Weeping for Zion

On the day of the dedication of the church, the Lord spoke these words of the Prophet Joseph: “Yes, his weeping for Zion I have seen, and I will cause that he shall mourn for her no longer; for his days of rejoicing are come unto the remission of his sins” (D&C 21:8).  At this point in the church, there wasn’t yet a concept of Zion as a gathering place for the Saints in the revelations that Joseph had received.  It wasn’t until July of 1831, more than a year later, that Joseph revealed that Zion would be “in the land of Missouri” with Independence as the “center place” (D&C 57:1,3).  It was after this that all of the great difficulties related to the persecution from Missourians came--so what “weeping” was the Lord referring to here in 1830?  The verse tells us that Joseph would rejoice because of the “remission of his sins”, and so I think that the “weeping for Zion” here was the weeping of Joseph for his own sins.  Zion is more than just a physical place, and so perhaps we can think of it here in this context as a matter of personal worthiness: Zion in one sense means forsaking sin and being pure before the Lord.  Joseph wept in many instances because of his own sins and weaknesses, such as with the incident of losing the 116 manuscript pages.  Later Joseph would reveal that Zion is “the pure in heart,” and I think it’s with exactly that connotation here in D&C 20 that the Lord is using it (D&C 97:21).  So when we personally try to follow the Lord’s charge to “seek to bring forth and establish the cause of Zion” we should focus first on becoming pure in heart ourselves and forsaking our own sins.  Only then can an actual gathering of righteous Saints come together to build the physical city of Zion.