Thmazing's Thutopia: A Thanksgiving Svithe

I gave this talk on November 16th. So not exactly Thanksgiving, but the topic was gratitude so it’s Thanksgiving for sure.

Once again, I’m singing in sacrament meeting talks. I really want everyone to do this but it’s not catching on. ALTHOUGH, this past General Conference, some one actually sang their quotation rather than just speaking it. So much better.

Usually of course it’s a hymn or a Primary song but this time, like my first-ever time, I went secular, baby.

I was worried one part of this talk might be controversial but it a) wasn’t or b) was but no one who was offended told me so or c) it was but the Sunday School lesson on polygamy (which I heard was “a barnburner” [and very good]) erased me from their minds. Let’s hope for a!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I thought for today we might look at perhaps the first explicit expressions of gratitude in our scripture, chronologically speaking:

This is in Moses 5:10 and 11, if you want to follow along. Moses. 5. 10 and 11.

And in that day Adam blessed God and was filled, and began to prophesy concerning all the families of the earth, saying: Blessed be the name of God, for because of my transgression my eyes are opened, and in this life I shall have joy, and again in the flesh I shall see God.

And Eve, his wife, heard all these things and was glad, saying: Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient.

Adam grateful for three things, Eve for four. Let’s consider them all.

Are we grateful that our eyes are opened?

Each morning when we wake, we open our eyes and arise again. And we are called upon to see.

Jesus would have us clothe the naked and lift the downtrodden. But do we see them?

Jesus would have us embrace joy. Do we see joy?

Jesus would have us seize opportunities to offer others the same good news we have been given, that their eyes, too, might be opened. Do we see these opportunities?

Look around a moment. Make eye contact. Smile.

Behold. Our eyes are open.

Are we grateful that in this life we shall have joy?

I don’t know about you all, but I had a lot of joy at the 100^th-anniversary celebration last week. Part of that was witnessing the decades of joy that had gone into getting to year number one hundred. People returning with open faces and sweet nostalgia. Seeing old friends and friends of old friends. Meeting a man who hadn’t been in this building since 1979 but, walking around, was filled with peace and sweet remembrance.

In this life we shall have joy. That’s a little thing we get to do together—to give each other.

Joy.

Remember looking around a moment ago and smiling?

That’s what we’re here for. To be joyful. Together.

Are we grateful that when again in the flesh we shall see God?

Adam’s being rhetorically clever here, expressing his gratitude that in the flesh we shall see God.

Although theologians are still in his future, I reckon Adam had a pretty firm understanding of the two deaths. Certainly, he knew separation from God—spiritual death. But, as the years went by, he gained a greater and greater understanding of physical death as well. From mourning over the body of Abel to the apostasy of Cain to whatever other tragedies and failings life gave him, Adam understood every flavor of death.

So as he expresses gratitude that in his flesh—in his post-death resurrected and perfected body—he shall see God—be reunited with the father he loved and had walked away from in order to learn and grow through mortality—Adam has as clear an understanding as anyone ever has just how glorious these two key miracles are.

This is what it means for a redeemer to be provided. And Adam knows, deep in his soul, the value of this gift.

Are we grateful that we can have seed?

I read an article in The Atlantic recently that has got me thinking about this gift in a new way. Largely it was a series of interviews with women who waited longer than evolved human biology might’ve preferred to have kids and who are now working with doctors and scientists to reproduce. Some successfully; some not.

But universally, these women all resented that their high-school sex-ed classes were all about how not to get pregnant—well, that and avoiding venereal disease—and not things that matter much more to them now—such as how stuff like age and weight and health have a detrimental effect on fertility. The article was filled with discouraging stats that suggest modern American women know very little about how to get pregnant once they want to. And while the article didn’t get into it, I’m a-gonna guess the men in their lives know even less.

I hope that doesn’t come off as judgmental. All I mean to say is I feel for these women because having seed is something I, like Eve, am grateful for. Having kids isn’t always easy or simple but easy and simple don’t have much to do with the purpose of life. They’re nice, but they’re not the goal. Even creeping-crawling things know that the goal is to multiply, and to replenish the earth and to have joy in our posterity. Even when you have to ask eleven times for someone to do the dishes, there’s still joy there, somewhere, underneath it all.

So I’m with Eve. I’m grateful to have seed.

(Although I’ll bet they’re not enjoying being referred to as seed right now.)

Are we grateful that we know good and evil?

I got upset in class this week. This isn’t something that happens much. I might get annoyed or frustrated but it doesn’t actually get to me emotionally. My demeanor doesn’t change.

But this week the girl I was talking to, and her two friends, could tell how upset I was. How seriously I was taking our conversation.

What happened is this: She came to class late. But unexcused tardies in my class sliver off some of your College Readiness points. This is a block of ten points you start the quarter with and an unexcused tardy can take one third of a point off that ten.

She didn’t want that to happen so she said she’d go find some teacher to write her a pass to get it excused. Plenty of people, she said, would do that for her, who cares.

