Now, we will compare the word unto a seed.
Thus begins one of the most recognizable sermons delivered
in the Book of Mormon.
Alma finds he has a receptive audience in those who built
the synagogues but were thrown out of them due to their poverty.
He begins to persuade.
And as great persuaders do, Alma identifies a chief concern.
From Alma Chapter 32, verse 9:
Behold thy brother hath said, What shall we do? – for we are
cast out of our synagogues, that we cannot worship our God.
He continues in verses 10:
Behold I say unto you, do ye suppose that ye cannot worship
God save it be in your synagogues only?
Alma’s sermon fascinates me. Because he could have spent
more time talking about how we can communicated with God no matter where we
are, kind of like Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof, who was always talking with
God: While talking with his family, while walking with his milk cart, while
celebrating, while fleeing:
But Alma doesn’t deliver that kind of sermon.
He talks about faith, comparing it to a seed.
I’ve often wondered why.
Maybe he sensed, in some of his audience, still a little pride.
They wanted to worship in the synagogue they’d built, point out to their
neighbors, their children, the other congregants, “I built this for us to
worship in!” Maybe that’s why he talks about those who are compelled to be
humble by circumstance, contrasted with those who are humble because that’s how
they are.
So he compares the word of God to a seed.
“The word of God, as found in the scriptures, in the words
of living prophets, and in personal revelation, has the power to fortify the
Saints and arm them with the spirit so they can resist evil, hold fast to the
good, and find joy in life,” says President Ezra Taft Benson. SO maybe Alma saw
an opportunity to fortify a growing, humble faith, by talking about faith
itself.
He saw, in other words, the long view.
It would have been quicker, perhaps, to persuade these
people that they could worship God wherever they stood. But when they found
their seed of faith sown in rocky ground, or when the drought or the east wind
came and shriveled their growing faith to dust, they would not be any better
off than those who worshipped inside the synagogue.
Alma saw the long view. If faith is strong, like that of
Tevye, then when the horse is lame, when the daughter marries out of the faith,
when the village of Anatevka is abolished, that faith that grew from a seed
sown in good soil will still remain strong, even as it passes through
adversity.
Even when they're forced to leave their home, they turn to their faith not for vengeance, but for a deep solace that consoles them at their nadir:
Perchik:Rabbi, we’ve been waiting for the Messiah all our lives. Wouldn’t this be a good time for him to come?
Rabbi: We’ll have to wait for him someplace else. Meanwhile, let’s start packing.
“[I]f ye will nourish the word,” Alma says in Chapter 38,
verse 41, “yea, nourish the tree as it beginneth to grow, by your faith with
great diligence, and with patience, looking forward to the fruit thereof, it
shall take root; and behold it shall be a tree springing up unto everlasting
life.”
Alma has his seed. And Tevye, he has that fiddler on the roof, metaphorically traveling with them even in their despair.
That’s a promise, I’m persuaded, that will last long past
the time any synagogue created by earthly hands crumbles to dust.
No comments:
Post a Comment