You Are What You Eat

Most cells in your body have an expiration date. A stomach cell only lives for a couple of days, skin cells last about a month, and red blood cells are with you about four months. Cells in your pancreas are hard at work regulating your blood sugar for about a year. Bone cells hang on for 25 - 30 years. Only very few-- like the cells that make the lens in your eye or the muscle of your heart-- last a lifetime.

So you don't fall to pieces, your body is constantly replacing, healing and regenerating cells that are injured, dead, or just worn out from helping you do what you do. This perpetual renovation means that the cells and molecules that make your physical self are seldom all the same from one moment to the next. You are always changing. And you're constantly deciding-- subconsciously or not-- what it is you're changing to be.

That's because your body gathers its building materials, be they for your liver or your toenails, from the nutrients in your food. In this way, we literally become what we have chosen to eat. A low-nutrient diet forces our body to improvise and we end up with the biological equivalent of a house made from cardboard and packing tape. Healthy eating gives our bodies what they need to build something a little stronger and more efficient.

For thousands of years, part of healthy eating has been whole-grain breads. Interestingly, bread also plays a significant role in many Bible stories and observances. Unleavened bread remains an important culinary and symbolic part of the Passover; it was bread from heaven, called Manna, that fed the Israelites in the desert after they escaped from the Egyptians; ravens brought bread to Elijah when he was hiding from the queen; and the widow of Zaraphath had an endless supply of oil and meal to make bread after feeding the prophet the last of what she had.

In the New Testament, Satan tempted Christ in the desert to turn rocks into bread and Christ broke bread to introduce the ordinance of the Sacrament to his apostles. There are dozens more examples, but none so impressive as when Christ used five loaves of bread and a few fish to feed 5,000 people on the coasts of Galilee. Some scholars believe that it was actually closer to 15,000 including women and children. Regardless of the number, it caught the people's attention.

Most of the thousands of people who were fed on this occasion had walked 5-7 miles along the coast of the Sea of Galilee to meet Christ on the other side. The Savior had left the city by boat that morning after hearing his friend and cousin, John the Baptist, had been murdered. He had gone to be alone, but when he saw the crowd of people he had compassion on them and ministered the rest of the day to them.

When evening came, Christ encouraged the people to stay rather than making the long walk back to the city to find food. He broke five loaves of bread and a few fishes into pieces and had his disciples distribute the pieces to the crowd. After all had eaten, there were more than five loaves of bread and a few fishes left over. It was a miracle!

The first reaction of those present was to testify that "this is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world" (John 6:14), but that reality means different things to different people. This crowd was hoping it would mean a lot of free meals. "When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain himself alone" (John 6:15).

Human nature has hardly changed in two thousand years. The masses today often choose not only their religious and political leaders but also their furniture store and orthodontist based on the "free bread" that can be offered. At first glance, it may even seem that Christ avoided a great opportunity here. The people wanted him to be their king! How much easier would it be to share his message as a king than as a carpenter?!

Christ explained his refusal the next day when the crowd found him in the city. "Verily, verily, I say unto you," he said, "Ye seek me, not because ye desire to keep my sayings, neither because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled" (John 6:26). The Jews wanted a temporal Messiah that would free them from Rome and put food in their bellies; Christ had come with the much greater mission to free us all from sin and death and put the gospel in our hearts so we could one day be like him.

His mission wasn't concerned with votes or consensus or popular opinion, but rather commitment and devotion and discipleship. Followers without faith aren't any better than if they hadn't followed at all.

Addressing the crowd's focus on their next meal, he concluded his explanation with an admonition to, "Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you" (John 6:27). Said another way, it's not the pot luck after church that nourishes our souls but the feast upon the Word that happens during church, at home and wherever else we choose to open our scriptures or go to our knees in prayer. It is by ingesting his gospel, not funeral potatoes and Jell-o, that our souls are able to heal, replace toxic habits and behaviors, and become stronger and more faithful.

