James 3:13-18
September 22
David A. Davis
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Our church went on a staff retreat two weeks ago to a retreat center in Quarryville, Pa. Quarryville is about 30 minutes from Lancaster. The GPS route to get there takes you off the highway about an hour from the conference center. Then it was all two-lane roads, rolling hills, and farm after farm after farm. It was a beautiful day and it was a beautiful landscape. A road was closed and we found ourselves crossing over a one-lane covered bridge. We passed horses and buggies and saw house after house with laundry drying on lines that looked like they stretched the length of a football field. During one afternoon break, I was in the car again passing buggies, and kids walking home from school carrying their shoes and lunchboxes. I was so enjoying my surroundings that GPS had to reroute more than once. I came upon a farmer harvesting what I guess was hay and being pulled by a team of four horses. I saw a barn full of harvest hanging from the ceiling to dry. Maybe it was tobacco, but I don’t know. I drove along a field where a family of all ages each had baskets in their hands and they were bent over harvesting something, but I couldn’t see that it was. As a kid who grew up not far from the river in Pittsburgh, I could tell from the smell in the air where the millworkers were in the steelmaking process but my knowledge of agriculture and the harvest is sort of embarrassing. It was like I needed a farming docent riding shotgun because the harvest may not always be what one guesses.
There is no shortage of reference to the harvest in the pages of scripture. No shortage of reference to the harvest in the teaching of Jesus for that matter. You remember what Jesus said about the harvest. Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few”. Jesus said it in Matthew and Luke. “The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the vineyards.” Harvest. Jesus usually mentions the harvest in a parable. Like the parable of the weeds and the wheat (Mt 13) or the parable of the vineyard (Mt 21) or the parable of the seed that grows in secret (Mk 4). They all include mention of the harvest. But a conversation about harvest and the teaching of Jesus usually starts with “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few”.
This memory verse, this quote, and this sound bite from Jesus often comes with a connotation of evangelism. It may conjure up thoughts of revivals, altar calls, and invitations from the preacher. Salvation’s rolling landscape full of hearts yearning to be transformed, waiting to hear the gospel, longing for grace and forgiveness anew. It is the harvest of conversion and the Gospel laborers attending to those hearing the gospel. The preacher concludes with the invitation, the plea, the promise. Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”
In the 10th chapter of Luke, Jesus speaking about the harvest and the laborers is wrapped up in the Lord’s appointing 70 others beyond the 12. He sent them ahead in pairs to every town and place he intended to go. That is when he warned them, telling them “I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves.” Jesus told them if they are rejected to shake the dust from their feet and move on. The sending starts with “the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. The gospel of Luke and Jesus’ sending of the 70. It does have that evangelistic flavor, that feel, that context.
But the harvest is a bit different in Matthew. Jesus dropping the verse in Matthew has a different feel. At the end of the 9th chapter, Matthew tells the reader that Jesus went around to all the cities and villages teaching and proclaiming the good news. Jesus was also “curing every disease and healing every sickness.” As he came upon crowd after crowd Jesus “had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd”. And that’s when he turned to his disciples and said “The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few, therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the Lord’s harvest.” Yes, the harvest for Jesus is about proclaiming the gospel. But here in Matthew, it comes with the feel, the flavor, the twist of his mercy and compassion. It comes with Jesus looking around and with a heavy heart full of love. Jesus looks into the faces of the crowd, turns to the disciples, and says, “There is so much to do and so few of us. We have to ask God for more help. This harvest of need is so plentiful. The harvest isn’t just about proclaiming the gospel. It is about living the gospel too.
The harvest. This harvest. This isn’t like taking our granddaughters to Terhune Orchards this fall and going out into the pumpkin patch to let them pick a pumpkin. No, this kind of harvest is where the exhausted farmers work all night long, and nameless, faceless migrant workers spend days that never end out in the field because there is so much to do and bad weather is coming and the economy of an entire region is at stake. A plentiful harvest, A plentiful harvest for Jesus among the crowds of people harassed by the world and so helpless.
