One of the very vivid memories I have of Primary (actually, when I was growing up it was junior Sunday School; Primary was held during the week and Junior Sunday School on the Sabbath)-and this is a frequent memory-is of our teachers and leaders telling us to be reverent. I can still hear Sister Maughan say, "Boys and girls, we need to be reverent. Fold your arms in class." I can still see very clearly in my mind the image of dozens of struggling 6-to-10-year-olds with their arms tightly knotted, like this. We figured we were being reverent because that's what they told us we needed to do, was to be quiet and fold our arms. We would sing a song. "Reverently, quietly, lovingly we think of thee." I came to understand that reverence was a synonym of silence.
Years later-I think when I was attending Ricks College, located near here-I heard this definition of reverence from President David O. McKay, the President of the Church while I was in Primary: "Reverence is profound respect mingled with love." That somehow seems to be a very different thing than tightly folded arms and pursed lips. As the current Primary song says, "Reverence is more than just quietly sitting."
Today, I am going to speak about what reverence is, what it is not, and then I will focus mostly on one often-overlooked element of reverence and how this can greatly enrich all aspects of our lives.
If reverence is a feeling of respect, then quiet might not be an obvious sign of reverence. For example, you can very quietly play games, text, surf the web, and even find Pokémon during a class at school, a devotional, or even during a sacrament meeting. In all of these instances you would be very quiet but also extraordinarily disrespectful. Obviously, quiet does not equal reverence. I came to understand this even more fully as I have participated at various times in my life in temple dedications. At the conclusion of the dedicatory prayer, the prophet leads the congregation in the Hosanna Shout-not the hosanna whisper.
We read this in 1 Nephi 11:1-6:
"As I sat pondering in mine heart I was caught away in the Spirit of the Lord, yea, into an exceedingly high mountain, which I never had before seen, and upon which I never had before set my foot."
"And the Spirit said unto me: Behold, what desirest thou?"
"And I said: I desire to behold the things which my father saw."
"And the Spirit said unto me: Believest thou that thy father saw the tree of which he hath spoken?"
"And I said: Yea, thou knowest that I believe all the words of my father."
"And when I had spoken these words, the Spirit cried with a loud voice, saying: Hosanna to the Lord, the most high God; for he is God over all the earth, yea, even above all. And blessed art thou, Nephi, because thou believest in the Son of the most high God; wherefore, thou shalt behold the things which thou hast desired."[1]
I'm certain nobody is more reverent than the Spirit, and yet he cried with a loud voice. So if reverence isn't necessarily quiet, what is it?
Have you ever thought about what the opposite of reverence is? Certainly we think, "It has to be irreverence," and that would be correct in the strictest sense. But maybe we can understand irreverence if we consider a synonym for irreverence. Here is a fascinating well-known quote from President Spencer W. Kimball:
"I find that when I get casual in my relationships with divinity and when it seems that no divine ear is listening and no divine voice is speaking, that I am far, far away. If I immerse myself in the scriptures the distance narrows and the spirituality returns."[2]
President Kimball seems to suggest that he is not reverent-that he is not receiving answers to prayer-when he is casual.
A few years ago Elder D. Todd Christofferson spoke at a CES fireside and said the following:
"The importance of having a sense of the sacred is simply this-if one does not appreciate holy things, he will lose them. Absent a feeling of reverence, he will grow increasingly casual in attitude and lax in conduct. He will drift from the moorings that his covenants with God could provide. His feeling of accountability to God will diminish and then be forgotten. Thereafter, he will care only about his own comfort and satisfying his uncontrolled appetites. Finally, he will come to despise sacred things, even God, and then he will despise himself."[3]
"Casual in attitude," says Elder Christofferson. If we think about that it really makes sense. Can we imagine being in casual conversation with our friends dressing in a casual manner? Of course it's easy. But can we imagine such conversation, such casualness, in the presence of the Lord or His appointed representatives? I just don't think we can-at least I hope we can't.
I once heard President Kim B. Clark talking about the difference in the dress and grooming standards at BYU-Idaho compared with other Church universities. He said, "We have chosen to be less casual." I found myself thinking he was attempting to engender a greater spirit of reverence.
I think with very little effort we can realize that respect is a key, central component to reverence. A reverent person is a respectful person. But there is another component of reverence which I find particularly profound and remarkably under appreciated. Let me give you another definition of reverence in addition to the one we heard from President McKay. This is from the Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball: "Reverence has been defined as a 'feeling or attitude of deep respect, love, and awe, as for something sacred.'"