With the advantage of two millenia of hindsight, it may seem easy to spot the short-sightedness of the people of Capernaum. They stood in the presence of the Creator, a god through whom all things are possible, and asked only for another loaf of bread. It is sometimes harder to recognize such smallness when our own approaches to the Divine become focused on similar requests for temporal wants or "golden goose" solutions that may be equally inappropriate and ungrateful.

Yet, we as they are often most persistent about our least important needs. When Christ refused to become their king, the crowd asked for Christ to simply provide more bread. When Christ refused again, they changed their approach and asked for the bread as a sign that he, like Moses, was doing the work of God. When Christ offered the bread of the gospel as a superior alternative to the manna their ancestors ate, the people responded, "Evermore, give us this bread," or, "That sounds great, but what we really need is something that goes with our lamb stew" (John 6:34).

Finally, in response to the crowd's oblivious persistence, Christ gave the people the formula for an endless supply of bread. "I am the bread of life," he taught, "he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst" (John 6:35). Unfortunately, the crowd was so focused on what they wanted that they did not perceive that they were being offered something much greater than a loaf of honey wheat. We can avoid their folly by zooming out to see that the formula Christ presents here-- and previously to the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well (John 4:13-14)--  is fulfilled in at least two different ways.

First, Christ gives us the bread and water of His gospel as we come unto him. That is, as we exercise our faith, continue to repent and improve ourselves, make and keep sacred covenants, and receive and follow the Holy Ghost, our souls receive the nutrients they need to repair and rebuild. And just as our DNA provides the blueprints for our physical bodies to build according to our biological heritage and the available nutrients, our souls have within them the potential to be like our Heavenly Father and our Heavenly Mother if we'll just feed it the right nutrients.

And second, Christ offers us the bread and water of the sacrament as symbols of his sacrifice for us and the covenants we have made with him. When the Lord instituted the Passover, he instructed the Israelites to both mark their doorposts with lamb's blood and consume the meat of the lamb in a special meal. The Israelites were physically saved and physically fed by their obedience. In like manner, the Lord instituted the sacrament so that we could symbolically eat the flesh of the Lamb of God and mark the doorposts of our souls with his blood. We are fed both body and spirit as we partake and delivered from sin and death through our obedience and the power of his atonement.

We witness as we partake of the sacrament that we will always remember him and keep his commandments. But what's more, Christ and the covenants we have made with him become a little more of who we are-- physically and spiritually-- as we take the sacrament each week.

Every day we decide to eat hot dogs or steaks, carrots or chips, yogurt and berries or twinkies and soda. We make the same kind of decisions about building spiritual cardboard huts or something more enduring. If we make a regular diet of the meat which endureth unto everlasting life, we will find that we will change from this moment to the next. More specifically, we will become the gospel that we have consumed and the image of the Lamb of God will radiate from our countenances. The choice is ours, but buyer beware: you are what you eat.

A Sacrament for All Time

One of the most celebrated events in Judeo-Christian history is the exodus of the Israelites from slavery. The Lord had prepared and preserved the prophet Moses to be his mouthpiece as he introduced miracles and plagues to persuade the Egyptian Pharoah to free his covenant people. When none of these were effective, a tenth plague was announced that would kill the firstborn of each family.

To preserve the lives of the faithful, the Lord also introduced the ordinance of the Passover. Those that would listen to Moses were instructed to find a male lamb without blemish and kill it after three days. The meat was to be well cooked and eaten in in a hurried way with shoes on and staffs in hand as if they would need to traverse the desert regions out of Egypt immediately following their meal. The blood of the lambs was to be displayed on the doorposts of each home as a token of their covenant.

On the appointed night, the firstborn of Egypt died. After the death of the king's son, the Israelites were finally allowed to leave Egypt.

For generations, the Passover ordinance brought together the past, the present and the future in the religious observances of faithful Israelites. It was a memorial of the what the Lord had done to preserve their lives, a reminder of vigilance required to meet the demands of the Law and be saved from death, and a call to be prepared for deliverance from bondage and for the coming of the Lord.