Nassau’s mission partner, Centurion, held their annual gala in NYC last night. Mark Edwards and Annalese Hume took several Nassau youths up on the buses provided by Centurion to hear more about Centurion’s incredible work. Nassau member and great friend Jim McCloskey started the work now more than 40 years ago and Nassau has served as the ministry’s spiritual home. Centurion has freed 71 people who were wrongly imprisoned. The collective years in prison for those 71 people now exceeds 1500. In August, Jose Carrion walked out of a prison in Queens after more than 25 years
Jim McCloskey and John Grisham have written a book together that tells the story of 12 different cases. The book will be released next month, Jim writes about 6 of his cases and John writes about six cases he has followed and studied. I will be interviewing both of them at the Princeton Public Library event here in the sanctuary. Tickets are free and available on the library website and the evening will be livestreamed. I received an advanced copy of the book and read it this summer. I found it a book I couldn’t read cover to cover. Not because it wasn’t compelling or well-written. Of course, it is. But it is the weight of what McCloskey and Grisham write about. It is the heartbreak of getting to know these stories. Stories of real people and real suffering, most for decades. To read it is to come alongside children of God who were pretty much the definition of harassed and helpless. There is a weight that comes with hearts full of compassion.
A plentiful harvest. Is that a promise or lament? You live in the same world, the same times as me. We, you, me, the followers of Jesus and Jesus himself, we better all be asking the Lord for more help. It can be so paralyzing when there is so much to do; like you don’t know where to start. It can be so disheartening when dominant voices in the public square invoke a Christian faith that lacks any mercy. It can be overwhelming when the need in crowds only seems to grow in our lifetime and humanity’s inability to know the things that work for peace seems etched in stone. And Jesus still turns to the disciples, to the church, to you, to me and says “Wow, we have a lot of work to do.”
Right here is where the voiceover from James starts. Here is where the soundtrack from James starts to play. Here is where the melody line from James rises from the string section as the requiem heads toward its completion. When the Faith Without Works author gets your attention, he eventually gets to “The harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.” A plentiful harvest of righteousness. No, not a lament. Indeed a promise from James. A word of encouragement. “The harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.”
It is fascinating to discover that James uses a different Greek word for “harvest”. It is not the same word for harvest that is found in the gospels. The word used by James when it comes to “harvest” is crop or fruit. Fruit like in Galatians 5:22: the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” Fruit like in Ephesians 5:8-9 “For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of the light—for the fruit of the light is found all that is good and right and true.” Fruit as in John 15 when Jesus said “I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last”
For James, the harvest is the fruit of righteousness. And righteousness? Well, all through scripture righteousness is righteousness. A reference to what God requires, what God intends. Righteousness has to do with the godly work of righting what has been wrong. That the kingdom here on earth might more nearly be as in heaven. Righteousness. Not our righteousness, but the righteousness of Jesus working through and among us. “The fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.”
James counts the harvest one piece of fruit at a time. Jesus turns to the disciples, to the church, to us, and says “look at this crowd of humanity, harassed and helpless; we have so much work to do”. And James, somewhere in the crowd gives you an elbow and says, “Well, we have to start somewhere.”
We are ordaining new leaders in the life of Nassau Presbyterian Church this morning. People God has called through the voice of this congregation to lead us in the harvest. The fruit of righteousness is not going to be found in the brownfields of church sanctuaries if faith communities have long since lost their edge when comes to the work of the gospel: the work of justice and serving the poor and speaking for those so long and still silenced. Kingdom fruit does not ripen when congregations hunker down, wring their hands, and wish for the good old days. The fruit of righteousness will rot on the vine if Christians like you and me give up on Christ’s call to bear witness and to live what we believe Jesus has taught us. The harvest is not just about proclaiming the gospel. It is about living the gospel. Living it out in the world.
I haven’t had a chance to talk to any of the Nassau youth who were at the Centurion celebration last night. But I imagine as they heard the stories of the recently exonerated and heard the thanks offered for Kate Germond’s 35 years of work, they learned what Jim McCloskey taught me years and years ago. The harvest of righteousness comes one fruit at a time. One life at a time. It is quite difficult to fathom actually, how the entire Centurion team of staff, volunteers, and financial supporters spend years of time, sweat, and tears working endless hours, working for every one of those 71 lives and more.
You and I are called by the Hebrew prophets and Christ himself to speak for and work for righteousness and justice. The call is to follow Jesus and his challenge to systems, practices, and institutions that sow injustice into the fabric of human life. The call is to follow Jesus with hearts full of compassion tending to the crowds so full of need. Let James rest in your ear and tend to your soul. Because we have to start somewhere and the harvest comes one fruit, one act, one work at a time.