.  And now not only have the prophets and faithful few been killed, but now so is to be the son of the Lord of the vineyard.

Now a terrible, incalculable price is being paid, and it exceeds the human heart to tell it.

In the midst of the swearing and the spit, the thorns and the threats, the ridicule and the rending of his garments; added to the crushing weight of his own body straining for support on the very nails that have been driven into his hands and into his feet; with friends in retreat and foes as far as the eye could see, the unexpected happens, worst possible scene in this divine drama unfolds.  The one fear he thought he would never face he now feels.

Perhaps the briefest glimpse is given of the terrible emotions and forces at work here when we read lines intentionally preserved for us in the original Aramaic: “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46.)

There is one thing and one thing alone this Only Begotten Son has been sure of: the love and companionship and unwavering support of his father.

Listen to these lines taken almost at random from the Gospel of John. They are suggestive of a theme that runs throughout that book.

“The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: … The Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth.” (John 5:19–20.)

“I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.” (John 6:38.)

“I am not come of myself, but he that sent me is true, whom ye know not. But I know him.” (John 7:28–29.)

“The Father that sent me beareth witness of me. … If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also.” (John 8:18–19.)

“I and my Father are one.” (John 10:30.)

“He gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak.” (John 12:49.)

“Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.” (John 16:32.)

And then this assertion, perhaps the most painful of all:

“I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me. … He that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him.” (John 8:16, 29.)

That one constant thread of doctrine and belief, the one certainty he had in spite of what might happen among mortal friend and foe: “[My] Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things which please him.”

And now, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

May I share this from Elder Melvin J. Ballard, written many years ago:

I ask you, what father and mother could stand by and listen to the cry of their children in distress … and not render assistance? I have heard of mothers throwing themselves into raging streams when they could not swim a stroke to save their drowning children, [I have heard of fathers] rushing into burning buildings to rescue those whom they loved.

We cannot stand by and listen to those cries without its touching our hearts. … He had the power to save, and He loved His Son, and He could have saved Him. He might have rescued Him from the insult of the crowds. He might have rescued Him when the crown of thorns was placed upon His head. He might have rescued Him when the Son, hanging between two thieves, was mocked with, ‘Save thyself, and come down from the cross. He saved others; himself he cannot save.’ He listened to all this. He saw that Son condemned; He saw Him drag the cross through the streets of Jerusalem and faint under its load. He saw the Son finally upon Calvary; he saw His body stretched out upon the wooden cross; he saw the cruel nails driven through hands and feet, and the blows that broke the skin, tore the flesh, and let out the life’s blood of His [Only Begotten] Son. …

[He] looked on [all that] with great grief and agony over His Beloved [Child], until there seems to have come a moment when even our Savior cried out in despair: ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me.

In that hour I think I can see our dear Father behind the veil looking upon these dying struggles, … His great heart almost breaking for the love that He had for His Son. Oh, in that moment when He might have saved His Son, I thank Him and praise Him that He did not fail us. … I rejoice that He did not interfere, and that His love for us made it possible for Him to endure to look upon the sufferings of His [Only Begotten] and give Him finally to us, our Savior and our Redeemer. Without Him, without His sacrifice, we would have remained, and we would never have come glorified into His presence. … This is what it cost, in part, for our Father in heaven to give the gift of His Son unto men.

He, … our God, is a jealous God—jealous lest we should [ever] ignore and forget and slight His greatest gift unto us”—the life of his Firstborn Son. (Melvin J. Ballard, Crusader for Righteousness, Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1966, pp. 136–38.)

So how do we make sure that we do not invite the wrath of a jealous God?  How do we make certain we never “ignore or slight or forget” his greatest of all gifts unto us?

We do so by showing our desire for a remission of our sins and our eternal gratitude for that most courageous of all prayers, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34.) We do so by joining in the work of forgiving sins, which is so clearly demonstrated hour after hour, day after day, in the work of this temple, from the baptismal font on the back of those twelve oxen deep inside the House of the Lord clear to the veil of the temple, the celestial room, and the Holy of Holies beyond it.