Three thousand years later, the same Lord that taught the Israelites about the Passover sat himself at a Passover meal in an upper room in Jerusalem. He had come to fulfill the Law of Moses and to introduce a higher law. He had prepared and preserved the lives of Peter, James, John and his other apostles to perform miracles and share the gospel message that would free mankind from the bondage of sin. He knew that no other power, no other sort of spirituality, nor the philosophies and wonders of men would be enough to save us from the spiritual death destined for us all.

To preserve both the physical and spiritual lives of the faithful, the Lord introduced the ordinance of the Sacrament. That very evening, he would go as the Lamb of God, without blemish, to Gethsemane and then to Golgatha to suffer and die for the sins and inadequacies of all mankind. Now he offered bread to his apostles so the faithful could partake of his flesh and wine to display on the doorposts of our souls as a token of the covenants we have made with him.

Like the Passover, the ordinance of the Sacrament reminds us of what the Lord has already done for us, what we should do today to be saved by the blood of the Lamb and that we need to prepare for him to keep his promises and for his glorious Second Coming. Each is worthy of our reverent contemplation. If we have appropriately prepared, we can partake of the sacrament with an attitude of urgency as if our deliverance from sin and death waits only upon our final swallow.

Just as the Israelites were delivered by the death of the king of Egypt's son, so are we delivered by the death of the Son of the Living God, the King of Kings. But not by his death only, but also by his life, for he lives and he will come again in what is sure to be a great and terrible day in eternal history of heaven and earth.

See also: Exodus 12, 1 Peter 1:18-23, Alma 34:36-41.

Always Remember Him

Every Sunday as we attend our ward sacrament meeting, we hear two prayers repeated word-for-word. The first is the prayer on the bread of the sacrament; the second for the water. In these prayers we find the covenant we accepted at baptism: we covenant to take the name of Christ upon ourselves, to always keep His commandments, and to always remember Him.

Or do we?

When I was a teacher at the Provo Missionary Training Center, I would read the sacrament prayers often with the missionaries. At least once during their 8-week stay, after agreeing upon the covenant as mentioned above, I would inquire how long the missionaries kept all of the commandments after they took the sacrament on any given week. Most often, we would agree that we usually didn't get through an entire day, sometimes not even out of church, without having some undisciplined thought or saying something regretful or doing something inconsistent with the commandments we had covenanted to keep. We agreed that our failure to keep the commandments could potentially break the agreement we had made, making our covenant void.

At this conclusion, I would challenge the missionaries with a question: "If, in reality, we don't always keep the commandments, and that jeopardizes the validity of our covenant," I'd ask, "what happens if I die on a Thursday?"

With some back-and-forth discussion, the missionaries insisting repentance overrides all individual shortfalls and me asking for evidence from the verse, one or more of the missionaries would always stumble upon a most interesting word in D&C 20:77. "It doesn't say that we'll always keep the commandments," they'd say, "but that we we will be willing to take upon us the name of Christ, willing to always remember Him and willing to always keep the commandments." We'd conclude that a willing attitude is a key to keeping our covenants. We may not always keep every commandment, but as long as we press forward and are always willing to keep them, we are keeping our covenant-- and that is something we can do from Sunday to Thursday to Sunday and on again from week to week.

Something that I didn't realize well enough to share with my missionaries was the way the sacrament prayers work together. The prayer over the bread does indeed emphasize willingness. It says that as we eat the bread in remembrance of the body of Christ, we witness that we are, "willing to take upon them the name of thy Son, and always remember him and keeps his commandments which he has given them; that they may always have his Spirit to be with them." If we are truly willing, we may have his Spirit with us always.

The prayer over the water, however, is not about willingness. It is not about trying, it is about doing-- but the requirements are slightly different. As we drink in remembrance of the Savior's atoning blood, we witness, "that they do always remember him, that they may have his Spirit to be with them."

