A Planner, a landowner, and a farmer walk into a church

Review

James is highly concerned with right living in the world. The way that faith guides the life of the believer and the community of believers.

This week in my reading, I even came across this belief that James was probably writing an encyclical letter. Like the pope writing a letter to all the leaders of the church so that they may guide their communities.

In this final section James turns again to the way of life. This time focusing on worldviews and what the day to day should be like.

Scripture

James 5:7–9 NIV

Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains. You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near. Don’t grumble against one another, brothers and sisters, or you will be judged. The Judge is standing at the door!

Introduction

It has occurred to me in nearly 10 years of ministry, both with students and parents and then in pastoral ministry that we have many different views of how God interacts with the world. You can pick up on this in listening to people, largely when dealing with crisis.

An example, I will never forget: hurricane Katrina in Louisiana in 2005. I had just gotten to college, my freshmen year. I didnt really know what was going on for days. Religious conservatives began to claim that the hurricane happened because God was punishing the United States.

Interesting take to think that God would use this hurricane to punish a country. That they were bad so they got bad.

Or individually you see this play out when people are wrestling with death:

It must have been his time

God needed another angel

All insinuate that God was responsible for this death

Everyday, you see this perspective in the phrase, “well everything happens for a reason.”

Sometimes I see another perspective, like the other day I shared a quote on facebook about the supernatural power of God at work in the world. Someone responded with skepticism. Which I get. They said “well, I dont know if I believe in the miraculous because I and so many friends have prayed desperately for healing and not received it.”

Sr. Pastor in Kingwood.

Sometimes the development here is that God really does not interact with us.

Like a clockmaker, he has put it all together and wound this thing up and it is going.

Divine Action:

All of these are about divine action. What do we believe about our freedom as humans? What do we believe about God’s sovereignty and action in the world.

Do we believe that God determines everything that happens, through power, or coercion, or persuasion?

Do we believe that he allows it all to play out with some persuasion only, occasionally intervening?

Do we believe we are kind of all on our own on this thing?

Well a lecture on divine action and theistic philosophy probably should be saved for a different setting. James is not going to answer these questions directly but he will give us clues about how to live in the world that God has created. James presents three hypotheticals that would speak to people in the context of the church. Two critiques and one affirmation of the type of person that is faithfully engaging with God’s work in the world. Remember, James is concerned with how you live.

The Successful Planner

The first person that James describes is the successful business person. In the ancient world there was a huge middle class. Very small percentage at the top, similar to today, but there was a small class at the bottom…slave, outcast, leper, widow, orphan. Very large middle and there was no real movement here. But in the middle class were some successful business persons that might travel and sale an item that is needed and popular. They set their own agenda, plan their travel, operate their business isolated from their faith. This group would be in the churches, they are the people hearing this word delivered. James says....

James 4:13–17 NIV

Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.

There is clearly a critique coming here from James.

planning out their own success

views the world as their playing field

Takes credit for their achievements

This worldview believes the world is a closed system of limited resources available to their control. This view takes all sorts of shapes:

marginal Christianity (my life). Christian but now free to go about this world

YDG YGG (You do good, you get good)… Transactional faith.

This person believes that the past has pressured the present.

James asks the question: “What is your life?”

“You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”

Wake up church!!! Your accomplishments, your business, your community contributions, apart from God’s anointing is but a vapor.

Panning for the future is not wrong. College funds for your kids, retirement plans, etc. This is not to say that you should not be great stewards with what God gives you.

There comes a point where planning for tomorrow idolizes your own abilities and accomplishments rather than attributing God’s grace at work in your life. Or worse, ignores God’s interaction with this world and your life, altogether.

Your life is but a mist, James says. Sounds harsh but it carries a compelling word for us. Like the mist of fog in the morning before the sun comes up. It is there but it isnt all that is there. And in the grand scheme of the day it only lasts but a moment.

The question is, will you leverage what you have for the sake of God’s kingdom? Because God’s kingdom is your endless day after the mist. It is your eternal significance and identity.

The Rich Landowner

The second worldview receives the fullness of James’ Spite. James shifts gears to another hypothetical. Of one that has greater standing in the world’s eyes and greater success. It is a ramping up of the previous category. Look at beginning of chapter 5

James 5:1–6 NIV

Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.

