Thoughts on the Atonement for a Funeral

The well-known adage says that “time heals all wounds.” This is most definitely false. The healing process can require time, but it isn’t time that heals. The power to heal comes from another source. That source is Jesus Christ.

Wounds, both spiritual and temporal, involve a separation—a separation of things that were meant to be together. A physical wound such as a cut, painfully breaks the flesh, dividing one side from another, severing tissue and blood vessels. Impassable chasms are caused by untamed courses of water that slowly erode the earth away to form deep and lasting breaches in the landscape. Physical death is the severing of body from spirit which were joined at birth as part of our Father in Heaven’s plan for us to become like Him. Spiritual death is like an impassable chasm separating us from our Father in Heaven’s presence, a breach caused by the Fall of man and our own sin. In this life, we experience conflict, which is a separation from peace, sorrow, which is a separation from joy, captivity, a separation from freedom, and most prominent on our minds now, mortality, which is the painful separation from the ones we love, those that were meant to always be with us.

The Atonement was the event by which Jesus Christ used His unique power as the son of God and the son of Man to redeem and resurrect all of mankind. These words redeem and resurrect both begin with the important prefix re- meaning again or back. The power of Christ is the power to not only redeem, meaning to buy us back from hell, and resurrect, to raise us again from death, but it is also power to restore past conditions, power to repair separations, power to return us to wholeness, the state before we were broken.

In Christ’s own words: Luke 4:18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.

The Atonement of Christ was an expression of His power that is represented in all aspects of the healing process. To heal a cut, stitches may be required to help bind the two sides together, acting like temporary bridges to shorten the gap in the flesh, while the body repairs broken blood vessels and grows new tissue. Ultimately, as the wound heals, the edges pull inward, until you are made whole again.

During the time in which Christ is still healing us to ultimately become whole again, He also has power to connect us to the side from which are separated, like stitches that bind. The Only Begotten has power, both figuratively and literally, to act as a bridge to span a chasm, in the end pulling the opposing cliffs back together and securing the ground once more until there is no more gap in the earth. We are not yet resurrected, but the Atonement connects us to the knowledge that one day we will. In bearing all of the sorrows, pain, and heartache of every individual, Christ bridges the gap between our mortal sufferings and our immortal Father in Heaven. He paves the covenant path ahead through His example until ultimately, as we follow Him, we are restored to God’s presence.

The atoning power of Christ that succors us through spiritual connections to the other side during our separations and then heals us so completely is enough to warrant our eternal gratitude. But this isn’t all. His power returns us to conditions even better than before the separation occurred, like newer, tougher skin that forms when a wound heals. Resurrection isn’t merely a return to the same body that we had before; it will be a perfected body that can never die. Restoration to the presence of our Father in Heaven won’t be simply coming back to Him; we will have become more like Him, through the example of our Savior Jesus Christ. And the joy in reuniting with a loved one will be greater than any we experienced with that person in this life.

Mormon 9 12 Behold, [God] created Adam, and by Adam came the fall of man. And because of the fall of man came Jesus Christ, … and because of Jesus Christ came the redemption of man.

13 And because of the redemption of man, which came by Jesus Christ, they are brought back into the presence of the Lord; yea, this is wherein all men are redeemed, because the death of Christ bringeth to pass the resurrection, which bringeth to pass a redemption from an endless sleep, from which sleep all men shall be awakened by the power of God when the trump shall sound; and they shall come forth, both small and great, and all shall stand before his [judgment] bar, being redeemed and loosed from this eternal band of death.

I testify to you that Rachel, someone that was both small AND great, will be resurrected, and one day you will be reunited with her, along with God and His Son Jesus Christ. For all who loved her, I promise that you will feel the succor of the binding power of Christ to her during your separation, that you will be restored to her presence, never again to part, and that when you are together again, your joy will be greater than any you have ever felt before.

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.