First, we agree to be willing, to keep trying, and to press forward. Then, we agree that we will always remember our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Knowing how to always remember Him is a point of such importance that it has merited three talks from living apostles with nearly identical titles. In a 2009 address from Elder D. Todd Christofferson, we learn that three aspects of always remembering Christ include seeking to know and follow His will; recognizing and accepting our obligation to answer to Christ for every thought, word, and action; and living with faith and without fear so that we can always look to the Savior for the help we need.

Elder Oaks provided more examples of how we can always remember Him in an address given in 1988. Some of those examples include serving as called, forgiving others, receiving ordinances, enduring affliction, ministering to the sick and afflicted, and loving our neighbors.

In his 1999 CES fireside address, then-Elder Eyring taught:

The Master not only foresees perfectly the growing power of the opposing forces but also knows what it is like to be mortal. He knows what it is like to have the cares of life press upon us. He knows that we are to eat bread by the sweat of our brows and of the cares, concerns, and even sorrows that come from the command to bring children to the earth. And He knows that both the trials we face and our human powers to deal with them ebb and flow.
He knows the mistake we can so easily make: to underestimate the forces working for us and to rely too much on our human powers. And so He offers us the covenant to “always remember Him” and the warning to “pray always” so that we will place our reliance on Him, our only safety. It is not hard to know what to do. The very difficulty of remembering always and praying always is a needed spur to try harder. The danger lies in delay or drift.

If we are unsure how to always remember Him, Elder Eyring encouraged us to start by remembering Him. He pleaded with us to study and ponder the scriptures and to go to our Heavenly Father in prayer. As we learn to always remember Christ, we will always have his Spirit with us, we will have armor and protection against pride and undisciplined thoughts that may lead us astray. We will have strength that we will not drift and faith to do all things.

As we take the sacrament each week, we are reminded of the promises we have made to be willing to take upon ourselves the name of Christ, to be willing to keep his commandments at all times and in all places, and to always, always remember Him. As the ten-minute reminder concludes, the task to remember becomes our own. As we establish habits of scripture reading, prayer and blessing those around us, we can ensure that we will remember Him for the 10,000 minutes of each week spent outside of sacrament meeting.

And, best of all, we can have his Spirit to be with us. Always.

A Note on Ordination, Ordinances

All of us know ordinations and ordinances are vital to our salvation and exaltation. We have often defined ordinances in our various church meetings as sacred acts which, when performed properly, contribute to our salvation. Ordinations are necessary to pass along a priesthood office or calling.

This general understanding of ordinances and ordinations are correct. There are certain ordinances, such as baptism, which we must have for salvation; and there is a certain connection to the priesthood required for exaltation. Keeping this in mind, Elder Packer teaches: "Remember, the word order means to put in rows or in proper relationship. Ordaining is the process of doing it, and ordinance is the ceremony by which it is done" (The Holy Temple, 217).

Ordination, then, is the process of putting things into proper relationship and ordinances are the ceremony by which this relationship organization is performed. More specifically, through ordinations and ordinances each of us may be put into our proper relationship with God and with our Savior, Jesus Christ. This is done piece by piece, bit by bit, ordinance by ordinance until we become "heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ" (Romans 8:17).

If this is true, than ordinances such as sacraments, baptisms, endowments and marriage are more than symbolic expressions of faith and devotion; on the contrary, these are also the practical means by which we are justified, restored and sealed to our Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, His Son, and our heavenly family. No wonder we are required to extend these blessings to both the living and the dead, for how could a person without these ordinances expect to return to their Heavenly Father?

It becomes us as Latter-day Saints to do all we can to help in this great work putting the family of God into their proper relationship with their Heavenly Father. We can do this through missionary work, temple attendance and teaching our families. The Lord has promised us that as we do all we can for the salvation of others we will also bring salvation to our own souls (Mark 8:35-37). Let us all do all we can for this great cause.