I'd like to devote most of the rest of our time together on this idea: awe. In the April 2, 2016 edition of The Deseret News, there was an article called "Awe-the sensation that unites." The author, Kelsey Dallas, said that research suggests that sharing feelings of awe-of wonder-will cause people to reflect more deeply about their own lives and to get along more successfully with others around them.
I found in that article this quotation from Albert Einstein:
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead-his eyes are closed. The insight into the mystery of life...has also given rise to religion. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms-this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness."
If we don't feel this sense of awe, we can't be reverent.
Children have a natural sense of awe. Maybe this is one of the reasons the Savior on numerous occasions commanded us to become as a little child. This feeling of awe and wonder so common to little children is not a sign of either weakness or ignorance. In fact, ignorant people are more likely to not feel awe, because of a lack of understanding and a failure to grasp context.
The Deseret News article I referenced earlier made mention of Brother Guy Consolmagno, the director of the Vatican Observatory, who holds advanced university degrees in planetary science. He's quoted as follows: "If you know the science, the nuts and bolts, the thrills are still there. You've just got another reason...to be excited about it."
Elder Donald L. Hallstrom tells of the time while living in Hawaii years ago at the time of the rededication of the Laie Temple-he was asked by the temple rededication committee to be responsible for security and transportation arrangements for President Kimball and his party-what he calls "behind the scenes." During that week he saw President Kimball close up ministering to others, dedicating a temple, and teaching.
Then in his own words,
"At the week's conclusion we were at the airport for the departure of President Kimball and his associates... President Kimball came to me to thank me for my meager efforts. Physically he was not very tall, and I am a large man. He grabbed me by my jacket lapels and sharply yanked me down to be at his height. Then he kissed me on the cheek and thanked me. After walking away a few steps, President Kimball returned. He grasped me in the same way and pulled me down again. This time he kissed me on the other cheek and told me that he loved me. Then he departed. The year before, a biography of Spencer W. Kimball had been published... At that time, I had obtained it and read it, and I found it interesting. However, after this very personal experience with Spencer Woolley Kimball, I went home from the airport and pulled that thick volume from our library shelf, feeling an intense desire to read it again. Over the next several days-every waking hour I was not otherwise obligated-I was reading and reflecting. You see, I was now reading about someone whom I deeply loved. I was now reading about someone whom I knew loved me. I was now reading about someone for whom I would do anything, because I knew whatever he asked would be for my own best good."[4]
The more he knew of President Kimball, the greater his sense of awe.
Contrast these two scriptural passages about a lack of reverence, a lack of familiarity:
To Laman and Lemuel Nephi said, "Ye are swift to do iniquity but slow to remember the Lord your God. Ye have seen an angel, and he spake unto you; yea, ye have heard his voice from time to time; and he hath spoken unto you in a still small voice, but ye were past feeling, that ye could not feel his words; wherefore, he has spoken unto you like unto the voice of thunder, which did cause the earth to shake as if it were to divide asunder."[5]
The Apostle Paul, speaking of non-believers in Ephesians 4:
"This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind,"
"Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:"
"Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness."
"But ye have not so learned Christ."[6]
If we don't feel this awe, if we are not reverent, then we are what Einstein calls "as good as dead." Paul references "the ignorance that is in them." The first part of the mission statement of BYU-Idaho is to help strengthen and develop testimonies of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It seems to me that learning-that is to say the reduction of ignorance-is a key part of this if (and this is sometimes a big "if") we seek that feeling of awe. Do we understand the context of something enough to recognize the wonder, or do we let it become too common, too familiar? Reverence extends to many areas of our lives, or ought to.
I once read about a president of the United States who said he felt such awe and respect for all that the office of the presidency and the White House entailed that he refused to ever remove his suit jacket while in the Oval Office. For him it was a matter of respect based on an understanding of context.
I remember several years ago, my brother Earl and I were in the city of Compiegne in northern France trying to find the ward building for sacrament meeting. We were standing on a street corner that had an enormous, old stone wall fragment extending partially around. Unlike Idaho, France is full of old stone wall fragments, some of them many centuries old. It's easy to take them for granted. I casually looked up at the sign that was attached to the stone wall, and in a few moments my casual feeling was replaced with one of reverence. My ignorance was gone. The sign said "Tour Jeanne d'Arc" (Joan of Arc Tower). I suddenly realized where we were. On May 23, 1430, 18-year-old Joan of Arc was captured in the city of Compiegne trying to free France from foreign oppression. She was then a prisoner in a stone tower and subsequently sold to the English, where she was then tried and executed. That stone wall was the vestige, the remnant of where Joan had been held nearly 600 years earlier. We were standing in the middle of a profound historic location. If Joan of Arc had not freed France from English rule, then the young United States would have had no ally in the revolution against Britain 350 years later. No successful American Revolution and no restoration of the gospel. I felt awe; I knew the context of the place.
