“Be patient until the Lord’s coming” (James 5:7 CSB). These words, written by Jesus’ half brother, spoke to a particular kind of affliction in the early years of the church. This specificity may help us understand how anticipating Jesus’ return informs our experiences of abuse and injustice today.
James’s call to patience is directed toward field hands who harvested for powerful, wealthy landowners. The landowners held back the wages of these workers for no other reason than that they had the power to do so.
Our nation saw this dynamic in Southern states following America’s civil war. Many formerly enslaved persons in the South became sharecroppers, often working the same land for their former masters. Because the landowners had all of the legal and social power, they often forced the black (and sometimes white) laborers into unjust contracts or simply withheld their wages. I heard an elderly African American man tell his story—representative of the time—of watching this injustice unfold. His father presented meticulously kept books of how much he owed the landowner for seed, fertilizer, and farming equipment, how much cotton he had grown for the man, how much cotton was selling for, and thus how much he had come out ahead. It was going to be a good year. They were going to be able to pocket a good bit of the profits, perhaps to buy some land of their own. But after the landowner looked over the father’s accounting, he simply said, “No, according to my books we broke even this year. I don’t owe you a thing.”
The old man telling the story remembered the indignation he felt as a little boy. He started to say something, to protest, to demand justice, but his father squeezed his hand to silence him. The father stood there, stoic, knowing that a sharecropper’s word would never be believed over a landowner’s, knowing that a black man in the South could be lynched for stepping out of line, knowing that the white power structure would never give him his justice. So he just said “yes, sir” as the man robbed him of his wages.
This is the kind of situation James is addressing when he calls God’s people to patience. He highlights dynamics of social power structures that might not change in his lifetime. Yet James is not telling them to roll over and play dead, to become doormats. Rather, his call is to a prophetic patience.
Prophetic patience submits to God’s timeline of justice while crying out about that justice now.
James not only points to the prophets as examples— “As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord” (James 5:10)—he himself models this prophetic stance toward the wealthy landowners. He calls them to “weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you” (James 5:1). He mocks their already decaying ill-gotten gain. He amplifies the voices of the victims of their injustice, assuring them that “the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts” (v. 4). The oppressors may have lived fat and happy, but the fattening was for “a day of slaughter” (v. 5).
By speaking in this way, James acknowledges both that final justice will be brought about only at the coming of the Lord and that justice should be addressed now. “Behold,” he tells them in verse 9, “the Judge is standing at the door.” The return of Christ is the great hope that what is inequitable, exploitative, abusive, and harmful will be set right. And our daily prayer, meant to shape our engagement with this present state of affairs, is “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10).
James illustrates prophetic patience with the experience of the farmers he is addressing: “See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand” (James 5:7–8).
The farmers James is referencing would plant their seed in the fall. And then there was absolutely nothing they could do to force that seed to grow. They simply had to wait until the early rains came around October and November, then the latter rains in March and April. Wait. Wait. Wait.
And so it is with the injustice they face. The fruit of justice will grow. Jesus will bring a harvest of equity when he comes. But those exploited laborers can’t hurry it or force it into being any more than they can make a seed sprout. They have to establish their hearts and wait expectantly for his return.
But farming is not all waiting, is it? If you have been around a farm, you know that a farmer doesn’t sit back and do nothing between planting season and harvest. The farmer is working from sunup to sundown—pulling weeds, keeping birds away from the seed, spreading manure, and tending to the animals that create the manure. So the farmer is both waiting and active.
Perhaps you are an abuse survivor whose painful story of betrayal and coverup burns deep in your heart. Perhaps you have been socially marginalized or financially disadvantaged because of your gender, ethnicity, or skin color. Perhaps your dedication to repairing a tear in the social fabric has brought unwarranted criticism from believers who hold different political views.
Whatever your experience of injustice or exclusion, there is a pathway of prophetic patience God invites you to walk. He calls you to cry out about what is wrong as you wait for the coming of the Lord. This is not a denial of the horrific things you have suffered. It is not resignation to the status quo under which you were harmed. Your persistent advocacy may bring about accountability for those misusing power and institutional change. But even if it does not, your hope can rest secure in the fact that the movie will have a good ending because the coming King Jesus will acknowledge your pain, vindicate your suffering, and set right what is wrong in this world.
Excerpted from Bright Hope for Tomorrow by Chris Davis. Copyright 2022 by Chris Davis. Published by Zondervan. Used by permission.
