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I have a new calling which involves me giving a lot more talks than I have been. Which means I’ll be posting a lot more svithes than I have been.
I'm scheduling this Friday evening so any final edits ain't here. I'm sure the live version will be much, much better.
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JOSEPH!
That’s Jesus talking. He’s addressing Joseph Smith. Joseph had just asked the one annoying question Jesus had been steadfastly refusing to answer since at least the Resurrection: When’s the Second Coming? I mean—maybe—if the Lord weren’t always making it sound so cool—talking about coming “in a cloud with power and great glory”—maybe this wouldn’t happen, but here we are.
“Joseph,” he says, “Joseph, my son, if thou livest until thou art eighty-five years old, thou shalt see the face of the Son of Man; therefore let this suffice, and trouble me no more on this matter.”
Joseph wasn’t really sure what to make of that answer. But I’ll tell you what I make of it. Our Savior had a friendly relationship with his prophet. He could yank his chain a little. That’s something friends do.
But friends are good for more than laughs. When Joseph was in Liberty Jail, the Lord was there.
Joseph felt alone. He cried out: “Where art thou? Where is…thy hiding place?”
Joseph was afraid and in pain and so he reached out.
And the Lord reached back.
“My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment; and then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high; thou shalt triumph over all thy foes.”
Joseph wasn’t the Savior’s first friend, of course. Remember in John when he said, “love one another, as I have loved you”? He followed that with “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” and “Ye are my friends.”
Jesus emphasized friendship to his modern apostles as well.
In the D&C he says, “As I said unto mine apostles, even so I say unto you, for you are mine apostles…you are my friends.”
And: “Henceforth I shall call you friends.”
And: “I will call you friends, for you are my friends, and you shall have an inheritance with me.”
And: “It is expedient…that you become even as my friends in [the] days when I was with them, traveling to preach the gospel in my power. ”
Ah, the good old days. Traveling around dusty Judea with friends, preaching the gospel.
It’s not often that we are invited, like Peter or James or John, to leave everything behind and preach the gospel. Currently, I am stressed over this new calling. As the high councilor assigned to M****a, I should attend their meetings as often as I can. Haven’t been there yet. But as the Sunday School president, I’m supposed to attend every ward as often as I can. But, at the same time, I should be attending my home ward. How will I, the ward historian, do any history if I don’t know what’s going on! And it’s a busy year in B******y—we’re prepping for the 100th anniversary of the B******y Branch. I feel like I should be there helping.
But still. No one’s asking me to quit my job, or travel without purse or scrip, or leave behind father or mother, or any of those things that, say, Peter was asked to do.
I guess the closest I’ve come to that was when I was nineteen and called to serve a mission. And I loved my mission. It was hard, but there’s a strong corollary, in the Lord’s service, between working hard and having fun. So I worked hard and I had fun.
But then the last day came. And I left my companion at the airport and I climbed onto an airplane. And as I sat on the tarmac, waiting to fly to my mission president’s office, I realized there was nothing else I could do. My mission was over. Whatever I was sent to do, I had either done it or not done it. There was no doing it tomorrow.
It was a sobering thought. I didn’t expect to die at age 21, but in a real way, this was death. I was done, over, kaput. Elder Thteed? No longer a person. I had entered some sort of purgatory. And when I exited, I would be Theric again, not Elder. It was over.
So I sat there on that airplane and I wondered if I had done what the Lord had sent me to do. Were my two years worth anything? Had I gone where he’d wanted me to go, over mountain and plain and sea? Had I said what he’d wanted me to say? Had I been what he wanted me to be?
I wasn’t sure.
And that was a heavy load. But as I sat there, looking out the window, waiting for the plane to taxi into takeoff, a song came into my head. Maybe not one you would guess. A Frank Sinatra song, actually. One that’s big with the kids these days for some reason. A song I hadn’t heard before but had heard a lot the last couple months, from hanging out with a new member. And it was just the right song. Frank became the voice of the Lord, telling me that he had called me to serve in that place at that time. Me! He had called me. And because he had called me, he had wanted me.
Which meant he knew me.
And that’s what the Lord does. He knows us. Like a friend.
But he’s not our only friend.
To come back to Liberty Jail for a moment, near the end of the comfort the Lord offered, he made this observation:
“Thy friends[, Joseph,] do stand by thee. And they shall hail thee again with warm hearts and friendly hands.”
Joseph had lots of friends.
Much of the Doctrine and Covenants is Joseph asking questions of the Lord for his friends. Making an introduction, you might say.