“ ‘Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ,’ [Paul commands us]. (Gal. 6:2) … The law of Christ, which it is our duty to fulfill, is the bearing of the cross. My brother’s burden which I must bear is not only his outward lot [and circumstance], … but quite literally his sin. And the only way to bear that sin is by forgiving it in the power of the cross of Christ in which [we] now share. Thus the call to follow Christ always means a call to share [in] the work of forgiving men their sins. Forgiveness is the Christlike suffering which it is the Christian’s duty to bear.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 2d ed., New York: Macmillan, 1959, p. 100.)

Surely the reason Christ said “Father, forgive them” was because even in the weakened and terribly trying hour he faced, he knew that this was the message he had come through all eternity to deliver. All of the meaning and all of the majesty of all those dispensations—indeed the entire plan of salvation—would have been lost had he forgotten that not in spite of injustice and brutality and unkindness and disobedience but precisely because of them had he come to extend forgiveness to the family of man. Anyone can be pleasant and patient and forgiving on a good day. A Christian has to be pleasant and patient and forgiving on all days. It is the quintessential moment of his ministry, and as perfect in its example as it was difficult to endure.

Is there someone, quite apart from those proxies that you bless here in the temple every day, who needs forgiveness from you in a more personal way?  Is there someone in your home, someone in your family, someone in your neighborhood who has done an unjust or an unkind or an unchristian thing?  Is it possible that even this very moment, in the rush to get to this meeting this morning, some unkind word was spoken and the vault of human pain increased again?  All of us are guilty of such transgressions, so there surely must be someone who yet needs your forgiveness.  And please don’t ask if that’s fair—if the injured should have to bear the burden of forgiveness for the offender. Don’t ask if “justice” doesn’t demand that it be the other way around. No, whatever you do, don’t ask for justice. You and I know that what we plead for is mercy—and that is what we must be willing to give.

Can we see the tragic and ultimate irony of not granting to others what we need so badly ourselves? Perhaps the highest and holiest and purest act of cleansing—inasmuch as we speak from first to last in the temple of cleansing and purification—would be to say in the face of unkindness and injustice that you do yet more truly “love your enemies and bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you.” That is the demanding pathway of perfection.

A marvelous Scottish minister once wrote:

“No man who will not forgive his neighbor, can believe that God is willing, yea wanting, to forgive him. … If God said, ‘I forgive you’ to a man who hated his brother, and if (as impossible) that voice of forgiveness should reach the man, what would it mean to him? How would the man interpret it? Would it not mean to him, ‘You may go on hating. I do not mind it. You have had great provocation and are justified in your hate’?

“No doubt God takes what wrong there is, and what provocation there is, into the account: but the more provocation, the more excuse that can be urged for the hate, the more reason … that the hater should [forgive, and] be delivered from the hell of his [anger].” (George MacDonald, An Anthology, ed. C. S. Lewis, New York: Macmillan, 1947, pp. 6–7.)

Tomorrow morning we watch our son board the airplane for his mission to Edinsburgh, Scotland.  He is our firstborn.  Though he is probably not without blemish, we have never found one.  He is going out, we believe, just as you come here to this temple every day to do something about forgiving men and women their sins, to encourage the kind of obedience and respect for gospel virtues which will be required of all who wish to enjoy such peaceful blessings.

Because of this personal moment in our lives, I recall just a few years ago (before the second level jetways were all in at the airport) seeing a drama enacted with which I wish to conclude.  I guess I had seen it a dozen times before and still see some variation of it now, though the airport configuration is a little different.

On this particular day, I got off an airplane and walked into the terminal. It was immediately obvious that a missionary was coming home because the airport was a-bustle with conspicuous-looking missionary friends and missionary relatives.

I tried to pick out the immediate family members. There was a father who did not look particularly comfortable in an awkward-fitting and slightly out-of-fashion suit. He seemed to be a man of the soil, an outdoors man, with a suntan and large, work-scarred hands. His white shirt was a little frayed and was probably never worn except on Sunday.

