Agricultural and horticultural imagery pervades the epistle of James. James begins by addressing a diasporic people (1:1)—one that has been scattered like grain throughout the world. He concludes with the prayer of Elijah that ended the drought, after which the ‘heavens gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit’ (5:18). In between he compares the rich to withering grass or flowers (1:10-11), describes Christians as firstfruits of the creatures of God’s word (1:18), uses illustrations of trees and their fruit (3:12), speaks of a harvest of righteousness that is sown in peace (3:18), and exhorts his hearers to follow the example of farmers patiently waiting for the rains (5:7), their expectations to be rewarded, like those of the prophet Elijah (5:16-18).
In his frequent recourse to images drawn from the worlds of the farmer or the gardener, James has much in common, not merely with Jesus, but also with the Old Testament wisdom literature. That such imagery is grounded in the natural world and thus readily accessible to people across many times and cultures is doubtless part of the reason for its use. Yet the aptness of such imagery for wisdom teaching arises more from its effectiveness for the discussion of the natural relationship between character and actions (trees and their fruit), actions and their consequences (sowing and reaping), dependence upon the providence of God (in the gifts of the sun and rain), the necessary intervention of time, and a corresponding posture of patience in acting and waiting for the working of these. The harvest is the time of disclosure, when faithful labours are rewarded and once-concealed characters are made known (we might here recall Jesus’ parables of the Sower and of the Wheat and the Tares).
The good farmer’s negotiation of agricultural realities offers an incredibly rich and fitting cluster of analogies for the wise man’s negotiation of moral realities. Like the farmer, the wise man can exert considerable power through knowledge of people’s natures and through attending to the seasons and acting deliberately within them. Like the farmer, the wise man’s wisdom may not be immediately evident, but can be seen in due time. The farmer is an example of powerful and effective action, working wisely with the gifts of the earth and a generous climate. Another image of effective action in James is given in the rudder, which by its controlled movements can direct an immense vessel (3:4).
The rudder makes it possible for the skilled pilot to move the vessel as he wills through his handling of the tiller. If this is an image of the incredible potential exerted by the focused and targeted speech of the wise and self-controlled speaker—the great vessel perhaps here illustrating a large body of people that he can move through his speech—together with the images of patient farming, it provides the starkest contrast with James’ images of destructive potential: of fire (3:5-6), of poison (3:8), and of saltwater (3:12).
It can be instructive to read these different clusters of imagery against each other, observing the commonalities, the contrasts, and the implied interactions. The immense power of small things is a common theme, but this commonality exposes the difference between corrupting, uncontrolled, or destructive powers and powers that are life-giving, controlled, and creative. This contrast further highlights the difference between the suddenness that can be characteristic of destructive powers—the fire that devours the forest—and the slowness of constructive and creative powers—the time that the farmer must wait between sowing and reaping. Further, within these contrasts are implied interactions. The farmer is not only acquainted with the creative powers of the earth and the climate, but also knows the power of fire, poison, or saltwater to destroy and frustrate his labours, undoing in minutes the labours of many months or years.
James portrays faithful Christian action within this constellation of imagery, allowing its distinctive character more readily to be perceived. Such action is distinguished by self-mastery (1:26), by concern to avoid corruption (3:17), and by patience (4:7-8). It is in the contrast between the farmer and the careless starter of uncontrolled fires that things such as the force of James’ exhortation to slowness in speech and anger (1:19-20) can best be understood.
When James most fully characterizes the wise behaviour he wants to encourage in those hearing his letter, the imagery of the farmer is prominent. In James 3:17-18, for instance, he writes:
But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
This description of the ‘wisdom from above’—in a list comparable to the Apostle Paul’s description of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23—contrasts sharply with the behaviour that James condemns in the surrounding verses, violent, envious, proud, and belligerent behaviour that arises from warring passions among his hearers (4:1-2). While we might misunderstand peace merely to be the absence of conflict—a state often won through success in war—James presents us with a far more positive description. Peace must be made and this is chiefly done through patient labour and diligent self-investment. The farmer offers James’ primary metaphorical paradigms for the work of Christians in situations of crisis and conflict, rather than the soldier.