If the planner was a Christian that is successful but also living in the fringe of their calling, the rich oppressor is a non-believer who has fully given themself to their wealth and the pursuit of it. These are land owners in the time of James writing and they are guilty of not just being rich but, as James points out, deep atrocities:

(v.2-3): They have selfishly hoarded wealth

(v.4): They have defrauded workers

(v. 5): they follow a self-indulgent lifestyle

(v. 6): and they oppress the righteous

Why does James write about this group of people in a letter to the church, they will likely never hear this word?

The oppressor has victimized people hearing this word. James encourages them that God will bring justice.

This person is idolized in the world. Likely, the planner from before emulates the success of this person. This is where the first worldview leads. James is saying, do not envy them, heck, do not emulate them.

What is interesting about James is you can see Jesus teachings all throughout this letter. They are always in the background. Jesus speaks very strongly about wealth and James is alluding to much of what Jesus says:

Do not worry about wealth. Do not store up riches in this life but store up your treasure in heaven. See Matthew 6:19-34. Or the parable of the rich fool.

Jesus says there is a reversal of the riches in the kingdom of God both now and in eternity. The first shall be last and the last shall be first. Is it possible, that we who have much are responsible to participate in the reversal ourselves?

Wealth leads to a divided heart. See Mark 10:24-25 ....how are is it for the rich to enter the kingdom of God? Like a camel going through the eye of a needle. One cannot have two masters....

The condemnation of James is the oppressor has only one master, money. And that master is ruthless to anyone that gets in the way.

John Wayne, Why spend so much time here? Glad you asked...

There is not a certain dollar amount that draws this line. Jesus did not write Dave Ramsey, dear, Dave… help people to a certain point but beware of $X dollars.

You do not have to be rich to serve this master.

The Patient Farmer

Finally, James moves on to a third worldview. A third hypothetical, the diligent farmer. On the surface it looks like James covers the middle class, then the upper class, then goes to the working poor, but that is only one observation. James is getting at the characteristic of this person. Look again at 5:7-9...

James 5:7–9 NIV

Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains. You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near. Don’t grumble against one another, brothers and sisters, or you will be judged. The Judge is standing at the door!

It is the farmer that is navigating this balance of our calling in the world but acknowledging God’s presence in it.

The farmer:

diligence in the present

faith in God

Patience in suffering

Diligence in the present

The farmer is in direct opposition to the planner. The farmer of course must look ahead to seasons and consider days to plant and days to harvest and how much seed to have on hand, etc. But the primary concern of the farmer is to work hard today. To accomplish what needs to happen in this moment.

Listen, we are so guilty of waiting for tomorrow. If we can just get through this, then we will go back to church, or if we can get through baseball season, or if I can just finish school, or wait until the kids are a little older. IF WE CAN JUST GET THROUGH THIS POLITICAL SEASON OR THIS PANDEMIC.

We do not have to wait to live into what God has for you.

Today is the day.

Faith in God

The farmer also knows that she can do everything right and yet it depends on God to bring the rains. She plants in faith, she diligently sows, knowing that God is the one that will grow the harvest.

The farmer believes that God is working in the world. That God can bring miracles, that God can bring healing, that God can bring power, that God can deliver.

Patience in Suffering

Finally, the farmer is patient. James says, be patient like the farmer. The farmer knows that if they do everything right, there may be seasons where the crop does not go as planned. When things get hard. But they press on, they endure, they suffer because the farmer knows that this small season that is unsuccessful does nothing to stand in the way of God’s victory.

That even when God does not intervene in the way we might hope, we know that after our mist is but gone the glory of Jesus will be forever.

“God’s kingdom is not merely some future cosmic event that human beings simply endure while waiting for its arrival. Rather the present is filled with meaning because God’s rule has already arrived.”

We have lost our patience. Maybe we have lost site of the cosmic truth, or maybe we have put God in a transactional box that when he does not intervene how we would then he must be absent. The early church new patience in suffering. They were farmers. Bishop Cyprian, writing in 256, to his people facing persecution.

Cyprian: Beloved brethren, we are philosophers not in words but in deeds; we exhibit our wisdom not by our dress, but by truth; we know virtues by their practice rather than through boating of them; we do not speak great things but we live them.”

The early church facing extreme persecution was not interested in a state sponsored faith, they were not interested in even winning souls, primarily. But they did win souls. You know how? They patiently and confidently faced all of the brokenness of the world and did not falter because they knew that temporal circumstances of hardship did not threaten the king Jesus who already rules.