Come, Follow Me October 21-27: 3 Nephi 27-4 Nephi
In 2024, the Maxwell Institute will offer a weekly series of short essays on the Book of Mormon, in support of the Church-wide Come, Follow Me study curriculum. Each week, the Maxwell Institute blog will feature a post by a member of the Institute faculty exploring an aspect of the week’s reading block. We hope these explorations will enrich your study and teaching of the Book of Mormon throughout the coming year.
For They Will Sell Me for Silver and for Gold
By Steven L. Peck
At the beginning of 3 Nephi 27, Jesus has completed his visit to the Nephites, and his ordained disciples have begun to preach his gospel throughout the land. We read:
1 And it came to pass that as the disciples of Jesus were journeying and were preaching the things which they had both heard and seen, and were baptizing in the name of Jesus, it came to pass that the disciples were gathered together and were united in mighty prayer and fasting.
2 And Jesus again showed himself unto them, for they were praying unto the Father in his name; and Jesus came and stood in the midst of them, and said unto them: What will ye that I shall give unto you? 3 Nephi 27: 1-2
I want to think about what is happening spatially for a second. Remember, much of land where Christ has appeared to the Nephites has been destroyed. It is a land of desolation and ruin. Amid the ruin, the disciples are gathering the remnants of the people, bringing news to people who were not present physically and near the temple of Zarahemla. These others were not located near enough to have firsthand experience with the appearance of Christ, so they are getting the stories of Jesus' visit secondhand. While on this journey, the disciples have gathered (whether planned or by accident is not clear), but since they are together, they begin to call on the Father in the name of Jesus, and he appears at their location and stands "in the midst of them." He has a specific location. He is at a time and place. He is present to them.
Exploring the notion of the physical presence of Jesus, Cole Arthur Riley, the author of Black Liturgies, talks about her first year at the University of Pittsburg. She writes,
As someone who is made of more doubt than faith, I find that Christians tend to want to talk to me about salvation. They seem quite concerned with the future of my faith, but they make the mistake of showing little interest in my present conditions. If asked to choose, I want a God who is someplace. Not just in “the heart,” but God standing on Fifth and Lothrop—God beyond the glass. I don’t just want to be rescued: I want to be taken someplace safe and good.
I think of Abraham’s descendants leaving the promised land and being forced into bondage; God didn’t raise up Moses just to free them from Pharoah. They were liberated to somewhere. They left their chains and began making their way back home. What healing can manifest when place is restored, when those once dislocated from their home are delivered into it once again. It seems to me God's promise was always a place. A liberation born of location.
This idea of a place of safety, a located Jesus, who "stood in the midst of them." I've been thinking of what this means to me, located in Pleasant Grove, a small town in Utah, to create a space where Jesus can be present, like he was with the disciples. We believe that Jesus has a body. He is a being of flesh and bone, implying a physical location. At the end of 3 Nephi and into 4 Nephi, Jesus gives the disciples instructions on obtaining his presence. We've seen that the desire to have his presence available to us can be enacted in one way by his coming to us as he did with the disciples and the living presence that came to them. But there is another way. Shortly after the appearance given above, where he comes to the disciples who desire his presence in much the same way that Cole Arthur Riley desires (so much about this chapter is about desire), he gives another way to obtain his presence:
14 And my Father sent me that I might be lifted up upon the cross; and after that I had been lifted up upon the cross, that I might draw all men unto me …”
Jesus brings us to him. This is described in Paul's letters to the Hebrews 11:
13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the Earth.
14 For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country.
15 And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned.
16 But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.
Is this heavenly talk about heaven as the place we all await? In part, but I think there is a nuance here redolent of the Latter-day Saint notion of Zion, which once was just an idea of a single location where we all gathered but now is an idea that has expanded into building Zion where we are. In the here and now. In our time and place.
This is enacted in 4 Nephi:
2 And it came to pass in the thirty and sixth year, the people were all converted unto the Lord, upon all the face of the land, both Nephites and Lamanites, and there were no contentions and disputations among them, and every man did deal justly one with another.
3 And they had all things common among them; therefore there were not rich and poor, bond and free, but they were all made free, and partakers of the heavenly gift.…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.
8 Yea, even that great city Zarahemla did they cause to be built again….
15 And it came to pass that there was no contention in the land, because of the love of God which did dwell in the hearts of the people.
16 … and surely there could not be a happier people among all the people who had been created by the hand of God.
17 There were no robbers, nor murderers, neither were there Lamanites, nor any manner of -ites; but they were in one, the children of Christ, and heirs to the kingdom of God.
But as we know, this will all fall apart by the end of 4 Nephi.
The "all manner of -ites” returns. People will begin to separate themselves into classes again. Wealth and its accoutrements prevent people from recognizing that the strangers and pilgrims on Earth are all God's children. They will think they are better because of the benefits they were born with, giving them more weight in God's calculus. They (and we) label the disenfranchised, the immigrants, and others across the borders they have erected to keep them out of God's City, or place of refuge; they mark them as strangers and persecute them while keeping them at bay. Christ predicted this, and it signifies that he has been rejected. Back to 3 Nephi 27:
32 But behold, it sorroweth me because of the fourth generation from this generation, for they are led away captive by him even as was the son of perdition; for they will sell me for silver and for gold, and for that which moth doth corrupt and which thieves can break through and steal. And in that day will I visit them, even in turning their works upon their own heads.
Have we made place for the stranger? Have we neglected the poor in any way? Jesus seems to make a place for his disciples in two ways: (1) visiting them by appearing where they are and (2) drawing them to his presence through the Cross and his atonement. Making a place for the Lord becomes impossible if we have not worked to create the love of God in the spaces we curate. This is how the Nephites failed—by selling Christ for the things of the world over the needs of our fellow travelers on this planet. We cannot have a space where Christ can dwell, this City of God, if we have excluded the stranger or attempted to make it a private resort where the love of money replaces the love of others. The terrifying word “perdition” in the above scripture is telling.
Images
Ben Crowder, That Ye May Stand Spotless, 2024. The Book of Mormon Art Catalog, [Bookofmormonartcatalog.org/catalog/that-ye-may-stand-spotless/].
James St. John, Flickr. Chalcopyrite-sphalerite.
Mormon.People, Silhouette, 2023. The Book of Mormon Art Catalog, [Bookofmormonartcatalog.org/catalog/silhouette/].
Steven Neal, The Deaf to Hear, 1995. The Book of Mormon Art Catalog, [Bookofmormonartcatalog.org/catalog/the-deaf-to-hear/].