The Christian must be a master of irenic virtues. For James, this begins with purity, which he previously mentioned in 1:27. The primacy of purity, I suspect, has to do with the fact that, of all the traits mentioned, it most directly relates to the heart, from which all else will proceed. As Proverbs 4:23 warns: ‘Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.’ 1 Timothy 1:5 expresses the same primacy of the heart: ‘The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.’ A pure heart is undivided, unpolluted, and at peace. It is a protected spring of clean waters. Where a person’s heart is exposed to the pollutions, distractions, and turmoil of the wider world there is little hope of them producing peace anywhere else. True peace-making must begin with hearts protected by a divine peace (cf. Philippians 4:7; Colossians 3:15). Cultivating and guarding such pure and peaceful hearts is our primary duty.
The greatest impediment to the practices of wisdom that James describes is a divided, corrupt, or unsettled heart. Rather than acting out of and communicating its inner Spirit-given peace, it will be the reactive prisoner of conflictual passions and the tensions and antagonisms of its surrounding environment. The person whose heart is pure and at peace, however, will be able to act in ways that are not determined by—and which markedly contrast with—the world that surrounds them. Surrounded with anger, hostility, suspicion, cynicism, and stubborn resistance, they can respond with kindness, gentleness, openness to persuasion, mercy, good deeds, just judgment, consistency, and a lack of hypocrisy or guile. The result of all of this will be the ‘harvest of righteousness’ James speaks of in 3:18. It flows from peace, its manner is peaceable, and its result is peace.
This does not mean that the Christian is in no manner bombarded by the forces of the present age, nor that they need not be on their guard against the destructive and corrupting forces that James has described. However, this is so much easier for those whose hearts are ruled by God’s peace. It is interesting to observe that, even when James turns to treat Christians’ appropriate relation to injustice in their society, agricultural imagery still provides his dominant metaphorical framework. Christians should be like farmers praying for and patiently waiting for the rains and the time of the harvest (5:7-8), the time when the Lord will bring about justice. Elijah’s prayers—prayers concerning rains—are given as encouraging examples (5:17-18).
Although the pressures we experience may not rise to the level of those endured by the first recipients of James’ epistle, Christians in Western countries today undoubtedly face significant cultural hostility, opposition, and threat. And, as Pastor Meyers emphasizes in his opening essay in this conversation, James has much wisdom to give to contemporary Christian dissidents.
The posture of the zealot is much in evidence among such dissidents. For such a mindset, the Church must function on an unrelenting emergency footing, surrounded by the threats of the culture. We must all beat our ploughshares into swords and engage in constant and total conflict with the culture, which assaults us on all fronts.
The warnings that James gives his hearers against adopting the mindset of the zealot are attended by exhortations to a better way, fleshed out in James’ images of the faithful farmer. The patient way of peace that the farmer exemplifies is not driven by the anxiety, fear, and antagonism that enflames the zealot. The farmer must be aware of and keep destructive forces at bay, but his dominant concern must be peaceful agricultural activity.
The zealots’ desire to fight can render every field a battlefield. Rather than doing the peaceable business of the farmer, the zealot will requisition fields of the Lord’s planting for culture war operations, trampling down the grain, polluting or poisoning the soil, and exposing it to fires and other destructive forces. What grain remains will produce but a meagre and damaged harvest.
The wise farmer, while recognizing the same dangers as the zealot, can address them chiefly by taking measures to keep them at bay. He can construct a wall or fence around his property, can erect a watchtower, can set up firebreaks and other measures to prepare for the outbreak of fires. Such actions protect his fields from the encroachment of hostile elements, destructive creatures, or enemies. Having bounded his fields, he can then dig deep wells to ensure that he has pure water with which to irrigate them. He can clear the land of stones and weeds. While such measures will not be sufficient to prevent anything hostile, destructive, or deleterious from entering his land, they will ensure that tackling such things will not overwhelm him or completely dominate his attention.
While directly fighting and counteracting invasive and encroaching elements of the wider world may provide some protection for the grain, this is not how it will grow healthy and strong. For that it requires a ‘culture’ of its own, which will principally develop as it flourishes within boundaries that keep hostile external elements at bay. This allows us to devote our energies chiefly to patient farming labour in our own hearts and churches, diligently sowing the seeds of God’s word, clearing the stones and removing the weeds that constrict or stifle their growth, scaring away birds that would take the seed, digging deep wells and irrigation channels, praying for the rains of God’s blessing, and awaiting a harvest. The ‘battles’ that should most preoccupy us should be with the hardness of the soil of our hearts and Christian communities.
