This week, we celebrate the founding of Brigham Young University – Hawaii, formerly known as the Church College of Hawaii. Many have written about its founding and the direct involvement of President McKay and other church leaders, the sacrifice of local saints and the wonderful students such as yourselves who have entered to learn and then gone forth and served as we know you can and will do. It is a great story and one that I encourage all of us to continue to learn and share. Who from our choir are alums?
I love stories and what they can teach me and those I love and serve. Recently, while reviewing stories from the Bible, I discovered that hundreds of stories can be found in the Old Testament alone. In fact, one reference claims 1,739 Old Testament stories and 1,068 in the New Testament. We are also blessed to have stories from the Book of Mormon and modern scripture.
With my roots in agriculture, I have been interested in the parables about farming and animals in particular. The Savior as the master teacher used situations and settings that were familiar with his followers and those He taught that could allow them to be taught by the Holy Ghost if their desires were righteous.
Two of those parables that I would like to discuss involve sheep. I find now that many are familiar with the basic stories. Many have not experienced the feelings that the Savior wished for His followers to experience because animals are so removed and distant from many of us today. In the parable of the lost sheep, He wished to convey that He, the Savior, as the shepherd of our souls, would go to great lengths, even leaving the 99, to find the one. Watch this video and notice who he is speaking with and why:
VIDEO – LOST SHEEP
Most of you have never seen a flock of sheep grazing on a rugged mountain side. There is a shepherd and usually some faithful sheep dogs watching over the flock and caring for their protection and growth. Today, these flocks are usually large, and each individual becomes a number, but in the Savior’s day, each ewe, ram, or lamb was an individual and probably had a name. The relationship of the shepherd was not only economical in that the sheep provided his means of living but the sheep were his companions in a lonely land, his friends.
Can you find the lost sheep in this picture? He really is a happy boy. We call him Beefy; I guess he takes after his father and grandfather. What would I do for this lost lamb, my grandson?
Now I know the story, but what does it mean? What is the worth of one sheep? One soul? Was their someone else in the video? Did he care for the sheep? Was he willing to go with great discomfort and effort to find the lost lamb or soul? Or in the picture, who was Beefy crying out to? His mother? His father?
To help you experience the feelings conveyed by this parable, I have asked Brother Ah Quin to sing hymn #221, Dear to the Heart of the Shepherd. This hymn written by Mary Wingate, not a member of our church but I believe inspired just the same.
Did you notice the invitation in verse three: “Will you not seek for my lost ones?” We answer in verse four with “yes.” As His disciples, we are ready to be His “under-shepherds’ to seek the lost sheep. You might feel that the invitation to lost sheep everywhere to come back would be a good way to end this hymn, but no. Instead, it is a call to the followers of Jesus to seek out those who are lost, for that is the message the Savior intended as He shared this parable. Remember, He is the Shepherd; we are the under-shepherds.
The King James Version of Luke 15:4 says, “What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?”
Notice “if he lose” the sheep, as recorded in the scripture. In this hymn by Mary Wingate, she changes it to teach that these sheep have wandered, perhaps accidently or even knowingly. They have left the flock and wandered away.
David O. McKay, several years before the founding of BYU–Hawaii said, “That man is most truly great who is most Christ like. What you sincerely in your heart think of Christ will determine what you are, will largely determine what your acts will be” (Conference Report, Apr. 1951, 93).
That is a wonderful parable but is far more meaningful when you understand the next parable about Christ as the good Shepherd.
Let’s listen to the Lord’s words as He shares the next parable:
VIDEO – THE GOOD SHEPHERD
As I teach others, I use positive uplifting messages to instruct, edify, and motivate others to learn and grow. I found this challenge that uses the opposite to invite us to look inward to ourselves. I felt guilty in a few situations. How do you feel?
You are the one who has turned a calling (Shepherd) into a career (Sheep herder).
Down deep in your gut, you don’t really care as much about reaching lost people because it’s hard, long, tedious work, and you know that no matter how many times you deny it.
You are the one who tries to fit your ministry around your hobbies, pet causes, and other priorities.
You are hard to get a hold of and don’t respond to people quickly, and it’s all because you don’t really care that much.
You think that your people are really fortunate to have someone of your ability because you have been … trained, ordained, started as a volunteer, did something great many years ago, have been around for a long time, or replaced someone even more pathetic than you.
You are the one who, when a wolf shows up, lets him start eating sheep because the truth is you aren’t concerned about wolves feasting on sheep because that’s what you’ve been doing as their shepherd anyway.
You don’t really preach hard truth, don’t warn your people about danger, and are more like a cowardly enabler than a courageous leader.
You pretty much always get your day off, your vacations and holidays, and far more when no one else is looking.
You don’t have a long list of sins of commission (e.g. adultery, thievery, murder) but rather a long list of sins of omission (e.g. not working hard, not doing your best, not loving the people), and this leaves the sheep confused about what to do with their lazy shepherd.
You are really good at making excuses—way better than being a true under shepherd.
