Why Go To Church: Finding Purpose in Zion

I can honestly say that I have had a few transcendent moments in my life. One of them was a little over eighteen months ago in Natick, Massachusetts. It was my first day in the mission field and with all my fellow “greenies” I was in the mission home listening to Daniel Packard talk about the Massachusetts Boston Mission. I don’t know that I could tell you exact words or distinct images from that day, but I will never forget the feeling that enveloped me. President Packard taught us, it felt like he was teaching only to me, about Zion. It was an out-of-body experience as I listened to something that I somehow knew I had been waiting to hear for my entire life: Zion. Unity, love, sacrifice, consecration. The closest I can come to describing that transcendent feeling is to say this: I was home.

Many people that I worked with on my mission struggled with the idea of organized religion. Three hours of church?! And to be perfectly frank, so have I. Often my most spiritual moments come when I’m alone in the woods or writing on a seashore. Let me emphasize here that I crave solitude. I find peace and alignment when I can be by myself, de-cluttering from the stimuli of the world. So coming together in large groups of people has not always fit with my idea of spirituality or pure religion. It is not the gospel, I have often thought, to be forced to socialize. I still hold that opinion--the gospel of Jesus Christ is not about socializing. But what I am trying to learn from the master teacher is what it is about. So, what I would like to talk about today is the beginning of an answer: we go to church for 3 hours because the gospel of Jesus Christ is about building Zion.

In the movie Finding Neverland, the main character James Barrie is a genius playwright. Unfortunately, his private brilliance isolates him from his wife and their marriage is dissolving. At one point he finds her reading his journals and says, “You needn't steal my journal to get to know me.” She responds, “No, I suppose I could just go see the plays. I was hopelessly naive when I married you. I imagined that brilliant people disappeared to some secret place where good ideas floated around like leaves in autumn, and I hoped at least once you would take me there with you.” I hoped at least once you would take me there with you. Sure James Barrie had a lot of incredible ideas. But do they matter in the eternal realm of things if those ideas isolated him from the love of those around him? Does it matter what inspiration I find when I am alone if I don’t take anyone else to the places I discover mentally and spiritually? 

When I first got home from my mission, I was a wreck. I didn’t even unpack my suitcase for two weeks. I felt like something inside of me had died. It was like I had gone to Neverland--some secret place where good ideas floated around like leaves in autumn--and was now drowning in the triviality of civilian life. Returned missionaries often talk about feeling a lack of purpose, and mine was deep. It was especially deep because I knew my purpose was exactly the same--still and always a representative of Jesus Christ--but now I was questioning the meaning of life and purpose in general. Everything seemed so much of a facade, so meaningless, I felt like Macbeth in William Shakespeare’s classic play. Questioning the purpose of life, he says, 

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.”

I knew mentally that life wasn’t meaningless, but I was certainly questioning every aspect of it. Including, very honestly, why we need three hours of church and all sorts of activities during the week.

When Alma teaches the people at the waters of mormon, he established a church. The people that were converted and baptized there in that beautiful valley became a Zion people. The scriptures tell us what Zion looks like. We read that “their hearts were knit together in unity and love one towards another.” They had “all things common among them.” They were perfectly united and filled with a joy that was “unspeakable and full of glory.”

This little band of believers achieved Zion. But they got away from it. In Alma 5, Alma’s son comes to them preaching repentance. A close reading of the chapter reveals that the people weren’t guilty of any truly heinous crimes, but they had departed from the Zion society they once knew. That is what was so distressing to Alma the younger, that was what he preached so vehemently about. And that is what happened to me when I first got home. I remember getting on the plane departing from Boston, looking out of the window and crying my heart out. I felt like I was leaving Zion. But I am starting to piece something together that I knew in my head but hadn’t yet felt in my heart: We had achieved Zion in Boston. But for now, Zion is not a place. It is a calling. And it is a covenant calling. All of us who have been baptized have made covenants to build Zion. To take upon ourselves the name of Jesus Christ and to strive for unity with our fellow men and women.  It is not about simply living the gospel by checklist, going through the motions and going to church because we’re supposed to. The gospel is about building Zion. 

The scriptures often emphasize the importance of our personal pilgrimages. It is true that we need solitude to solidify our faith and to commune with God. But what gives us meaning in this mortality is when we are united with other people. Chaim Potok writes: “A blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives the span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant.  A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life. It is hard work to fill one's life with meaning. A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest when I am no longer here.” We need each other. Life is meaningless without connections of love and service. We fill our lives with meaning when we are united. Gathering to Zion is what gives us meaning; finding the sacramental moments in the mundane things of mortality.

I don’t know all of the reasons mandating organized religion. I don’t know everything about culture or order or structure, but I know this: I can simply go to church, or I can build Zion. I can get my visiting teaching done, or I can build Zion. I can breeze through my scriptures, or I can learn about Zion. We go to church and we stay for all of church not because we’re good Mormons, not for checklists, but to build Zion. 

I submit that we all have places and things that are comforting and Zion-like. We all have our own Neverlands. They are different for each of us, and in many ways they are very personal and private. For me, one of those places is the Massachusetts Boston Mission. I lost a lot of meaning when I left the place. But we come together because it is not about the place. We go to church for 3 hours to bring the beauty we find personally and make it meaningful. It is about Zion. It is Zion that makes we want to get up in the morning. It is the hope and even the belief that Mosiah 18 can be real. Hearts knit together in unity and love. It is the prayer that my personal wilderness moments can become redemptive as I use them to help other people. The invitation in coming to church and building the kingdom of Zion is to allow the lines between heaven and earth to blur. This calling is every minute of every day, and we are a covenant people. What does it matter where you go alone if you keep yourself alone? There is purpose in Zion. 

As Peter said to the lame man at the temple Beautiful, “silver and gold have I none. But such as I have give I unto thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” The lame man walks, and bearing the name and the calling of Jesus Christ, so can we. And we can do so together. As Shakespeare’s Hamlet says, “There's a divinity that shapes our ends.”

In the words of Alma: “as to [every]thing I do not know. But this much I do know, that the Lord God hath power to do all things which are according to his word” (Alma 7:8).