Everyone is invited to share the path

By John Hamer, Director of Outreach & Innovative Mission

Community of Christ in Canada provides a number of resources for sharing invitation, including source files that can be printed as posters, framed pictures, or art on canvas. These include a set of images, representing our understanding of the church’s sacred inheritance: the Old Covenant, the New Covenant, and the Restored Covenant.

The first is an image of Mt. Sinai with a quotation from Exodus 3:5: “The place where you’re standing is holy.” In the Exodus story, the God of Israel communes directly with Moses on the mountain sharing the name “I Am” — revealing God as divine being and the source of all being.

The second image is the shore of the Sea of Galilee, with the simple words Mark 1:17: “Follow me.” In the gospels, Jesus walks along the shore, and seeing simple fishers, Simon-Peter, Andrew, and others, says “Follow me” — an invitation to embark on the path of the disciple.

The third image represents the Sacred Grove in Palmyra, and shares the quotation from The Epistle of James 1:5: “If you lack wisdom, ask God.” Two centuries ago, a young spiritual seeker named Joseph Smith Jr., troubled by doubts, came across this verse, rendered in King James’ English: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.” Taking this invitation seriously, he went into the woods near his home to pray. In later recollections, he remembered a spiritual experience that became known as his “First Vision” by members of the Restoration movement that grew up around him.

Sinai, Galilee, Palmyra — Old Covenant, New Covenant, Restored Covenant. These stories of connecting with the divine have long been rich sources of inspiration, but they have also been abused when people have looked back and interpreted the individual experiences as sources of authority and then misused the stories to make authoritarian claims.

By the 2nd century BC, the Torah had taken its final form, and tradition had imagined Moses as its author. When a Judean priest named Judas Maccabeus, outraged at the desecration of the Jerusalem Temple by King Antiochus IV, led a revolt — his family, the Maccabees or Hasmoneans, successfully established an independent Judean kingdom. Although short-lived, the Maccabean kings took the opportunity to conquer their neighbours, destroying the rival Samaritan temple. They also conquered the Idumeans to the south and the Galileans to the north. And using Moses as a source of authority, they forcibly converted these new subjects to Mosaic law.

In the Christian era, Jesus’ calling of Simon bar Jonah has been used to make incredible claims to divine authority. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus renames Simon “Peter” (rocky) and says: “upon this rock I will build my church” (6:18). Tradition named Peter the first bishop of Rome, and later Roman bishops — considering themselves the heirs of Peter — developed claims to primacy over everything on earth.

In the Restoration era, Joseph Smith's first vision led to the claim of the church he organized to be “the one and only true church on the face of the earth.” An exclusive claim to divine authority we originally maintained as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and a claim that is still made by many other expressions of the Restoration, including the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

From our perspective in Community of Christ today, all three of these authoritarian interpretations of scripture miss the point of the stories themselves. In all three cases, God chooses an ordinary individual. Moses is “slow of speech and tongue” — not the most obvious candidate for God’s spokesperson. Simon-Peter is a simple fisherman, seemingly ill equipped to spread a gospel message in the culturally sophisticated Greco-Roman world. Joseph Smith was a farm boy from a poor, downwardly mobile family in the American countryside. The conclusion we should draw is that God is not focused on powerful leaders; God is available to the most humble. God’s revelation is available to everyone.

That is the clear message in the scripture from The Epistle of James that inspired Joseph Smith to pray. It does not predict a chosen one will come in the latter days, to whom all authority will be given. It says “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.” God gives generously to all. Not to just one state or kingdom. Not to just one church. Not to just one leader. God gives generously to all.

If you would like to make use of this set of three posters in your congregation or campground, you can download the source files here.

Posters and Media