Come, Follow Me October 7-13: 3 Nephi 17-19
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.
Guarding the Body (Prayer as Vigil)
3 Nephi 18:15-24
By Kimberly Matheson
Jesus spends much of 3 Nephi 18 passing out gifts to an assembled multitude, usually by giving them first to his disciples. The first gifts are things we immediately recognize: the emblems of the sacrament, bread and wine distributed to the Lord’s newest followers. The third gift, however, is something more unexpected: a teaching delivered first to the disciples and then to the multitude. Speaking to his twelve chosen followers in verse 15, Jesus says: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, ye must watch and pray always, lest ye be tempted by the devil, and ye be led away captive by him” (3 Ne 18:15). And then, “when Jesus had spoken these words unto his disciples, he turned again unto the multitude and said unto them: Behold, verily, verily, I say unto you, ye must watch and pray always lest ye enter into temptation; for Satan desireth to have you, that he may sift you as wheat” (3 Ne 18:17–18). Jesus wishes to instruct his followers about prayer, and he parcels out this teaching exactly like the bread and wine.
What is it that Jesus wishes us to hear in these words? And why is it important enough to rank among the sacramental distribution of his flesh and blood?
We might notice, first, that Jesus doesn’t simply command his followers to pray in general. He commands them to “watch and pray,” invoking the time-honored form of prayer known as vigil. When you keep vigil, you stay awake at a time when most people are asleep. You stay contemplatively vigilant against encroaching darkness, refusing to let your memory or your attention slip into unconsciousness. Vigils can be public, as when communities gather in response to a recent death, or they can be more private and domestic, as when a mother peers out through the blinds for her teenager after curfew. Jesus wants his disciples to pray, yes, but he wants them to pray with the vigilance of a soldier on guard duty or the warden of a lighthouse who minds the generator on a particularly stormy night.
Nor are these words entirely new. Jesus has counseled something similar before. When the risen Lord warns his new followers that “Satan desireth to have you, that he may sift you as wheat” (3 Ne 18:17–18), he echoes words addressed to Peter at the Last Supper. On that fateful night in the upper room, it was revealed to the Jerusalem disciples that Jesus was going to die, that they had a betrayer in their midst, and that Satan had laid a malevolent scheme against Jesus’s followers, hoping to fracture and divide them in the face of the coming trial. As the meal came to a close, a fight broke out, and the disciples devolved into a petty quarrel about who among them was the greatest (Luke 22:24), after which Jesus finally turned to Peter and issued the following warning:
Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not. And when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren. (Luke 22:31–32)
Watching the way a trivial dispute could fracture his disciples, Jesus warned them of a much more devastating division still to come. Satan was reaching after this band of disciples, hoping to “sift [them]”—to divide them, wheat from chaff, until they were broken in pieces, susceptible to being blown about by the wind. Against that schism, Jesus prayed anxiously for Peter, knowing that, although Peter would turn away for a time, he would also return. And when he did, his task would be to “strengthen [his] brethren,” to reunify and stabilize the community at which Satan was so fiercely chipping away.
There was a time in my life when I would have most naturally read these warnings as counsel about me and my individual covenant life. I should “watch and pray,” I would have thought because Satan wants to lure me into sins that would threaten my eternal progress. But now that I am older and a bit more aware of the people under my care—now, that is, that I am a mother and a more conscientious ward member and a slightly-anxious-but-trying-neighbor—I hear this counsel differently. Now I can read past this initial counsel to consider it in light of what Jesus says next.
Jesus does not have his eyes on individuals, it seems, but on whole communities. To his disciples, he commands: “As I have prayed among you even so shall ye pray in my church, among my people” (3 Ne 18:16). And when speaking to the multitude, he reminds them to “pray in your families” and “meet together oft” and “not forbid any man from coming unto you when ye shall meet together” and “pray for them” (3 Ne 18:21–23). In the same way that Peter was to be on guard against a communal fracturing in Luke 22, Jesus seems to be reminding his Nephite followers to guard against Satan’s threats to their communities: his erosion of their unity, his attempts to break apart the Zion that the Lord gave his life to form. Vigil, after all, is never something we keep on behalf of ourselves but always on behalf of others—like citizens who gather to mourn a young life taken too quickly in a car accident, the soldier standing guard so the rest of his squad can catch a few hours of sleep, or the staff in the maternity ward nursery letting new mothers rest in the vulnerable nights just after delivery.
In 3 Nephi 18, the Savior calls us to recognize that prayer has power not just in guarding us individually. If we let it, it can also serve as a kind of vigil over the Zion communities that we’re trying to form—in our wards, our friendships, our families. Prayer is not only something we do by ourselves in our closets (Matt 6:6), individually by our beds, silently in our hearts. It is also something that we do aloud over pulpits and with our children and in hospital rooms. When we pray in sacrament meetings, do we take seriously our role as a mouthpiece for an entire community, trying to speak into words the desires of all the hearts in that room? When my children hear me praying, do they hear me trying to soothe contention and reaching for understanding with those who think differently than I do? Do we pray in a way that binds hearts together and unifies in love all those within reach of our voice?
When Christ chooses to parcel out instructions on communal prayer alongside the emblems of his flesh and blood, I believe he does so because the body of Christ is centrally at issue in both gifts. “As I have prayed among you even so shall ye pray in my church,” the Savior commands (3 Ne 18:16). It is no coincidence, I think, that when scripture lets us overhear Christ praying on our behalf, these are the words we read: “Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me that they may be one” (John 17:11).
Images
Jorge Cocco Santángelo, Jesus partiendo el pan, Jesus Breaking the Bread, 2011. The Book of Mormon Art Catalog, [bookofmormonartcatalog.org/catalog/jesus-partiendo-el-pan-jesus-breaking-the-bread/].
J. Kirk Richards, Three Angels with Trumps, 2014. [https://www.jkirkrichards.com/catalog2016.pdf]
Julie Rogers, Sincere Prayer. [julierogersart.com/product/sincere_prayer/]