The more we adopt the mindsets of zealots, however, becoming preoccupied with the way of cultural conflict, the more that labouring upon our own hearts and communities will be regarded as a dangerous distraction or a cowardly shrinking away from pressing cultural battles. Why devote our chief energies to removing the stones from the fields of our Christian circles when there are enemies near at hand who hate us, whom we should be fighting? Surely focusing on such matters over the threat of our cultural enemies would be to ‘punch right and coddle left’?
What might the peaceable way of the patient farmer look like in our lives and contexts? As a matter of primary concern, it would seek to create healthy boundaries between our hearts and communities and our surrounding world. We can cultivate neither the peace nor the purity that James regards as integral to true religion if we directly, heavily, and incessantly expose ourselves to the conflict, impurity, and anxiety of our world. And, without such peace and purity, we have little to offer the world but more of the same.
Practically, this might require us to wean ourselves off much of our news intake, to step back from social media, to turn off our devices, to practice quietness and solitude, to give ourselves time and space. As we are less bombarded by the surrounding world, we can tend the fields of our hearts and communities. We can spend much more time in private reading, in personal and family prayer, in meditation upon Scripture, in the singing of psalms, in fellowship with the people of God. Having surrounded our fields with strong walls, we can clear stones, sow seeds, dig wells, pray for the rains, and patiently await God’s gift of harvest.
When we face threats, attacks, and incursions from the hostile culture that surrounds us, as we doubtless will, we can respond without the anxiety, reactivity, or preoccupation with conflict of the culture warrior, but as those who have bound the scope of such conflicts and are overwhelmingly devoted to peace-making—to the peaceable work of patient farmers. And, as we do so, we will also be able to communicate peace, purity, and sanity to those around us.
Alastair Roberts (PhD, Durham) is adjunct Senior Fellow at Theopolis and is one of the participants in the Mere Fidelity podcast. He is also the contributing editor of the Politics of Scripture series on the Political Theology Today blog. He blogs at Alastair’s Adversaria and tweets using @zugzwanged.
Agricultural and horticultural imagery pervades the epistle of James. James begins by addressing a diasporic people (1:1)—one that has been scattered like grain throughout the world. He concludes with the prayer of Elijah that ended the drought, after which the ‘heavens gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit’ (5:18). In between he compares the rich to withering grass or flowers (1:10-11), describes Christians as firstfruits of the creatures of God’s word (1:18), uses illustrations of trees and their fruit (3:12), speaks of a harvest of righteousness that is sown in peace (3:18), and exhorts his hearers to follow the example of farmers patiently waiting for the rains (5:7), their expectations to be rewarded, like those of the prophet Elijah (5:16-18).
In his frequent recourse to images drawn from the worlds of the farmer or the gardener, James has much in common, not merely with Jesus, but also with the Old Testament wisdom literature. That such imagery is grounded in the natural world and thus readily accessible to people across many times and cultures is doubtless part of the reason for its use. Yet the aptness of such imagery for wisdom teaching arises more from its effectiveness for the discussion of the natural relationship between character and actions (trees and their fruit), actions and their consequences (sowing and reaping), dependence upon the providence of God (in the gifts of the sun and rain), the necessary intervention of time, and a corresponding posture of patience in acting and waiting for the working of these. The harvest is the time of disclosure, when faithful labours are rewarded and once-concealed characters are made known (we might here recall Jesus’ parables of the Sower and of the Wheat and the Tares).
The good farmer’s negotiation of agricultural realities offers an incredibly rich and fitting cluster of analogies for the wise man’s negotiation of moral realities. Like the farmer, the wise man can exert considerable power through knowledge of people’s natures and through attending to the seasons and acting deliberately within them. Like the farmer, the wise man’s wisdom may not be immediately evident, but can be seen in due time. The farmer is an example of powerful and effective action, working wisely with the gifts of the earth and a generous climate. Another image of effective action in James is given in the rudder, which by its controlled movements can direct an immense vessel (3:4).