There was a mother who was quite thin, looking as if she had worked very hard in her life. She had in her hand a handkerchief—and I think it must have been a linen handkerchief once but now it looked like tissue. It was nearly shredded from the anticipation only the mother of a returning missionary could know.  There was a beautiful girl who—well, you know about girls and returning missionaries. She appeared to be on the verge of cardiac arrest. I thought that if the young man didn’t come soon, she would not make it without some oxygen.  Two or three younger brothers and sisters were running around, largely oblivious to the scene that was unfolding.

I walked past them all and started for the front of the terminal. Then I thought to myself, “This is one of the special human dramas in our lives. Stick around and enjoy it.” So I stopped. I slipped into the back of the crowd to wait and watch. The passengers were starting to come off the plane.

I found myself starting to bet (Church-approved betting, of course) as to who would make the break first. I thought probably the girlfriend would want to most of all, but undoubtedly she was struggling with the discretion of it all.  Two years is a long time, you know, and maybe one shouldn’t appear too assertive.  Then a look at that handkerchief convinced me that the mother was probably the one. She obviously needed to hold something, so the child she had carried and nurtured and gone down into the valley of the shadow of death to deliver would be just what the doctor ordered.  I thought perhaps it would be the boisterous little brother, if he happened to look up long enough to know the plane was in—which fact he probably wasn’t going to notice.

As I sat there weighing these options, I saw him start to come down the stairs. I knew he was the one by the squeal of the crowd. He looked like Captain Moroni, clean and handsome and straight and tall. Undoubtedly he had known the sacrifice this mission had meant to his father and mother, and it had made him exactly the missionary he appeared to be. He had his hair trimmed for the trip home, his suit was worn but clean, his slightly tattered raincoat was still protecting him from the chill his mother had so often warned him about.

He came to the bottom of the steps and started out across the apron toward our building and then, sure enough, somebody couldn’t take it any longer. It wasn’t the mother, and it wasn’t the girlfriend, and it wasn’t the rowdy little brother. That big, slightly awkward, quiet and bronzed giant of a man put an elbow into the ribcage of a United Airlines flight attendant and ran, just simply ran, out onto that apron and swept his son into his arms.

The oxygen summoned for the girlfriend could have now been better directed toward the missionary. He was probably 6'2" or so, but this big bear of a father grabbed him, took him clear off his feet, and held him for the longest time. He just held him and said nothing. The boy dropped his briefcase, put both arms around his dad, and they just held each other very tightly. It seemed like all eternity stood still, and for a precious moment the Salt Lake City Airport was the center of the entire universe. It was as if all the world had gone silent out of respect for such a sacred moment.

And then I thought of God the Eternal Father hiding in some great corner of his universe while his boy goes out to serve, to sacrifice when he didn’t have to do it, paying his own way, so to speak, costing everything he had saved all his life to give. At that precious moment, it was not too difficult to imagine that father speaking with some emotion to those who could hear, “This is my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” And it was also possible to imagine that triumphant returning son, saying, “It is finished. Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”

Now, I don’t know what kind of seven-league boots a father uses to rush through the space of eternity. I don’t know how far away in the universe you have to go not to hear the cries of “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani,” but even in my limited imagination I can see that reunion in the heavens. And I pray for one like it for you and for me. I pray for reconciliation and for forgiveness, for mercy, and for the Christian growth and Christian character we must develop if we are to enjoy such a moment fully.

I stand all amazed that even for a man like me, full of egotism and transgression and intolerance and impatience—I stand all amazed that even for a man like me, there is a chance. But if I’ve heard the “good news” right, there is—for me and for you and for everyone who is willing to keep hoping and to keep trying and to allow others the same privilege.

I marvel that he would descend from his throne divine
To rescue a soul so rebellious and proud as mine. …
I think of his hands pierced and bleeding to pay the debt!
Such mercy, such love, and devotion can I forget?
No, no, I will praise and adore at the mercy seat,
Until at the glorified throne I kneel at his feet. …
Oh, it is wonderful, wonderful to me!
(Hymns, 1985, no. 193.)

In the sacred name of Jesus Christ, amen.