Carl Sandburg described the irreverence that accompanies ignorance in a passage from his poem "Grass." Speaking of the great battlefields of the past and the forgetfulness that comes from the passage of time, he writes, "Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor: / What place is this? / Where are we now?"
I'm convinced one of the reasons we are required to study science and the arts at BYU-I is to help us gain a sense of context-and a sense of wonder. Awe, not through ignorance but through experience and knowledge.
Here's what President Hinckley said in a BYU devotional in March 1992.
Vaughn Stephenson Devotional - Gordon B. Hinckley Clip
What President Hinckley is talking about is wonder and awe: reverence.
When we visit Yellowstone Park (something every student should do at BYU-Idaho) are we filled with awe?
Do our experiences on "trek" give us a greater reverence for the actual experiences of our pioneer forebears? Can we ponder and feel awe?
When we learn about the creations of Michelangelo, of Bernini, of Bach and Mozart, do we experience awe? If I have presented those things in my humanities class and we do not share a sense of awe and wonder, then I feel much like the words of the hymn "Have I Done Any Good?" and say to myself, "If not, I have failed indeed."[7]
The tithe payers of the Church spend large amounts of money so that we can be educated in the arts and the sciences. Certainly we owe it to them and to ourselves to become more reverent, to recognize that which is not easily explained.
As we go about our lives, a sense of awe, of reverence, will make us kinder, better people in a world which today thrives on sarcasm, irreverence, debunking, and disrespect.
But there's another important role of reverence.
Elder Hallstrom said that he realized from his experience with President Kimball that he recognized the need for greater reverence in his life:
"Through the exhilaration of that experience I had another experience... I comprehended that I did not have that same love and respect-reverence-for Those who matter the most: the members of the Godhead and, specifically, God's Only Begotten, the Savior and the Redeemer. This motivated me to study His "biography" and, through prayer and fasting and pondering, to know that I was now reading about someone whom I deeply loved. I was now reading about someone who I knew loved me."[8]
Do we have proper reverence for God and for His beloved Son? I worry if we merely think of Christ as our generous big brother that we are lessening the profound respect mingled with awe that we should feel. If we reflect on that which we cannot truly understand nor fully comprehend, namely the Atonement, we ought to be left reverent, awe struck. Some hymns have suggested these feelings:
Stewart K. Hine wrote, "And when I think that God, His Son not sparing, / Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in."[9]
Charles Gabriel I think describes it as effectively as anyone has ever done in these words which reflect profound respect mingled with awe: "I stand all amazed at the love Jesus offers me, confused at the grace that so fully he proffers me. I tremble to know that for me he was crucified... Oh it is wonderful to me."[10]
Brothers and sisters, to close, I'm not saying we shouldn't be quiet in church. If anything, we should be more attentive. I am saying that we need to ponder and understand more about all around us so that we can more fully experience the profound respect mingled with awe that is at the heart of a reverent life.
These words from President Kimball are an important guide for all of us: "We must remember that reverence is not a somber, temporary behavior that we adopt on Sunday. True reverence involves happiness, as well as love, respect, gratitude, and godly fear. It is a virtue that should be part of our way of life. In fact, Latter-day Saints should be the most reverent people in all the earth."[11]
May we be more reverent is my humble prayer today, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Notes
[1] 1 Nephi 11:1-6; emphasis added
[2] The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, ed. Edward L. Kimball [1982], 135
[3] D. Todd Christofferson, "A Sende of the Sacred," CES Devotional, November 7, 2004
[4] Donald L. Hallstrom, "How Firm a Foundation," CES Devotional, November 2, 2014
[5] 1 Nephi 17:45; emphasis added
[6] Ephesians 4:17-20; emphasis added
[7] Have I Done Any?, Hymns, No. 223
[8] Donald L. Hallstrom, "How Firm a Foundation," CES Devotional, November 2, 2014
[9] How Great Thou Art, Hymns, No. 86
[10] I Stand All Amazed, Hymns, No. 193
[11] Spencer W. Kimball, We Should Be a Reverent People," Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Spencer W. Kimball, 156