The rudder makes it possible for the skilled pilot to move the vessel as he wills through his handling of the tiller. If this is an image of the incredible potential exerted by the focused and targeted speech of the wise and self-controlled speaker—the great vessel perhaps here illustrating a large body of people that he can move through his speech—together with the images of patient farming, it provides the starkest contrast with James’ images of destructive potential: of fire (3:5-6), of poison (3:8), and of saltwater (3:12).
It can be instructive to read these different clusters of imagery against each other, observing the commonalities, the contrasts, and the implied interactions. The immense power of small things is a common theme, but this commonality exposes the difference between corrupting, uncontrolled, or destructive powers and powers that are life-giving, controlled, and creative. This contrast further highlights the difference between the suddenness that can be characteristic of destructive powers—the fire that devours the forest—and the slowness of constructive and creative powers—the time that the farmer must wait between sowing and reaping. Further, within these contrasts are implied interactions. The farmer is not only acquainted with the creative powers of the earth and the climate, but also knows the power of fire, poison, or saltwater to destroy and frustrate his labours, undoing in minutes the labours of many months or years.
James portrays faithful Christian action within this constellation of imagery, allowing its distinctive character more readily to be perceived. Such action is distinguished by self-mastery (1:26), by concern to avoid corruption (3:17), and by patience (4:7-8). It is in the contrast between the farmer and the careless starter of uncontrolled fires that things such as the force of James’ exhortation to slowness in speech and anger (1:19-20) can best be understood.
When James most fully characterizes the wise behaviour he wants to encourage in those hearing his letter, the imagery of the farmer is prominent. In James 3:17-18, for instance, he writes:
But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
This description of the ‘wisdom from above’—in a list comparable to the Apostle Paul’s description of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23—contrasts sharply with the behaviour that James condemns in the surrounding verses, violent, envious, proud, and belligerent behaviour that arises from warring passions among his hearers (4:1-2). While we might misunderstand peace merely to be the absence of conflict—a state often won through success in war—James presents us with a far more positive description. Peace must be made and this is chiefly done through patient labour and diligent self-investment. The farmer offers James’ primary metaphorical paradigms for the work of Christians in situations of crisis and conflict, rather than the soldier.
The Christian must be a master of irenic virtues. For James, this begins with purity, which he previously mentioned in 1:27. The primacy of purity, I suspect, has to do with the fact that, of all the traits mentioned, it most directly relates to the heart, from which all else will proceed. As Proverbs 4:23 warns: ‘Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.’ 1 Timothy 1:5 expresses the same primacy of the heart: ‘The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.’ A pure heart is undivided, unpolluted, and at peace. It is a protected spring of clean waters. Where a person’s heart is exposed to the pollutions, distractions, and turmoil of the wider world there is little hope of them producing peace anywhere else. True peace-making must begin with hearts protected by a divine peace (cf. Philippians 4:7; Colossians 3:15). Cultivating and guarding such pure and peaceful hearts is our primary duty.
The greatest impediment to the practices of wisdom that James describes is a divided, corrupt, or unsettled heart. Rather than acting out of and communicating its inner Spirit-given peace, it will be the reactive prisoner of conflictual passions and the tensions and antagonisms of its surrounding environment. The person whose heart is pure and at peace, however, will be able to act in ways that are not determined by—and which markedly contrast with—the world that surrounds them. Surrounded with anger, hostility, suspicion, cynicism, and stubborn resistance, they can respond with kindness, gentleness, openness to persuasion, mercy, good deeds, just judgment, consistency, and a lack of hypocrisy or guile. The result of all of this will be the ‘harvest of righteousness’ James speaks of in 3:18. It flows from peace, its manner is peaceable, and its result is peace.
This does not mean that the Christian is in no manner bombarded by the forces of the present age, nor that they need not be on their guard against the destructive and corrupting forces that James has described. However, this is so much easier for those whose hearts are ruled by God’s peace. It is interesting to observe that, even when James turns to treat Christians’ appropriate relation to injustice in their society, agricultural imagery still provides his dominant metaphorical framework. Christians should be like farmers praying for and patiently waiting for the rains and the time of the harvest (5:7-8), the time when the Lord will bring about justice. Elijah’s prayers—prayers concerning rains—are given as encouraging examples (5:17-18).
Although the pressures we experience may not rise to the level of those endured by the first recipients of James’ epistle, Christians in Western countries today undoubtedly face significant cultural hostility, opposition, and threat. And, as Pastor Meyers emphasizes in his opening essay in this conversation, James has much wisdom to give to contemporary Christian dissidents.