We have heard President Kimball when he taught, “God does notice us, and watches over us. But it is usually through another person that he meets our needs” ("Small Acts of Service," Ensign, Dec. 1974, p. 5).
Elder J. Richard Clarke shared this story to help us understand how we as under shepherds serve the Savior by meeting another’s needs.
A dear sister had been incapacitated for the past eight years – she could not walk or talk and was confined to bed. About six years ago, she and her husband were assigned a faithful home teacher. He asked if his wife could come over to their house every Sunday morning and stay with the invalid woman while her husband attended priesthood meeting. For six years, every Sunday, this home teacher would bring his wife over to stay with the invalid sister while her husband went to his meeting, and every Sunday, the home teacher’s wife would bring with her some baked goods or something special that she had made for this older couple.
Finally, this sister who had been ill passed away. When her daughter tried to express her deep love and appreciation to this loving home teacher and his wife for what they had done over the years, the wife said, “Oh, don’t thank us. It was our privilege to visit with your sweet mother. What am I going to do now? The hour and a half on Sunday morning will now be, for me, the loneliest hour and a half in the week” ("Love Extends beyond Convenience," Ensign, Nov. 1981, p. 81)
What do true shepherds do for their sheep? In the book of Ezekiel you find these active words: Search, seek, deliver, gather, feed, bind up, and strengthen (Ezekiel 34: 11-16).
To be an under shepherd is an active discipleship, not passive.
This leads me to the final video clip that helps us understand the need for protection from thieves, robbers or wolves.
VIDEO - SHEEPFOLD
Who or what is the wolf?
As I have tried to be a good father and grandfather, I see adversity come into the lives of my children and grandchildren. I know it is for their growth, but sometimes the hurt is so challenging.
Let me use the sacred covenant of marriage to show how God’s love is key. We should think of the role of the shepherd and recognize possible wolves. Elder Hafen explains this very well. He started by telling this story.
Another bride sighed blissfully on her wedding day, “Mom, I’m at the end of all my troubles!” “Yes,” replied her mother, “but at which end?”
Elder Bruce Hafen has taught this so well using principles found in these parables.
“Marriage is by nature a covenant, not just a private contract one may cancel at will. Jesus taught about contractual attitudes when he described the “hireling,” who performs his conditional promise of care only when he receives something in return. When the hireling “seeth the wolf coming,” he “leaveth the sheep, and fleeth … because he … careth not for the sheep.” By contrast, the Savior said, “I am the good shepherd, … and I lay down my life for the sheep.” Many people today marry as hirelings. And when the wolf comes, they flee. This idea is wrong. It curses the earth, turning parents’ hearts away from their children and from each other.”
Contract companions each give 50 percent; covenant companions each give 100 percent.
Every marriage is tested repeatedly by three kinds of wolves.
The first wolf is natural adversity. After asking God for years to give them a first child, David and Fran had a baby with a serious heart defect. Following a three-week struggle, they buried their newborn son. Like Adam and Eve before them, they mourned together, brokenhearted, in faith before the Lord.
Second, the wolf of their own imperfections will test them. One woman told me through her tears how her husband’s constant criticism finally destroyed not only their marriage but her entire sense of self-worth. He first complained about her cooking and housecleaning and then about how she used her time, how she talked, looked, and reasoned. Eventually, she felt utterly inept and dysfunctional. My heart ached for her and for him.
Contrast her with a young woman who had little self-confidence when she first married. Then, her husband found so much to praise in her that she gradually began to believe she was a good person and that her opinions mattered. His belief in her rekindled her innate self-worth. (As an aside, this is the story of Johnny Lingo.)
The third wolf is the excessive individualism that has spawned today’s contractual attitudes. A seven-year old girl came home from school crying, “Mom, don’t I belong to you? Our teacher said today that nobody belongs to anybody—children don’t belong to parents, husbands don’t belong to wives. I am yours, aren’t I, Mom?” Her mother held her close and whispered, “Of course you’re mine—and I’m yours, too.” Surely marriage partners must respect one another’s individual identity, and family members are neither slaves nor inanimate objects. But this teacher’s fear, shared today by many, is that the bonds of kinship and marriage are not valuable ties that bind but are, instead, sheer bondage. Ours is the age of the (decline) of belonging.
He then closes with this statement: “May we restore the concept of marriage as a covenant, even the new and everlasting covenant of marriage? And when the wolf comes, may we be as shepherds, not hirelings, willing to lay down our lives, a day at a time, for the sheep of our covenant.”
Brothers and sisters, I pray that we might understand our Father’s love who sent His Son; that we might understand His Son, our Savior, who gave His life so that we might share in His hope and love; the Savior, Christ, who followed the plan of our Father and restored truth, authority, and purpose through Joseph Smith, the prophet, and all the prophets since; that we might understand the love, covenant love, that would give one’s life, one’s own hopes, for the fulfillment of your spouse or someone you care deeply for; love of a Shepherd who would knowingly give His life so that we can live.
Please listen to this final hymn that will be sung by the Hawaiian Choir, and I pray that the Spirit will convey to your heart the Savior’s love, of which I bear testimony in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.