Joseph was a big believer in friendship. I could spend almost an entire sacrament meeting quoting him on the topic, but here is one:
“Friendship,” he says, “is one of the grand fundamental principles of ‘Mormonism’ to revolutionize and civilize the world—and cause wars and contentions to cease—and [people] to become friends.”
Don’t, ah, tell President Nelson that Joseph Smith said “Mormonism.” I don’t want to cause any…problems….
But I love this. Friendship is one of the grand fundamental principles of our faith. And it’s a tool we have to civilize the world.
Think about it. We’re here to be friends. And to bring friendship to the world. That’s a pretty good way to think about missionary work!
This is something the world needs right now.
Never mind all the arguing and disagreements, the Surgeon General recently reported that loneliness is an epidemic, that
“Loneliness is far more than just a bad feeling—it harms both individual and societal health. It is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death. The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking…15 cigarettes a day….”
I’m an English teacher and I care a lot about language, but to me, our need for friends was most elegantly captured in The Bride of Frankenstein when the creature comes across a blind hermit. Presumably the hermit went into the woods to live alone and worship God, but it ends up that’s not so great. He’s lonely. And when the creature arrives—perhaps because the hermit is blind—or perhaps because his blindness and his loneliness allow him to see a fellow creature more clearly—he gives the creature his first lessons on language and kindness.
— Before you came, [he says,] l was all alone. It is bad to be alone.
— Alone, bad. Friend, good. Friend, good!
It’s so simple.
Alone: bad.
Friend: good.
And if it’s okay with you, let’s just pretend the movie ends there with a happy ending. Cool? Cool.
Section 128 is a letter Joseph Smith sent the Saints that has since been canonized. And Joseph doesn’t end his letter with “Sincerely,” or “Have a nice Tuesday.” He ends it with “I am, as ever, your humble servant and never-deviating friend.”
Joseph Smith believed that a friend never deviates. And that belief of his is right there in our scriptures.
And this, the ward, is an easy chance to be friends, never-deviating friends. Saying hello to the person sitting alone. Doing our ministering. Smiling.
When I was ten, the economy of Bear Lake County, Idaho, totally collapsed. I probably don’t have the numbers right, but I remember being told that when the phosphorus factory closed, unemployment went up to something like 75%. My dad was working any piddling crap job he could trying to keep us fed. And when he found what sounded like a good job in California, he took it. We moved to C****s on Valentine’s Day, 1987. And the job was…not as great as promised. He took extra jobs, midnights at a convenience store—whatever he could find. We were poor. And we didn’t know anybody.
But we had a ward. C****s 2nd. And they took us in. One family in particular who were also from Bear Lake, but had come to California years earlier and were doing just fine, had us over for dinner regularly. They taught us how to play Spoons. They tried and failed to hook us on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
I know now much more than I did when I was a kid about how much the B***es helped my parents socially and emotionally. My mom had never been so far from her parents and siblings. Neither had my dad, if you ignore his mission. They—us—were isolated and alone. Or we would have been. But we had a ward. We had friends.
Elder Richard G. Scott suggested we can read one famous scripture like this:
And friendship suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up. . . . friendship is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with them.
At the last day, we won’t be just with the friends we’re with today, but with our friends who have gone before.
Joseph Smith said:
“I…remember…the faithful of my friends who are dead, for they are many; and many are the acts of kindness…which they…bestowed upon me…. There are many souls whom I have loved stronger than death. To them I have proved faithful—to them I am determined to prove faithful, until God calls me to resign up my breath.”
Joseph Smith welcomed people he had never met as they came off the ferry to Nauvoo. He shook their hands and said hello. He hoped to become their friend.
What would it mean for Joseph Smith to be your friend?
Sure, he’s dead, but death was never a boundary he had much respect for. And his friend, Jesus Christ, obliterated that barrier for us all.
And when we are friends with Joseph—when we are friends with Sidney and Emma and Hyrum—or at least willing to be their friends—how will that change our engagement with the Doctrine & Covenants?
I don’t know, not really, what it means to become the friend of Joseph and Emma in 2025, but as we read the Doctrine and Covenants this year, let’s remember that friendship is one of the grand fundamental principles of Mormonism—we’re all about people becoming friends. Here in this chapel. At our jobs and in our neighborhoods. Across all time and space.
It’s my testimony that Christ’s gospel is a gospel of friendship. And as we study his words, we can become his friend. And that we will become greater friends to each other.
In the name…..
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