The posture of the zealot is much in evidence among such dissidents. For such a mindset, the Church must function on an unrelenting emergency footing, surrounded by the threats of the culture. We must all beat our ploughshares into swords and engage in constant and total conflict with the culture, which assaults us on all fronts.
The warnings that James gives his hearers against adopting the mindset of the zealot are attended by exhortations to a better way, fleshed out in James’ images of the faithful farmer. The patient way of peace that the farmer exemplifies is not driven by the anxiety, fear, and antagonism that enflames the zealot. The farmer must be aware of and keep destructive forces at bay, but his dominant concern must be peaceful agricultural activity.
The zealots’ desire to fight can render every field a battlefield. Rather than doing the peaceable business of the farmer, the zealot will requisition fields of the Lord’s planting for culture war operations, trampling down the grain, polluting or poisoning the soil, and exposing it to fires and other destructive forces. What grain remains will produce but a meagre and damaged harvest.
The wise farmer, while recognizing the same dangers as the zealot, can address them chiefly by taking measures to keep them at bay. He can construct a wall or fence around his property, can erect a watchtower, can set up firebreaks and other measures to prepare for the outbreak of fires. Such actions protect his fields from the encroachment of hostile elements, destructive creatures, or enemies. Having bounded his fields, he can then dig deep wells to ensure that he has pure water with which to irrigate them. He can clear the land of stones and weeds. While such measures will not be sufficient to prevent anything hostile, destructive, or deleterious from entering his land, they will ensure that tackling such things will not overwhelm him or completely dominate his attention.
While directly fighting and counteracting invasive and encroaching elements of the wider world may provide some protection for the grain, this is not how it will grow healthy and strong. For that it requires a ‘culture’ of its own, which will principally develop as it flourishes within boundaries that keep hostile external elements at bay. This allows us to devote our energies chiefly to patient farming labour in our own hearts and churches, diligently sowing the seeds of God’s word, clearing the stones and removing the weeds that constrict or stifle their growth, scaring away birds that would take the seed, digging deep wells and irrigation channels, praying for the rains of God’s blessing, and awaiting a harvest. The ‘battles’ that should most preoccupy us should be with the hardness of the soil of our hearts and Christian communities.
The more we adopt the mindsets of zealots, however, becoming preoccupied with the way of cultural conflict, the more that labouring upon our own hearts and communities will be regarded as a dangerous distraction or a cowardly shrinking away from pressing cultural battles. Why devote our chief energies to removing the stones from the fields of our Christian circles when there are enemies near at hand who hate us, whom we should be fighting? Surely focusing on such matters over the threat of our cultural enemies would be to ‘punch right and coddle left’?
What might the peaceable way of the patient farmer look like in our lives and contexts? As a matter of primary concern, it would seek to create healthy boundaries between our hearts and communities and our surrounding world. We can cultivate neither the peace nor the purity that James regards as integral to true religion if we directly, heavily, and incessantly expose ourselves to the conflict, impurity, and anxiety of our world. And, without such peace and purity, we have little to offer the world but more of the same.
Practically, this might require us to wean ourselves off much of our news intake, to step back from social media, to turn off our devices, to practice quietness and solitude, to give ourselves time and space. As we are less bombarded by the surrounding world, we can tend the fields of our hearts and communities. We can spend much more time in private reading, in personal and family prayer, in meditation upon Scripture, in the singing of psalms, in fellowship with the people of God. Having surrounded our fields with strong walls, we can clear stones, sow seeds, dig wells, pray for the rains, and patiently await God’s gift of harvest.
When we face threats, attacks, and incursions from the hostile culture that surrounds us, as we doubtless will, we can respond without the anxiety, reactivity, or preoccupation with conflict of the culture warrior, but as those who have bound the scope of such conflicts and are overwhelmingly devoted to peace-making—to the peaceable work of patient farmers. And, as we do so, we will also be able to communicate peace, purity, and sanity to those around us.
Alastair Roberts (PhD, Durham) is adjunct Senior Fellow at Theopolis and is one of the participants in the Mere Fidelity podcast. He is also the contributing editor of the Politics of Scripture series on the Political Theology Today blog. He blogs at Alastair’s Adversaria and tweets using @zugzwanged.
-->