The whole story of man can be told from the perspective of farming. We see these images popping up everywhere at the beginning of our history. God makes a world in which the land that emerges from the water becomes lush with vegetation. Then, after creating the man, he creates a special Garden for the man to work and to protect. Farming was man’s original task. These images were even evident in the relationship between the man and the woman. God told them to be fruitful and multiply, filling the earth. Man’s relationship with his wife would be like farming; it would be like tending and guarding the Garden. After the fall of man, God promises a seed who will come. God will make a new Garden that will be fruitful and will overcome the seed of the serpent, who are the thorns and thistles.
Creation and redemption can both be explained in terms of man’s vocation as a farmer. In giving man this vocation, God was also teaching man something about himself as well as leading him to meditate on how the entirety of his life is reflected in the world of agriculture. Man learns truths about himself and his relationships with God and others as he observes what goes on with land, seed, plants, and cultivation. This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. Remember, man was created out of the dust of the ground (Gen 2.7). This means that man, though distinct from the ground, nevertheless, corresponds to the ground in many ways. Man is the ground formed and filled with the breath of God. We are living, breathing plots of ground who are called to be farmers. This is why, not so incidentally, these parables of Jesus about seeds, soils, and sowers aren’t “far out-there” analogies. They are as natural as they can be. How much more basic can you get than going back to our original creation and understanding the correspondence between us and the ground from which we were birthed, so to speak? Jesus teases out the implications of this relationship in all of these agricultural parables, calling us to reflect upon our lives in light of what God is doing in this world in and through Christ Jesus and by the Spirit.
Of course, one of the first commands God gives man concerning the earth is to take dominion of it. We might say it this way: man was called to be a king and set up a kingdom. Man was to cultivate the earth in every way to make it fruitful. But this project must begin with man taking care of business at his personal garden first and foremost. That is, each person has the responsibility to cultivate his own body or person along with all of his other responsibilities. Before the fall this would have been necessary as well. It wouldn’t have been as difficult, but it would have still been necessary. Man needed to mature in wisdom and numbers. Cultivation for fruitfulness has always been necessary, even without the presence of sin. Man would have still had his challenges, to be sure, but nothing like what happened after the fall. After the fall, the curse became more than a challenge; it became the death of man and, thus, all of his creation work. The curse, which God says will be evident in a soil that will produce thorns and thistles, must be overcome. There is only one who could ultimately overcome that curse, and he would have to do it by submitting to its death even though he himself was without sin. Thankfully, he did this. He has defeated the curse and is reversing its effects. The last of that work will end when our bodies are resurrected at the last day.
The curse is defeated and its effects are on the way out but not completely eradicated. So, what do we do as we wait for the Advent of Jesus who will raise us from the dead? We continue to farm. Your body still feels the effects of sin. This will be made painfully evident one day when your body no longer has breath. Even now sin tries to overcome us. What do we do? We cultivate our gardens with the implements God has given us in Christ and by his Spirit so that our bodies are not overcome with thorns and thistles that will leave us fruitless. God has given us one another as the church to encourage us. As we gather together on the Lord’s Day and at other times, our relationships with one another should be cultivating godliness; whether that is through mutual encouragement or rebuke when necessary, we cultivate godliness as we live together as believers. God has given us Word, the Sacraments, and prayer in all of their various contexts to cultivate our gardens. We ought to be prayerfully meditating on Scripture and seeking ways to see how we apply it in our daily lives.
All of this is work. But any farmer worth his salt must be a diligent worker. Sloth is the enemy of godliness. Will you become tired? Yes. Will it seem at times that there is very little progress? Yes, there will be times it seems that these plants will never pop through the soil. Will you become discouraged? Probably. Everything will not go smoothly (something anyone who has worked a garden can tell you). Should you keep plugging? Yes. The daily cultivation of your life is necessary. The thorns and thistles grow quickly in an uncultivated garden. So, keep up the work. Maintain the disciplines. God has promised to give you everything you need to do it. Look to him, rely on all that he has given you, and trust his promise. There is a harvest coming. Be patient.