But that’s a lie, I said.

Yeah, but she wants her points.

But it’s dishonest.

But the only negative consequence she could see was losing a third of a point. Nothing to do with integrity or my opinion of her—those things were all too abstract. I rephrased the problem a number of ways but when I finally asked her if she would sell her soul for a third of a point, her friends were shocked that I would go so far. But, I mean, I meant it. Who cares about a third of a point? Do you respect yourself so little that you would lie to get it? Is that how little you are worth?

She hasn’t brought me a pass to excuse that tardy.

You guys. My blood pressure was so high. I didn’t yell or anything but I felt so strongly that I had to stand up for honesty. I don’t know but I sure hope the next time her integrity could be trimmed for some minor benefit, she won’t do it. And then—I don’t know but I sure hope—as opportunities to sell out grow and become more persuasive, more valuable, that she’ll not be the sort of person who would trade her own soul for a third of a point.

I can be, as the kids say, extra. But man. I tell you. She’s worth more than a third of a point.

I hope she believes that.

And, if today she just thinks I’m a weirdo, I hope something about our conversation proves sticky and, someday, she figures out what I meant.

Because the difference between good and evil isn’t always as simple as don’t be a Nazi. Sometimes the difference between good and evil can be subtle to the point of dangerous.

I’m grateful to know good and evil—and I’m grateful that when I get it wrong, Jesus will be there to buy my soul back.

Are we grateful for the joy of our redemption?

I’ll admit that redemption is something of an abstract concept to me. It’s not hard for me to accept I’m not all I could be. And I am grateful to my redeemer. But I don’t know that I always get the details of redemption.

And so, this afternoon, when C***** gets baptized, I intend to arrive open to once more receiving proof to my heart that Jesus is the Christ, and that he died for me and for you and for everyone who has ever lived.

That’s a little too much for me to comprehend. I can’t even comprehend Elon Musk’s new compensation package. But the least I can do is spend my time trying to comprehend the good—the best—the very best this universe has to offer.

Are we grateful for the eternal life which God gives the obedient?

At the end of my mission—and I mean the end: I was sitting in an airplane on the tarmac waiting to taxi to a runway to take me to the mainland to report to my mission president before he sent me home home—I was looking out the window at various airport things and realizing it was too late to do better, it was too late to try again tomorrow, it was all over, I was done, finished, kaput.

That’s a vulnerable moment.

Much of my mission had been dedicated to doing better tomorrow—and now there were no more tomorrows.

All the great missionaries I’d seen? I hadn’t done what they’d done. All the great feats they’d accomplished. Those were not my feats.

And so I sat there, sober as any teetotaler has ever been, and prayed, asking the Lord if I he accepted what I had offered, little as it was.

The last couple months of my mission, my companion and I had often been taken places by a member of our ward—Brother Kim (he insisted on being addressed in English). Everywhere we went in his little car, he played the same tape of music over and over and over again. It was covers—near-identical knockoffs, really—of popular American songs. I don’t remember any of them but one, sung by a faux Frank Sinatra. It was a song I hadn’t heard before but which I became intimately familiar with over those months.

It’s usually interpreted as an ode to ego and self-aggrandizement—even an embarrassed Frank Sinatra thought so—but as I sat there on the tarmac, the Lord put that song into my head:

And now, the end is near
And so I face the final curtain
My friend, I’ll say it clear
I’ll state my case, of which I’m certain
I’ve lived a life that’s full
I traveled each and every highway
And more, much more than this
I did it my way

The song goes on. It’s become a vital anthem of the Berkeley Ward for reasons the bishop mentioned a week ago. When [a teenager] died [last November], this song played over and over and over again in our house, like a sacred offering to accompany him home.

I suspect [my son, whose best friend this was] was playing it for similar reasons that the Lord put it into my mind that day.

The Lord sent me to Korea not because he needed another Elder X or a Sister Y but because he needed me. He needed an Elder Jepson. With all his weird traits and peculiar ideas. He wanted an Elder Jepson to serve in Taegu and Chinhae and Pusan and Masan and Cheju. I was the person he wanted to meet the people I met, to say the things I said, to do the things I did.

Yes, there were times, I’m sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew

But the Lord wanted me. And he wanted me to be a missionary my way.

Not because I would be perfect. I wouldn’t be. But perfection’s never the point of any particular day.

For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught
The record shows I took the blows

And did it my way

The trick of course is to remember, as Eve did, that this life is just the first step of the eternal life the Lord gives the obedient. It doesn’t matter that I wasn’t perfect. Jesus is perfect. And he was there serving with me.

That’s what I’m grateful for. That God knows me and loves me and accepts the service I give and allows me to serve you alongside our Savior.

We all serve alongside our Savior.

And so will we—eternally.

That’s what I’m grateful for this Thanksgiving.

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

previous svithe on thutopia (here)
previous svithe on thubstack (there)