Originally Written: August 2022.

Confidence Level: I gave this talk over the pulpit at church.

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Introduction

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints used to have a tradition of building cities.

Under the leadership of Joseph Smith, we built the cities of Kirtland, Far West, and Nauvoo. Brigham Young oversaw the building of almost 300 cities across the Intermountain West.^[1]Colonization of Utah by Leonard J. Arrington City building slowed dramatically after his death. We haven’t built any new cities in the last hundred years.

Why?

Building cities is closely tied to the idea of Zion. We see this in the early days of our dispensation, as well as in 4 Nephi, verse 7:

And the Lord did prosper them exceedingly in the land; yea, insomuch that they did build cities again where there had been cities burned.

Zion is closely tied to the idea of consecration. So don’t worry bishop, I’m not straying too far from my assigned topic. We see this from the Law of Consecration itself.

Law of Consecration

If we covenant to live the Law of Consecration, we covenant to consecrate everything we have to the Church of Jesus Christ for building the Kingdom of God and Zion.

This “for” statement is unusual for a covenant. You didn’t hear a “for” in the Sacrament Prayers. This covenant has a specific purpose: building the Kingdom of God and Zion.

I think of this as a three way covenant between God, myself, and the Church. I may be asked to consecrate everything to the Church, but the Church can not ask me to consecrate something unless it is for building the Kingdom of God and Zion.

We can see this in the most obvious example of consecration: the full-time missionaries. You two are asked to consecrate a lot, aren’t you? Why do you do it? Because you are building the Kingdom of God.

Missionary work is clearly part of the purpose of consecration. But to fully understand the purpose, we have to understand Zion. For that, we look to our history.

History of Zion

Joseph Smith was a very utopian man. He saw lots of problems in the world, and dreamed (literally) about how to fix them. With the help of God, he was able to make progress on many of them.

Today, we mostly focus on Joseph’s religious utopian project. God used him to Restore truths of the Gospel that had been lost. God used him to build His Church, led with His Priesthood.

Joseph also wanted an economic, social, and even political utopia. This is Zion. We don’t just want to be a member of the True and Living Church, we also want to be a member of the True and Living Society.

Zion and the Church were not the same. You could be a member of the Church and not live in Zion. You could live in Zion and not be a member of the Church. In Nauvoo, even a few of the people called as leaders of Zion were not members of the Church.^[2]This was called the Council of 50. The nonmembers who were on the Nauvoo Council of 50 were Marenus Eaton, Edward Bonney, & Uriah Brown.

Joseph put a lot of time and effort into building Zion. He received revelation about building Zion within a year after the Church was organized. By 1833, he had produced detailed city plans.

The city of Zion would have about 20,000 people.^[3]This was very ambitious: the entire Church at the time had only about 5,000 members. Most of the people were farmers, who would live in the city and walk to their fields. This is different from most American cities at the time. Most American cities were mostly commercial or industrial, and most American farmers lived scattered across the countryside.

When the city Joseph planned got too large for farmers to walk to their fields, it was time to build a new city somewhere else. These cities were the stakes of Zion, planted across the Midwest, mixed with the “Gentile” settlements. Our modern terminology of ‘stakes’ and ‘wards’ comes from a time when these referred to cities. The cities of Zion would be the leaven in the loaf, causing the whole bread to rise.

There were a few differences between the way Brigham built cities and the way Joseph planned to build cities. The violence in the Midwest caused Brigham to build all of his cities close together, instead of scattered across the rest of the country. Brigham was also willing to have larger and more specialized cities.

But the cities built by Joseph and Brigham were similar in how they dealt with consecration.

Consecration in Zion

When you move to Zion, you would deed all of your property to the Church. The Church would then assign you a stewardship sufficient for yourself and your family. ^[4]This is in D&C 42:30-36. Anything extra that you did not need would be administered by the Bishop, to help the poor and needy, and to build houses of worship.

Legally, this is a radically different vision of property ownership. The Church legally owns all of the land in Zion. In practice, you still control the land you have a stewardship over. Your everyday life might look the same as if you owned your land.

What stewardship you were assigned usually depended on what skills you had developed before moving to Zion. If you had been a blacksmith before, you would likely still be a blacksmith. If you had been a printer, you would likely still be a printer. If you had been a weaver, you would likely still be a weaver. In a lot of ways, living your life in Zion would be similar to living your life anywhere else.

So what is different about living in Zion?

You life has been consecrated to God.

Sacrifice and Consecration

We can now see what consecration is, and how consecration is different from sacrifice. Uchtdorf explained the difference is his talk Our Heartfelt All:

To sacrifice means to give something up in favor of something more valuable. Anciently, God’s people sacrificed the firstlings of their flocks in honor of the coming Messiah. Throughout history, faithful Saints have sacrificed personal desires, comforts, and even their lives for the Savior. …

Consecration is different from sacrifice in at least one important way. When we consecrate something, we don’t leave it to be consumed upon the altar. Rather, we put it to use in the Lord’s service. We dedicate it to Him and His holy purposes. We receive the talents that the Lord has given us and strive to increase them, manifold, to become even more helpful in building the Lord’s kingdom.

When we sacrifice something to God, we lose it. When we consecration something to God, we keep it, but now it is being used to build the Kingdom of God and Zion.

When a blacksmith is a blacksmith on his own, he may do good work in this world. But when a blacksmith is a blacksmith in Zion, he is glorifying God.

Consecration Today

Let’s fast forward to today. We are no longer trying to rebuild the economic, social, and political foundations of society. We don’t dream as much about a utopia on Earth. We don’t build cities anymore.

But that does not mean that we don’t believe in consecration anymore.

We can still dedicate our lives to God. We can still love God and God’s children in everything we do. We can still serve God and God’s children while going about our daily lives.

This is what it means to consecrate our lives today.

The question I leave you with today is not: What can I change to become better? Instead, it’s: What can I do the same, but do it in a way that is consecrated to God?

Maybe someday, the Church of Jesus Christ will start building cities again. I’ve got a bit of a utopian streak in me, so I hope to be part of it. Until then, we are asked to live our lives as individuals in a secular society, and to live in a way that glorifies God.

I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.